The state Department of Corrections has a waiting list of 7,000 prisoners needing drug treatment. This has meaning beyond the state prisoners who need treatment to help straighten out their lives. This is also a matter that should upset all Alabama taxpayers.

As everyone knows, state prisons are dangerously overcrowded. Both state and federal courts have ordered the state to take steps to remedy crowding problems.

One way Gov. Bob Riley has chosen to address the problem is to expand the state's Board of Pardons and Paroles in order to parole more convicts. And, indeed, the expanded parole board is hearing more requests and granting more paroles.

But even that has highlighted yet another problem in the state's criminal justice system: an underinvestment in drug-treatment programs.

Some nonviolent felons up for parole before the board have been turned away because they haven't completed drug rehabilitation. In fact, it's become such a regular occurrence at parole hearings that it's one factor that more than half of those up for early release are denied.

As of early last week, of the 1,896 cases heard by the board since December, only 879 had been approved. No one knows how many are due to a lack of drug treatment, however, because the board doesn't keep count of such factors. But it should.

Let's be clear: The parole board should be commended for demanding that convicts with a history of drug abuse first go through treatment before they are released early on parole. Turning loose felons with unresolved drug problems would be a greater threat to public safety than the costs to the state of warehousing them in prisons.

It's also clear that drug treatment is much cheaper and more effective than incarceration. Yet the wait for a place in one of the state's 57 treatment programs for prisoners can be up to six months.

Prison officials say that in most cases inmates on the waiting list get into the next session of a program. But the fact that there are 7,000 on the waiting lists and that paroles are being denied indicates a need for more treatment programs.

It's in the state's interest to provide treatment to all inmates who need it, whether they're eligible for parole or not.

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