Get Active Subscribe Support Us

DRUG COURT BELIEVES IN REDEMPTION

I'm at a graduation ceremony and the featured speaker enters the room dressed in orange stripes, bound by handcuffs.  This is Drug Court.  Like a lot of folks in Courtroom C, the man is an addict.  As one of the program's failures, he had some knowledge to impart to the Drug Court enrollees and the program's two graduates.  The kind that comes from the belly of defeat.

"Drugs are evil to the soul and ( they ) rape your consciousness.  ...  And if I don't get this thing right, I will die."

He, like the two men who were graduating from Drug Court that day, had been given the tools to shake his habit.  He talked about how it signaled a new day in his life.  It renewed hope for his family.  But a single lapse in judgment put him there before a packed courtroom, chained, contrite and pitiful.  All he'd worked to reclaim was gone.  His second chance, wasted.  Still, I left Drug Court that night convinced this state and this community needs more of this.  More restorative justice where we rebuild people.  More emphasis on treating addiction, which is the root cause of so much crime in our community.  More second chances where we divert people away from a lifetime of crime and give them the chance at sobriety and citizenship.

[Remainder snipped]