TULSA, Okla. — With their 2025 Felony Drug and Mental Health Court class, the Tulsa County Alternative Courts Program saved taxpayers across the state approximately $1.8 million.
Instead of sending individuals with drug or felony charges to prison, they rehabilitate them and get them ready to re-enter society.
However, financial woes at the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services has the program's fate hanging in the balance.
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"If we lost our funding from the Department of Mental Health, we would not be able to sustain," said TCACP Director Ericka Jeffords. "Unfortunately, we don't know much about what our funding is going to look like for next year."
ODMHSAS is the program's primary funder.
The alternative courts have been serving Tulsans since 1996. Losing it, Jeffords said, would have a ripple effect across the state.
“We’ve graduated over four thousand people from our programs, and so ultimately many of those individuals were prison-bound, so if not for coming into one of our programs, they would have been sentenced to DOC," she said. "The cost to incarcerate someone in the Department of Corrections is significant, and the taxpayer dollars that we save by putting people into our program are great for the community to know as a whole, but it also has a huge impact on the lives of the people that we're saving.”
The graduates are people like Matthew Winchester.
Before entering drug court, he had been in active addiction for 25 years and spent most of his adult life in prison.
“I wasn’t a very good human being before," said Winchester. "I wasn’t a good father, I wasn’t a good brother, I wasn’t a good friend, a good son, I wasn’t employable. Not whatsoever was I employable. I just was a terrible human being, and it was time for a change.”
Winchester said the program he entered helped him not only learn to beat his demons but also find a new and better version of himself.
They helped him with everything from learning to write a check or pay a bill, all the way to the big things like honesty.
"There’s rehabilitation programs, rehab or rehabilitation, this is for a lot of people’s 'habilitation,' there is no ‘re’ they’re learning for the first time," he said.
2 News asked Winchester where he thought he'd be if he didn't have drug court to get his life back on track.
“Oh no doubt, prison," said Winchester. "I mean there’s an old cliché saying, the streets only have two endings, death or prison and I have no doubt it would be one or the other.”
2 News has highlighted the program's graduates in years past:
The proof that this program works is all in the numbers.
In 2024, over 1,200 individuals were served through TCACP. That same year, Mental Health Court saw 142 new admissions, the highest in the court's history.
Mental Health Court graduates have seen a 66% reduction in arrests, a 64% reduction in the number of days spent in jail, and an 84% reduction in days spent in hospitals.
But without the funding, Jeffords said, none of these numbers will matter.
"You’re looking at higher rates of incarceration, potentially increases in crime because individuals who are suffering from those diseases are not getting the services that they need, and ultimately there is going to be more people suffering without treatment," said Jeffords.
The program saw a 98% decrease in recent drug court graduates' unemployment rates, and an 81% decrease in those graduates lacking a GED or diploma by the end of the program.
“Not everybody has a family, not everybody has a support system, not everybody has somebody they can call that’s going to hold them accountable or say 'hey, do you just need to talk?'" said Winchester. "People don’t have that, and nowadays, people are dying at an ungodly amount, we need this program more than ever."
The funding from ODMHSAS doesn't just affect the funding the TCACP gets, but their treatment providers too.
At any given time, the program is serving several hundred individuals in need for anywhere from six months to three and a half years. Without this support, these individuals would have no other option but to spend time behind bars without the treatment they need.
To contact the alternative courts, call 918-596-8595.
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