Pubdate: Mon, 27 Aug 2001
Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)
Copyright: 2001 Chicago Tribune Company
Contact:  http://www.chicagotribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/82
Author: Flynn McRoberts

CITIZEN 'JUDGES' SOFTEN STING AT DRUG COURTS

An Iowa City Tweaks A National Tactic To Find Workable Alternatives To 
Prison For Addicts.

MASON CITY, Iowa -- The judges ate goulash. They nibbled on garlic bread as 
they leafed through probation reports. They finished their salads in time 
to hear a teary-eyed drug addict confess how, despite the threat of prison, 
she had taken a hit off a crack pipe.

"I'm just really scared," she said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue offered 
by the probation officer sitting beside her. "We're here to support you, to 
help you beat your addiction,' judge Alan Love told her.

More precisely, that would be Alan Love, police dispatcher. He was sitting 
next to another "judge," Don True, butcher at a local grocery store. 
Rounding out the four-person panel were a community planner and a social 
worker.

So goes another typical session of drug court in this north-central Iowa 
factory town. Since their creation in South Florida more than a decade ago, 
drug courts have spread across the country, from the Criminal Courts 
building at 26th and California on Chicago's Southwest Side to the prairie 
towns of Iowa.

Now the essence of drug courts--offering offenders treatment instead of 
prison--is being credited with helping to cut the number of inmates in 
state prisons for the first time in nearly three decades.

Usually, black-robed judges run drug courts. But one of the most innovative 
approaches to this softer strategy in America's war on drugs is on display 
in a halfway house in Mason City.

It is here, every Wednesday, that citizen volunteers such as Love and True 
take time off from their regular jobs to sit on community drug panels. They 
are the front line in a nationwide push to address America's drug problem 
as a public health issue, not just a criminal one.

Mason City, whose drug court started in April, and other Iowa courts have 
taken the idea a step further: harnessing the street smarts and varied 
perspectives of community residents to reduce drug usage and crime.

Love, True and their fellow volunteers help lighten the caseload of a local 
court calendar that otherwise would be clogged by methamphetamine addicts 
and other drug users. At no cost, they also provide a mix of discipline and 
encouragement--from a kind word to a job tip--that organizers hope will 
motivate repeat offenders to stay clean.

A mix of state and federal funding pays for the frequent drug testing and 
probation visits that most experts say are crucial to the success of such 
courts.

"The bottom line is, we don't have the prison space to put every one of 
these people behind bars," said James Drew, the Iowa District Court judge 
in Mason City who holds the threat of jail or prison for any drug court 
failures. "This is high intensity. It's not easy. It's done with the 
understanding that if you screw up, you're going down."

Treatment experts call it "coerced abstinence," as did President Bush 
earlier this year when he announced John Walters as his nominee to be 
America's new drug czar. Walters, who has yet to be confirmed by the 
Senate, is a veteran of the drug czar's office and has a reputation for 
focusing on interdiction and incarceration rather than treatment.

But at Walter's nomination ceremony Bush also asked Atty. Gen. John 
Ashcroft to draft a plan by mid-September to expand drug testing for 
probationers and parolees "and to strengthen our system of drug courts 
around the nation."

State lawmakers are doing so already. About 30 legislatures have enacted 
laws meant to promote drug courts. In Texas, for instance, a new statute 
takes effect Saturday that requires heavily populated counties to create 
drug courts or lose certain state funds.

Such moves reflect a growing consensus that treating people while they are 
under criminal justice control can reduce by as much as 70 percent the 
likelihood that an offender will return to drug use and crime, according to 
Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

With such figures in mind, drug courts are growing nationwide at the rate 
of about 100 a year, with 710 established and another 521 planned, 
according to U.S. Department of Justice figures.

Even with that explosive growth, however, most estimates indicate that only 
about 5 percent of the nation's drug offenders are involved in drug courts; 
that limited reach has led some treatment proponents to push other approaches.

"It's not that what they do is bad, it's that they can't serve enough 
people," said Bill Zimmerman, executive director of the Campaign for New 
Drug Policies. Zimmerman's group led the fight in California last fall to 
pass Proposition 36, a ballot measure that is expected to send 24,000 drug 
offenders a year to treatment instead of prison.

Though Prop 36 took effect July 1, California's 100 drug courts continue to 
cover people not eligible under the new measure, such as offenders arrested 
on charges that involve more than just drug possession. The drug courts 
also continue to hold out a bigger threat of jail time than the Prop 36 
program, which allows offenders up to three violations before facing 
mandatory incarceration.

Threat keeps many in line

Many repeat offenders say it is the drug courts' threat of prison that 
keeps them motivated.

Lori Awe, a 38-year-old mother of three and longtime methamphetamine 
addict, entered drug court in Mason City after testing positive for 
marijuana the week she was graduating from a local treatment center. She 
already was on probation for forgery, a crime she had committed to get 
money to buy drugs; failing the urinalysis could have sent her to prison 
for five years.

She chose drug court instead, which typically takes at least a year to 
complete. After more than four months in the program, Awe said she has her 
family and church praying for her. "But if I didn't have the drug courts 
and my [urinalysis], I can't say I would stay straight," she said after 
another visit with her probation officer.

Those who volunteer to sit on Iowa's community drug panels often have 
equally personal reasons for doing so. For True, the Mason City butcher, it 
was the neighbor who has been dealing methamphetamine next door.

True, the father of two teenagers, put up a fence. But as he said, "You can 
put your fence up [only] so high." So he volunteered for Mason City's drug 
court. "Who knows, I may see him in here one day and I can say, 'I'm not 
with the police. I can help if you just want to talk.' When he needs help 
to get straight, maybe I can help get him a job."

But like others involved in drug courts around the country, True is under 
no illusion that his town has found a panacea. "There is a war out there 
against drugs. We're not going to win it overnight," he said. "I just 
wanted to do my part as a citizen."

While cautioning that more research needs to be done to determine which 
types of drug courts work best, Leshner and other experts applaud the 
philosophy behind experiments such as Mason City's. "The more we make the 
recovery of the offender a community priority, the better off we are 
because, obviously, if you get them recovered they'll stop committing 
crimes," he said.

Lab seizures soar

Iowa officials added Mason City to the state's system of drug courts after 
watching methamphetamine lab seizures jump statewide from 320 in 1998 to 
660 last year. Through mid-August, the state already had completed 415 
seizures, according to Logan Wernet, a Mason City police investigator 
assigned to the North Central Iowa Narcotic Task Force.

As elsewhere, methamphetamine hasn't discriminated much in cutting a swath 
through Mason City: Offenders range in age from 18 to 45, they are men and 
women, single and married, some of them parents, Wernet said.

By the time they are offered a chance at drug court, many of these 
offenders have committed forgeries, burglaries and other crimes to support 
their habits. So if drug court can keep them clean, the offenders aren't 
the only ones to benefit.

"They keep their families intact. They hold down jobs. And they pay taxes," 
said Mike McGuire, who heads the drug court in Mason City, which has 10 
offenders enrolled. "They become productive members of society."

How long they will remain so is a question. Steven Belenko, a fellow at the 
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse who has reviewed studies 
of drug courts nationwide, said drug courts appear to reduce offenders' 
return to crime "for at least a year" after leaving the program. "But 
beyond that we don't know," he said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom