Since overhauling its work-release program into a community corrections corporation last year, the county has combined punishment and rehabilitation in a way that has kept hundreds of nonviolent offenders out of jail without letting them off the hook. And the program is getting close to breaking even.

"Shelby County would more or less be the model," said Jeffery Williams, director of community corrections for the state Department of Corrections, "but a lot of the programs don't have the options Shelby County has. And most of the counties do not have the resources Shelby County has."

Thirty-eight of Alabama's 67 counties have some form of community corrections, with seven getting organized just last year, Williams said. Several of those counties sent delegations to visit the work-release residential center in Columbiana, the drug-testing laboratory and the adult drug court, all of which fall under the Shelby County Community Corrections Corp.

The program had more than 1,100 participants by the end of August, each one a person who otherwise would have been at least in jail and possibly in the state prison system.

Although the county has run some version of work release for several years, leaders got serious about it 15 months ago and formed the corporation to remove red tape involved in accepting assistance from the private sector and to put all its community corrections efforts under a single umbrella.

Since then, Executive Director David Horn has marked some milestones in which he takes pride. Fees paid by participants, as well as drug-testing fees from outside agencies, totaled $716,115 last year. They fell short of covering the $772,963 in expenses incurred, but "the gap is closing," Horn said.

Horn's $1.5 million 2006-07 budget forecasts breaking even.

Tests part of program:

Part of closing the gap between income and outgo has been the seven-day-a-week drug-testing laboratory.

The lab, under the direction of Richard Bailey, is housed in a triple-wide modular home next to the work-release residential center on Columbiana's McDow Drive. Its drug analyzer can test for 13 substances.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Bill Bostick, the corporation's chairman, said the philosophy is to combine punishment and rehabilitation while making the offender pay his own way.

"This way they are working and going through drug screening instead of sitting in jail," he said. "If they commit a new crime - and those numbers are very low - they will go to jail."

The Community Corrections Corp. includes adult drug court, residential work release, pretrial work release and electronic and alcohol monitoring, as well as contractual supervision of some state felons. Bostick said the program does not accept violent offenders, sex offenders or drug sellers.

In each category, offenders pay either a portion of their income or a flat fee for supervision and random drug testing.

Horn used a single day's jail population as an example. Of 498 people behind bars, 104 appeared to be eligible for community corrections.

Pretrial release is designed to keep a person employed instead of sitting in jail before he may be convicted of an offense. This helps inmates who cannot make bond, Bostick said. While awaiting a court date a person pays a supervision fee, reports regularly for counseling and must telephone daily to check the possibility of a random drug screen.

"By the time someone like that gets to court, he has what amounts to a probation record to point to as a reason why he should get probation and not incarceration," Bostick said.

Pays room, board:

The state contracts with the corporation to keep some nonviolent, non-sex offenders in community corrections for $15 a day. The offender works, reports to lockdown residential control at night and pays 40 percent of his income in room and board.

Otherwise, the state's taxpayers would be spending $34 a day to keep him in a state penitentiary.

Some people convicted of DUI are equipped with electronic monitors that detect any alcohol consumption through sweat, Horn said. Other electronic monitors let the corporation know where a client is by bouncing signals off cell phone towers.

"I like that they are having to pay for the place," Bostick said of the residential program. "They are locked down at night, and, while a captive audience, we see that they access counseling."

E-mail: nwilstach@bhamnews.com