Education and accountability benefits all of society,especially when it comes to drugs,and alcohol is a drug.Get over it!

“Drug courts”are battling addictions behind crime
Participants must commit to change, or face jail.

By Keith Herbert and Julie Shaw
Inquirer Staff Writers

James Forbes stands 6-foot-1 and weighs a healthy 210. But two months earlier - when he was stealing identities and writing fake prescriptions to fuel his addiction to painkillers - he was a hollowed-out shell, dozens of pounds thinner.
Sixty days after Forbes became free of drugs and alcohol, the 30-year-old Norristown man's blue eyes no longer had the glazed look that stared out of his police mug shots. "I'm happier. I'm more relaxed," he said. "I look healthier."
Forbes is one of more than 30 adults taking part in drug court, a program launched in Montgomery County in the spring for people whose crimes were driven by their addictions.
The court program, like ones in Chester County, in Philadelphia, and across New Jersey, uses intensive supervision, mandatory one-on-one and group therapy, drug screening, and weekly meetings with a judge to help addicts beat addiction.
Conquering addiction, the theory goes, will help prevent the revolving door of arrest, prison, release and rearrest that judges often complain about.

About 70 percent of crime is drug-related, according to a 1995 study of adult and juveniles arrests done by the National Institute of Justice, a research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O'Neill used the study in his efforts to get backing for drug court.

Another study by the agency found that drug courts reduced rearrests for drug offenses, at least in the short term.

That 2003 study found a recidivism rate of 16.5 percent for drug court graduates after one year, and 27.5 percent after two years. Recidivism rates for people who don't participate in drug court was 60 to 80 percent.

The difference between traditional courts and drug courts is that traditional courts typically are event-driven: Did a crime happen as alleged? But drug courts ask different questions: Does the offender have an alcohol or drug problem? And would treatment help? Admitting guilt in drug court is the beginning of treatment.
Relapses mean jail time. Missing a therapy session brings other sanctions, such as community service.
But the success of those programs, including Montgomery County's, depends on people like Forbes changing their lives.

Experience, Forbes said, tells him that he wouldn't get individual counseling and psychotherapy, with the county picking up the bill, if he was not in drug court. Finding treatment is difficult, especially without insurance, he said. In prison there is a waiting list for addiction counseling.

"It has definitely been hard," Forbes said. "But if you want to do it, you're going to do it. If you don't want to do it, you're just going through the motions."
The job of O'Neill, the judge, is to spot who is going through the motions. More Dr. Phil than Judge Judy while presiding over drug court, he has been the steward of the county program since its inception.
On the day before the Thanksgiving holiday, the judge chastised Forbes for failing to pick a sponsor - someone to guide him through a 12-step recovery program. "It's a big trust issue with me," Forbes said with other addicts, probation officials and attorneys looking on.
"Did you trust all your dealers?" O'Neill asked.
"No," Forbes said.
When the lecture ended, O'Neill stepped down from the bench and walked across the courtroom. He handed Forbes a $10 gift card from Wawa, a reward for staying drug-free for 60 days. O'Neill dispensed a big congratulatory handshake, and the courtroom erupted in applause.
The Montgomery County program is modeled on drug courts in Chester County and Philadelphia, where they have operated since 1997. New Jersey has operated drug courts since the 1990s, and expanded them statewide in 2002.
In New Jersey, 6,300 people had been enrolled in the three-year program as of September, and 635 have successfully graduated. An additional 2,500 are active participants, said Tammy Kendig, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey judiciary.

After three years, only 14 percent of successful graduates were rearrested for new crimes.

In Pennsylvania, 19 counties are operating or planning drug courts, O'Neill said. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has approved new guidelines for counties that want to establish drug courts, and has "really bought in to the concept of problem-solving courts," Chester County Drug Court Judge William P. Mahon said.
Since November 1997, more than 1,640 people in Chester County have been referred to drug court. There have been 510 graduates, and 108 people are enrolled now; the balance have "washed out" of drug court and been prosecuted, Mahon said. Ten percent of graduates are rearrested within a year.
Some in the criminal-justice system have been slow to embrace problem-solving courts because no one wants to be tagged as soft on drug crime, Mahon said. "It becomes a political issue," he said.

Drug courts have another advantage:

They are cheaper than prison. Estimates put drug court costs at $2,000 to $4,000 a year per person. Housing an inmate at Montgomery County Prison costs $22,000 to $28,000 a year

.

Philadelphia Treatment Court was Pennsylvania's first drug court. It offers court-ordered, intensive treatment to addicts who voluntarily enter the program, which takes at least a year to complete.
"It affords people the opportunity to change their lives," said Municipal Court President Judge Louis J. Presenza, who founded Treatment Court in April 1997.
People who have committed violent, sexual or firearms crimes are not eligible. If they remain arrest- and drug-free for a year, their arrest is wiped clean.
"If they fail the program, they all get a period of jail time," Presenza said.
Through Sept. 30, more than 2,000 people had entered Treatment Court. About 400 are now enrolled. Of the total, 1,203 people had graduated, while 323 failed.
The rest had their cases disposed of by withdrawing their guilty pleas and facing court hearings on their charges, or for other reasons.

Of those who have graduated from Treatment Court, 85 percent have not been rearrested for any crime within one year, Presenza said.
There has "been a tremendous reduction of recidivism in that population,"

Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said. People who get treatment "don't have to wake up and say, 'What old lady am I going to hit in the head?' "
Montgomery County's Forbes, who has worked for a painting contractor in the past, knows he has more than a year of the 15-month program before he is free of drug court. That's a lot of time to slip up and go back to prison, this time for up to five years.
"My crimes weren't violent," he said. "I didn't rob anybody. I didn't stick anybody up. I had a problem, and I did what I did. Drug court, I believe, is correcting that problem.
"I know a lot of people who keep getting out of jail and go back to the same old life because that's all they know."