The state Community Corrections Council, chaired by legislative Speaker Sen. Kermit Brashear, recommended spending approximately $17 million to construct a medium-security treatment center in Norfolk, Neb. The panel was tasked with determining how to ease prison crowding with alternative sentencing for drug offenders.

"We have to begin implementation now," said Brashear. Added Sen. Mike Flood: "Long term, it's a way to save money. It's either $100 million on a new Tecumseh (prison), or take a crack at treatment."

Flood called the proposal a companion to a bill passed last year to control sales of cold medicines containing chemicals that can be used to make meth. "The issue left unanswered is what to do with the 80 percent of folks who get meth from other places, are addicted and go to prison," he said.

The Norfolk treatment facility also would complement Nebraska's plan to increase community-based treatment and corrections. "A group of offenders will always exist whose resistance to treatment and recovery will outpace even the most complete system of intervention services ... prior to incarceration with the Department of Correctional Services," the panel's report noted.

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