Pubdate: Sat, 27 May 2000
Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY)
Copyright: 2000 Lexington Herald-Leader
Contact:  606-255-7236
Website: http://www.kentuckyconnect.com/heraldleader/
Forum: http://krwebx.infi.net/webxmulti/cgi-bin/WebX?lexingtn
Author: Ty Tagami, MORE RURAL COUNTIES TRYING DRUG COURTS

Alternative System Requires Resources

ALBANY Circuit Judge Eddie Lovelace knows the look: gaunt bodies, eyes like 
slits.

It's the look of people he has sent to prison in the grip of drugs, people 
he knew well in this town of 2,000.

Consider the woman from his church. The daughter of a tobacco farmer 
attended Bible class regularly as a child, grew up, got married and had 
children. Then she was caught stealing to support a drug habit.

Lovelace gave her probation after she pleaded guilty to embezzling from her 
employer. Later, a urine test showed she was still doing drugs. Lovelace 
sent her to prison.

"It was just a sad situation," he said. "I was really moved and hated to do 
it. But I had a job to do."

Feeling helpless against the power of drug addiction, Lovelace and other 
judges in rural Kentucky are volunteering their time to join a federal 
experiment that's being tried in Lexington and other Kentucky cities, but 
whose prospects in rural areas are unclear.

Known as drug courts, the program preaches rehabilitation instead of 
incarceration. It allows offenders to avoid prison if they attend AA-like 
counseling sessions and submit to random drug screens. But prison awaits 
those who fail.

Until this month, there was only one rural drug court in Kentucky in the 
1st Judicial circuit consisting of Fulton, Hickman, Carlisle and Ballard 
counties. But the idea is catching on: a drug court for juveniles opened in 
Whitley County on May 19, and judges in 15 other judicial circuits around 
Kentucky, 11 of them rural, are planning or seriously considering drug courts.

The programs have garnered important support and funding from state and 
federal sources. Joseph Lambert, the chief justice of the Kentucky Supreme 
Court, wants to take the program statewide.

"The only limitation right now is the availability of judges who are 
willing to volunteer," he said.

But it could be hard to convince many of them, given their heavy caseloads 
and the lack of statistical proof that drug courts work. Although the 
program is operational in about 600 court systems nationwide, there has 
been little research to show they work better than standard probation.

Perhaps the most thorough study, by the Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND 
research institute, found that drug court participants in Maricopa County, 
Ariz., were 10 percent less likely to get re-arrested for a crime than 
their counterparts in standard probation.

Growth in drug crimes

Mary Noble, the chief judge of the Fayette circuit, started the second 
Kentucky drug court in August 1996. (The first one was started in Jefferson 
County in 1993.) Of the 379 offenders admitted by her and other 
participating judges, a little over half were later dropped because they 
used drugs, failed to show up for counseling or committed some other 
violation. From July 1997 through last December, 92 participants were 
re-arrested for a crime while enrolled.

Ray Larson, the commonwealth's attorney in Lexington, said drug courts may 
work for those who want off drugs, but some just want a free pass out of 
prison.

"I know there are some people in the program who are just using it to avoid 
responsibility for what they've done," he said.

Still, the sheer volume of drug arrests has judges looking for alternatives 
to prison. In Kentucky, the total number of inmates tripled from 1985 
through 1998. During the same period, the number of those incarcerated for 
drug offenses went up by nearly 14 times.

And anecdotal success stories have earned drug courts some important 
supporters. Lambert said he became an advocate when he watched a drug court 
graduation in Fulton County. He heard from one graduate who was destined 
for prison until drug court kept him clean for a year and he was able to 
mend relations with his wife and children.

"I thought to myself, `Any program that can do that is worth considering,' 
" Lambert said.

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, a former Somerset prosecutor, also is an important 
supporter. As chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee over 
justice programs, the veteran Republican has approved President Clinton's 
requests to increase the national drug court budget. It grew from $12 
million in 1995 to $40 million this year, said Rogers' spokesman, Dan DuBray.

Some of that money has found its way to Kentucky, which received $813,000 
in grants from the federal drug courts program last year, double the amount 
from the year before.

Sparse resources

The experience in the 1st judicial circuit in far Western Kentucky shows 
the hurdles drug courts face in rural areas, where there is little public 
transportation, and fewer counseling facilities and jobs than in cities 
important considerations for a program where intense supervision and 
vocational rehabilitation are key.

Program coordinator Phyllis Teeters said there are few drug treatment 
facilities in the 900-square-mile area, and travel distance can be a 
problem. Some participants in the program which had its first graduation on 
May 4 have to drive up to 60 miles to attend sessions, she said.

"Resources are very skimpy in these small towns and small counties," she 
said. "It's a large area to cover. That makes it difficult."

Lovelace, the sole circuit judge for Clinton, Wayne and Russell counties, 
already runs the eighth-busiest circuit in Kentucky based on the number of 
new cases per judge. His docket is so full that he holds court on Saturdays.

To run the drug court, he says he'll need to hire a program coordinator to 
help monitor the participants, and he'll need to pay for addiction 
counseling, urinalysis, rent and other items. He has applied for a $665,000 
federal grant that would stretch over three years. That would cover the 
cost of enrolling 200 offenders for one year each.

Other counties are applying for grants from the same pot of money. In 
Whitley County, which lacks a juvenile jail, Judge-Executive Mike Patrick 
saw the program as a way to reduce the annual $50,000 to $70,000 the county 
pays to send its young offenders to out-of-county holding cells.

His county got $95,000 in federal and state funding last October to try a 
juvenile drug court for 18 months. Leslie Ellison, a substance abuse 
counselor from nearby London, was hired to run it. He hopes each year to 
take 30 teen-agers, who will live at home and attend mandatory treatment 
and counseling.

In Laurel County, Circuit Judge Roderick Messer got a federal grant of only 
about $5,000 to plan a drug court not enough to hire staff to monitor 
participants.

"We're trying to do this on a shoestring," he said. "What I'm trying to do 
is the same thing they're doing in Fayette with a lot less money."

(For the 1999 fiscal year, the Fayette County program received more than 
$350,000 in federal and state funding.)

The Laurel program got off to a rocky start. Judy Coffey, its first 
participant, left a residential treatment facility after only one day. A 
warrant was issued for her arrest, but when police arrived at her address 
in rural Laurel County, they discovered that her mobile home had 
disappeared as well.

"Everything they had's gone," said John Whitehead, the London police 
officer whose arrest of Coffey and her husband during a DUI stop last year 
led to her enrollment in the rehabilitation program. She was re-arrested 
early this month.

Despite that experience, Messer is willing to try again. He is considering 
another candidate for drug court.

"We feel like we're making progress, but we've certainly got a ways to go," 
he said.

Despite the problems, Tom Handy, the prosecutor in Laurel County, believes 
drug courts could provide a needed alternative. His London office is two 
blocks away from the headquarters of a 3-year-old federal anti-drug effort 
known as the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program.

"The thing that we need to do is get people off drug abuse rather than just 
warehousing them and not solving the problem," he said. "The problem is 
just going to get larger with time, and we have to look at new ways to 
address that."

Reach Ty Tagami at (606) 678-4655 or  ---
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