Pubdate: Sat, 30 Aug 2014
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)
Copyright: 2014 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC.
Contact:  http://www.timesdispatch.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/365
Author: Evan Halper, McClatchy- Tribune
Page: E2
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?159 (Drug Courts)

DRUG COURTS NOW A BATTLEFIELD OF POT POLITICS

Casual Marijuana Users Go to Treatment As Hard- Core Drug Abusers Are Rejected.

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 drug courts 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 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 Florida's Broward County, a special marijuana drug 
court processes approximately 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 constantly thank him 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 that few graduates of the program get rearrested, and 
statistics back him up. According to the National Association of Drug 
Court Professionals, 75 percent of drug-court graduates are free of 
any new criminal charges two years after graduating from the program.

But critics say a major reason the drug courts can boast such success 
is because they avoid tackling the hard cases. A group of scholars 
who recently reviewed drug-court data 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."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom