Money spent on helping inmates avoid a return trip to jail is a good investment for the community.

It’s understandable that law-abiding taxpayers chafe at spending money on people housed in county jails and state prisons. It’s maddening to see money that could be going to support schools or social services being diverted to feed and house people who aren’t giving anything back to society.

That said, however, some expenditures seem to have a pretty good chance of paying off in the long run for both taxpayers and inmates. The Douglas County Jail’s partnership with the Bert Nash Community Mental Health Clinic is one such investment.

An article in Sunday’s Journal-World tells of an innovative new program that brings a team of mental health counselors and social workers to the jail at least four times a week and keeps them available to respond to emergencies around the clock. The county sheriff’s budget allots $20,000 a year to cover the cost of the program.

The goal is to help inmates understand and deal with some of the mental and personal issues that landed them in their current predicament. The hope is that inmates will be able to control or alter their behavior to prevent returning to jail again.

According to Douglas County Sheriff Rick Trapp, up to 20 percent of the county jail population is affected by serious mental health problems. That number rises to about 75 percent if problems associated with drug abuse are included. It’s just common sense that dealing with those issues could go a long way toward keeping people from becoming repeat offenders.

The jail program is just a start, the Bert Nash people acknowledge, but it gives inmates an opportunity to tap into services that could help them keep out of trouble when they leave jail. Considering that the county has budgeted $491,000 to provide medical services at the jail this year, $20,000 seems like little enough to invest in prisoners’ mental health.

Trapp says he thinks the Bert Nash program is cost-effective because it helps reduce disruptive behavior in the jail and trains the jail staff on how to better handle the bad behavior that does occur. If the program also reduces repeat offenses, it could have much broader benefits for the county by reducing the jail population, the cost of prosecution and other related expenses.

It probably isn’t surprising that Douglas County is the only county in Kansas that has this type of program. Money is tight, and spending on inmates isn’t a popular item. Yet, especially as mental hospitals have closed and more people with mental health issues are being pushed into community treatment programs, it seems that providing mental health care for offenders is a good investment.

We talk a lot about educating young people and investing in youth programs as being a good way to avoid problems that will be more expensive to deal with down the road. The community apparently missed that opportunity to head off problems for people who find themselves in the county jail, but not all inmates deserve to be written off as a lost cause.

If programs like the county’s partnership with the Bert Nash Center can keep even a few offenders from returning to jail, it will be a good investment for the community.