A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT to reduce prison costs by appropriating funds to provide comprehensive residential treatment and vocational training for probationers with substance abuse disorders.
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
SECTION 1.  There is appropriated from the General Fund to the Department of Correction the sum of three hundred thirty thousand dollars ($330,000) for the 2009‑2010 fiscal year and the sum of three hundred thirty thousand dollars ($330,000) for the 2010‑2011 fiscal year for Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers (TROSA), a nonprofit, State‑licensed therapeutic community. These funds shall be used to provide comprehensive residential substance abuse treatment services and vocational training for up to 230 probationers per fiscal year as an alternative to incarceration. This appropriation would save the State approximately two million four hundred thousand dollars ($2,400,000) annually in incarceration costs.
SECTION 2.  Triangle Residential Options for Substance Abusers (TROSA) shall report by February 1 of alternate years, beginning February 1, 2010, to the Joint Legislative Corrections, Crime Control, and Juvenile Justice Oversight Committee and to the Chairs of the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Justice and Public Safety on the expenditure of State appropriations and on the effectiveness of the program, including information on the number of probationers served, the range of services and service days provided to probationers in the TROSA program, and the number of probationers who have been rearrested within three years of successfully completing the program. The report shall provide financial and program data for the complete fiscal year prior to the year in which the report is submitted with the exception of the report dated February 1, 2010, which shall be a partial fiscal year report.
SECTION 3.  This act becomes effective July 1, 2009.