PROVIDENCE — When the state budget won final passage last week, despite the governor’s veto, lawmakers declared it a major victory that they were able to earmark $1 million for drug treatment for parolees in the same budget year they had to close a $300-million deficit. But setting aside the money was only half the battle.

The state Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals must now determine how to spend the money, and it isn’t as simple as figuring out how many treatment slots $1 million will buy.

Department Director Ellen R. Nelson says she wants to make sure the money is spent in a thoughtful way that maximizes its impact. To that end, Nelson wants to work with the Department of Corrections and the Parole Board to assess the number and types of slots needed, and consult treatment providers about the best way to use the money.

Nelson emphasized that she doesn’t intend to “plan the thing to death,” and hopes the state can buy the additional slots and have them available this fall. “I think we’re going to take a very short and intensive period to analyze the need and the options, and then move forward expeditiously,” she said yesterday. “We’re optimistic that we can do this quickly.”

Neil A. Corkery, executive director of the Drug and Alcohol Treatment Association of Rhode Island, lauded Nelson’s openness to providers’ input, but also urged the state to make the treatment slots available as soon as possible. “There are loads of people who could benefit from this immediately,” he said.

The state prison population reached an all-time high of 3,889 earlier this month, and next year’s budget includes nearly $100 million for prisons. Corrections officials have said 70 percent of inmates at the Adult Correctional Institutions have problems with drug or alcohol abuse, and some inmates who qualify for parole are spending an extra three to four months in prison — at an average per-person cost of $39,000 a year — because there are no open drug-treatment slots and treatment is a condition of their parole. House Finance Committee Chairman Steven M. Costantino, D-Providence, and Senate Majority Leader M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, spearheaded the push to include the additional treatment money.

Nelson said her “preliminary assumption” is that $1 million is not enough to meet the demand and ensure that drug treatment is immediately available to parolees who need it, but it is enough to make a big dent in the problem.

Residential treatment for an adult costs $54.83 a day, and the average stay in the program is between 6 and 9 months, so the treatment typically costs $10,000 to $15,000.

The Department of Corrections estimates that there are 35 people at the ACI who could be paroled, but are waiting for a bed to open up in a residential treatment program. Parolees typically need residential, as opposed to outpatient, treatment because the structured setting drastically reduces their chances of regressing into active drug use and ending up back in prison, those involved said.

But people generally don’t go straight from residential treatment to living on their own with no treatment whatsoever, and the intermediate steps carry a cost, too. Outpatient treatment costs $10.47 a day, and the average stay in the program is 12 weeks. Narcotic maintenance — treatment with methadone, a synthetic drug used to quell cravings for heroin and other opiates — costs $7.95 per person per day, but people stay in the program for years.

In all, the state spends $14.5 million a year on contract slots in drug treatment programs. Less than $100,000 of that comes from a federal grant; the rest is state money.

Nelson said about 4 percent of the slots are generally open at a given time, but people — especially parolees — end up waiting for residential treatment beds because many of the residential facilities place restrictions on who can stay there. Some facilities are for men only or women only; some won’t accept people with a history of violent crime.

Nelson said those concerns will enter into the process, as her department tries to determine what type of beds it needs and to get providers to create them if they don’t exist. Workers will also need to be hired and trained, and Nelson said the state may need to consider raising the rates it pays providers.

Above all, Nelson called the additional money a positive accomplishment in what was, in many ways, a grim budget year. “People understand this is a critical component that can’t be left unattended,” she said. “It has a negative economic impact as well as terrible social consequences.”

egudrais@projo.com