LINCOLN- A very low number of accused felons in Nebraska — just over 4% — can access a problem-solving court, touted by officials as a more effective way to turn lives of crime around and a much less costly alternative than prison.

Last year, about 1,100 individuals were able to get into problem-solving courts across the state, which is 4.2% of those charged with felonies.

“There’s obviously some huge room for improvement,” Nebraska Supreme Court Judge Jeffrey Funke told members of the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee.

32 such courts are spread across the state in which a district judge, utilizing tough love and highly supervised requirements such as taking a job and remaining drug-free, seeks to turn around the lives of “high-risk, high-need” offenders.

Funke said a new study found that the cost of problem-solving court supervision was $5,387 a year and that the recidivism rate for those completing the program was 19%.

That is about one-third the cost, or less, of housing someone in a state prison, where the most recent recidivism rate — the percentage of inmates returning to prison within three years — was about 29.8%.

Webb Bancroft, a public defender in Lancaster County whose primary job is working with problem-solving courts, said offenders regularly say that the most important factor in their success was the time they spent with a judge.

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