Pubdate: Sun, 27 Jul 2014
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2014 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Evan Halper

POT POLITICS ENGULF COURT PROGRAMS

Therapy Often Bars Serious Addicts

WASHINGTON - Attorney David West can't pinpoint precisely when he 
started to sour on the rapid expansion of drug courts - but the 
karate episode stands out.

West, a criminal defense lawyer in the Atlanta area, was representing 
a client busted in a town north of the city for possession of pot. 
Faced with the prospect of losing his driver's license and being 
haunted by a criminal record, the client opted for treatment.

The intensive, costly therapy was more appropriate for a heroin 
addict, West said. What he found particularly absurd was the 
requirement that his client enroll in and pay for three months of 
martial-arts training.

"It is ridiculous," said West, who has since had other clients 
ordered to take karate. "What does that have to do with marijuana?"

Both the White House and prominent Republicans have pushed to expand 
drug courts - programs that allow drug offenders to choose 
court-supervised treatment over punishment.

And there is little doubt that such programs can sometimes have 
dramatically positive effects. West and many experts credit them with 
transforming the lives of addicts.

But many longtime supporters of the program have become dismayed by 
the extent to which the courts now reach into the lives of people 
whose only infraction was to light up a joint.

More Americans are arrested for pot possession than any other drug 
offense, with more than 650,000 such arrests in 2012. In many areas, 
those charged with marijuana possession are the single largest group 
of offenders sent to drug-court treatment programs.

Though drug courts have been pitched as a way to divert hard-core 
addicts from prison and into treatment, strict eligibility rules in 
many jurisdictions bar chronic abusers of hard drugs.

"For serious drug offenders it has been a far better alternative than 
prison," said John Roman, a senior analyst at the Urban Institute who 
began studying drug courts 17 years ago, when only a handful existed. 
"The problem is very few people who have those serious problems get 
into one of these drug courts. Instead, we take all kinds of people 
into drug court who don't have serious problems."

As a result, the courts, which are controlled locally and now number 
more than 2,700, have become a battleground of marijuana politics. 
For example, while Colorado makes pot available for purchase to any 
adult who will pay the sales tax, some counties in neighboring Kansas 
send even casual users to treatment for drug abuse.

Some pot users who might have simply faced a fine in the regular 
court system are instead getting moved into the drug-court system for 
months on end, Roman said. They are often required to pay for 
expensive treatment programs and risk jail time if they break program 
rules along the way.

"Once you get that deep into the criminal justice system, it can be 
really hard to get out," Roman said.

So many marijuana offenders are being shuffled through drug courts 
that some counties now have entire courtrooms that deal with just 
that group. In south Florida's Broward County, a special marijuana 
drug court processes some 50 to 80 offenders each day, three days a week.

The judge who runs it is hardly a crusader against pot. In an 
interview, Judge John A. Frusciante expressed ambivalence about the 
nation's shift toward decriminalization. The people who wind up in 
his court typically have problems that run much deeper than affinity 
for an occasional bong hit, he said.

"If you really have your act together and are using weed, it is 
probably under controlled circumstances where you are not going to be 
arrested," Frusciante said. "If you are using it to the point where 
you are getting arrested, something is wrong there."

Frusciante insists those who go through his program be screened for 
earlier traumas, such as sexual abuse, that can be addressed with 
targeted therapy. He says offenders are constantly thanking him - and 
even their arresting officers - for helping them gain a footing in life.

His descriptions of the process sometimes sound more like those of a 
social worker than a judge.

"We try to emphasize that each and every individual is worth it," he 
said. "I don't care if they are homeless, if their mother, their 
brother, their teacher told them they will never amount to anything. 
They have value. We try to convince them of that."

Frusciante said few graduates of the program get rearrested, and 
statistics back him up. According to the National Assn. of Drug Court 
Professionals, 75% of drug-court graduates are free of any new 
criminal charges two years after the program.

But critics say a major reason the drug courts boast such success is 
because they avoid tackling hard cases. A group of scholars who 
recently reviewed data from drug courts concluded the system has done 
little to reduce prison crowding for that reason.

"People want these programs to be successful," said Harold Pollack, a 
professor of social service administration at the University of 
Chicago. "They are leery of bringing populations into them that will 
frighten the public."

Broward County's longtime public defender, a former cocaine addict 
who says drug courts can, indeed, work miracles, called the county's 
marijuana court "one of the stupidest courts ever created."

"Most of the people in drug court now are not like me," said Howard 
Finkelstein. "They are not addicts."

"Everybody who gets arrested with drugs is automatically put in the 
category of drug addict. Then it is off to the races," Finkelstein 
added. "Come to court every month. Get treatment here. Get counseling 
there. It just becomes a justification for the court."

In New York, attorneys at the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem 
say they are frustrated to see smalltime pot offenders get pressured 
into treatment regimens while addicts they represent are disqualified.

"It is not working the way we thought or hoped it would," said Rick 
Jones, executive director of the nonprofit group.

In the spring, a homeless client addicted to cocaine and heroin was 
accepted into drug court after an arrest for selling drugs. Soon 
after, though, the court blocked him from entering treatment.

Corrections department records said that the defendant had told a 
jail intake officer during a prior arrest that he had thought about 
suicide. The treatment center contracted by the state said it was not 
equipped to handle suicidal patients. So the client was sent to prison.

"We dangled the opportunity for treatment and help in front of him, 
then they said we can't place him in a program," said Teghan DeLane, 
the attorney on the case. "It was incredibly unfair... I started 
crying in the courtroom."

Nobody was crying for a truck driver in Broward County recently 
arrested for marijuana possession. He told the court he was not a 
drug abuser and had no desire for counseling. The court, though, had 
another plan.

"I asked to see his driver's license," said Judge Sharon Zeller, who 
sometimes presides over the marijuana court. "Then I asked the clerk 
for a pair of scissors, put the driver's license in the scissors and 
held it up. I said, 'Do you understand what this will do to your 
license?' He turned white as a ghost... This man is now going to sign 
up for drug court."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom