Summer Van Hook became a meth addict in her hometown of Sidney at 14, after a girlhood in and out of foster care as her own mother battled dope.

By 17, she was a high-school dropout living -- and shooting up -- in Billings, where she eventually committed a felony and ended up on probation.

Married with a baby, Van Hook then made an honest run at clean living, but relapsed on her birthday and fell deeper into meth than she'd ever been.

Then she had a choice: Go to prison or try Montana's newly opened Elkhorn Treatment Center, a lockdown meth treatment center in Boulder that's part of Montana's new direction for the Department of Corrections.

She chose Elkhorn, which she describes today as one of the most difficult and rewarding experiences of her life.

"I wish everyone in my family could go through something like Elkhorn," she said in a telephone interview from Passages in Billings, a women's prerelease center.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer cites stories like hers when he talks about why he is pleased with how Corrections has changed since he became governor in January 2005.

Since Schweitzer's inauguration, the agency has added two lockdown meth treatment centers (the first of their kind in the nation), expanded prerelease, beefed up probation and parole and put a greater emphasis on rehabilitating drug users and stabilizing the mentally ill.

But the change hasn't been cheap. In the last Legislative session, lawmakers set aside an additional $94 million for the department. That comes on top of the nearly $300 million the agency spent between 2006 and 2008.

And the shift didn't entirely originate with Schweitzer. Driven by prison overcrowding and tight budgets, Martz began looking at treatment and prison alternatives two years before Schweitzer was elected governor.

"He didn't have a whole lot to do with it, as far as initiating programs," said Rep. Ray Hawk, R-Florence, who has served on the panel that drafts Corrections budget since 2005. "He was in favor of the direction (Corrections) was taking. In that regard, he went along with it."

So, how much credit can Schweitzer take for the department's new face and what assurances do we have that innovative programs like meth treatment are really working -- and saving tax money?

What changed?

The meth treatment centers have become an emblem for what has changed in corrections, but the agency has seen a shift throughout its ranks. Numbers tell the story:

- The number of people on probation and parole has grown 25 percent, up to 8,558.

- A sixth prerelease center was built in Bozeman with a seventh in the works for Kalispell.

- Existing prerelease centers have expanded; the number of people in prerelease has grown 42 percent from 597 to 849.

- The number of state inmates backing up into county jails has fallen from 222 in 2006 to 95 in 2008.

- Montana ranked No. 1 among all states for the lowest rate of growth of the state's incarcerated population in 2007, according to a recent report. In Montana, the number of people in prisons actually declined by 4.9 percent.

At the Montana Women's Prison, Warden Jo Acton has transitioned the entire facility into a "therapeutic community." The women live in groups which function like a kind of drug-free "mini-society" geared toward teaching them how to live clean after they are released.

Is it working?

Van Hook was one of the very first graduates of the Elkhorn center. Because the centers are so new, it is impossible to tell how many will relapse, said Mike Ferriter, director of the Department of Corrections.

The agency has hired the University of Montana's School of Social Work to track the graduates from meth treatment to see how they fare.

If experience is any guide, however, there is reason to believe the meth centers will work. Graduates of the state's older lockdown alcohol treatment centers are significantly less likely than other probationers and ex-cons to wind up back in the correctional system, statistics show.

Some addicts will relapse, Schweitzer said. That's a fact of life.

"But there will be a certain number of them who will turn their lives around," he said. "And we've done that without increasing the increase" of money the state was already spending on corrections.

Money talks

Hawk, who chaired the committee that drafted the Corrections' 2008-2009 budget, said he thought the agency asked for too much money because it predicted unrealistic growth in the number of expected new convicts.

But Corrections spokesman Bob Anez said the agency is unlikely to ever have a static budget, particularly with rising food, energy and fuel costs. The number of new convicts in the system grows every year, he added, and the 2007 budget included money for programs like meth treatment, that were approved in 2005, but didn't fully come on line or cost the state money, until 2008.

Hawk and Schweitzer do agree, however, that treatment and prison alternatives are already saving the state money.

For example, Van Hook's treatment and prerelease combined will cost the state $51,000, before she graduates to probation, where she will cost the state just $4.12 a day.

If Van Hook had been sent to prison, the state would have spent $121.50 a day to house her. If she was an average inmate, she could expect to stay there for about a year and a half. That would have cost the state $69,000 or $18,000 more than treatment and prerelease.

For men, who tend to stay in prison longer, the savings is even higher. The 15-month treatment and prerelease regimen for men costs the state $41,700. The average length of stay at Montana State Prison costs $94,000.

Both Schweitzer and Hawk say those savings are only the beginning. Ideally, treatment brings down recidivism and that means there will be fewer inmates for the state to deal with in the future. Treatment also turns lives around, Schweitzer said.

"What is the value of having a family made whole again?" he said. "What is the value of having a father back being a father or the value of having a mother back with her children?"

Did Brian do it?

Schweitzer said he is proud of the role he has played in changing Montana's correctional system. The state's new focus changes the lives of many people who are part of the "throw-away generation," he said, people who were failed in life and went on to fail themselves and those around them.

Hawk, however, said the seeds of change were planted under former Gov. Martz. She inaugurated Montana's the first lockdown treatment, for alcohol, and began looking seriously at alternatives to prison for nonviolent offenders. Under Martz, almost 360 inmates were let out of prison on a conditional release program.

Schweitzer, himself, doesn't take full credit for the shift. He said Corrections was not one of his passions when he ran for governor in 2004, but it was part of the job and he came to see how important the agency is, both in keeping Montanans safe and rehabilitating people.

Schweitzer gives credit to lawmakers, including Republicans like Hawk, for signing on to the vision he shares about Corrections.

Hawk said most of the agency's best ideas came from its current director, Mike Ferriter, who ran the department's community corrections division before Schweitzer picked him to run the entire agency.

For that, Schweitzer can certainly take credit. He said he picked Ferriter precisely because of his career in community-based corrections and because the two share a vision for the agency.

"I will stand by him, I will stand with him," Schweitzer said.

What does it all mean?

Van Hook said she is grateful to the state for giving her a second chance and teaching her how to live a clean life. Today, in the town where she used to shoot up, she takes the bus to her job at a Burger King. She is getting ready to live on her own and hopes to become a reliable enough mother to re-enter her sons' lives.

Her new life, she said, "is awesome."

"I'm not all the way there," she said. "But I'm getting there."