An Ounce of Prevention These are difficult times for Shelby County government. Faced with all manner of budgetary constraints, county commissioners are in no mood to consider new programs and increased expenditures when they vote next week on the county budget. There is one new item, however, whose inclusion in that budget seems essential. District Attorney General Bill Gibbons has proposed -- and the state General Assembly has authorized -- the creation of a Shelby County drug court, modeled upon the hundreds of similar facilities now operating all across America. A part-time drug court, presided over by Criminal Court Judge Tim Dwyer, has been operational in Shelby County for two years -- providing intensive treatment, rehabilitation, and close supervision of drug-addicted offenders indicted for nonviolent crimes. The achievement of such programs nationwide has been impressive. In Los Angeles, for example, the success rate for drug court "graduates" -- defined as no rearrests after completion of a one-year intensive rehab program -- is more than 80 percent. Across the country, recidivism rates have been cut in half by successful drug-court programs. Attorney General Gibbons -- who hardly has a reputation for being "soft" on crime -- has embraced the drug-court concept wholeheartedly, as has the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission. In a city where three of every five burglaries are drug-connected, criminal-justice solutions that attack drug addiction are bound to make a meaningful impact upon the community. Judge Dwyer has agreed to head the court, should the county vote to fund a full-time program. After start-up costs, the annual price tag for operating such a facility is less than $600,000: a small price to pay, in our opinion, for attacking the root cause of so much crime in this community. Again Elsewhere in this issue the sad fate of John F. Kennedy Jr. is reflected on, and surely there are very few of us who didn't suspend much of our usual activity last weekend in order to follow the nonstop TV accounts of what was first called a "rescue" attempt and -- later, inevitably -- was reclassified as a "recovery" effort. The truth is, we all knew from the beginning -- from the time we heard young Kennedy's plane was missing over open water -- what the almost certain outcome was. Our close attention to the tube was as much an act of tribute to the fallen young scion of America's true First Family as it was an act involving any realistic hope on our part. Still, we kept the vigil -- as we always do when something dreadful has happened or seems about to in the case of those whom we choose to admire and/or venerate. It was a reminder of the sacrificial role which the famous play in our lives. Even as we savor their vicarious triumphs, we grieve during their moments of anguish. Omne padme um, as the ancient Hindus had it: I am that. We are that, of course, although, as long as we have our exemplars, we can forget for a while the common and inevitable destiny. "Catharsis," Artistotle called it. Well, we have just been through another one.