The Kochs and Laura Kelly are right on criminal justice reform. But there’s one problem

It’s great that incoming Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and the libertarian lobby funded by Wichita-based Koch Industries agree that the right response to the state’s growing problem of overcrowded prisons isn’t to pave over the prairie and build more and more correctional facilities. Instead, we have to reform the whole system.

As is already happening at the federal level, reforming sentencing laws for low-level and drug offenders is the right move for Kansas, too, particularly amid the current increase in the inmate population.

What’s still being left out of this important conversation, though, is that it will be a lot more difficult to successfully overhaul the prison system without also expanding Medicaid, as the state has so far failed to do under the Affordable Care Act.

Here’s why: If we expand by 140,000 the number of Kansans covered by Medicaid, many more people will have access to drug treatment. When more people are covered, providers can expand capacity. That’s why in states that did take federal dollars to expand Medicaid coverage, many people who could never have gotten treatment for addictions before have gotten help.

In states like Kansas and Missouri that did not expand coverage, it follows that more people are in prison who with proper treatment could instead be working, contributing and taking care of their families.

You can let drug offenders, whose addictions often lead to other crimes, out of jail without making treatment available, of course, but that does make it much more likely that the ex-offender will wind up right back inside. That’s not to say that everyone with a drug or alcohol problem will get treatment, but if we don’t make sure it’s available, we know they won’t.

And failing to make medication-assisted treatment available can only hobble the prospect that sentencing reform will work as it’s supposed to and could.

Kelly said recently that “right now, we are incarcerating many, many people who are non-violent, first-time drug offenders. Those folks no more belong in prison than you or I. What they need, if anything, is treatment.”

That’s true. No ifs about it, though.

A high percentage of all prisoners have an addiction and/or a mental health problem of some kind, yet too many get little to no real treatment either in prison or after they get out, unfortunately.

Part of the whole Obamacare discussion that never got enough attention is that if you wipe out the Affordable Care Act’s requirement for coverage of “essential benefits,” as Republicans have pushed for years to do, then neither drug treatment nor care for a mental illness will typically be covered. Providers will lose staff, and access for addiction services will be decreased dramatically.

Though allowing companies to sell junk insurance that does not cover addiction services is always presented as a cost savings and a win for freedom, a lack of access really only forces us all to pay more, for one thing to house a burgeoning prison population.

Kansas’ male inmate population will exceed capacity this next summer, according to projections from the Department of Corrections, growing about 20 percent in the next decade, and about 30 percent for inmates charged with drug-related crimes, according to the Kansas Sentencing Commission.

Obviously, going on as we are isn’t a realistic option. But neither is addressing only half of the problem.