Pubdate: Thu, 14 Dec 2000
Source: Houston Press (TX)
Copyright: 2000 New Times, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.houston-press.com/
Author: Margaret Downing

TOUGH ON DRUGS

Prisons Are Filled With Users Who Pick Jail Over Probation And Treatment. 
Welcome To Round 42 Of The War On Drugs.

Attorney Marc Carter had a client, 18 years old. A first-time offender, 
she'd been smoking crack cocaine since she was 14. She was the mother of a 
young child. Everyone involved in the case agreed that what she needed was 
rehabilitation, Carter says, and the court gave her an offer of drug 
treatment and probation. Her alternative was six months in county jail, 
which would mean 90 days.

"You ask a crackhead what do you want to do: 90 days in the county or do 
you want to go through three years of treatment and probation?" he says, 
smiling ruefully. She turned them down and did the time.

Do the time in jail or prison, get it over with, and be out on the streets 
again with no strings attached, no accounting to anyone. Lawyers throughout 
the Harris County courthouse say most addicts think this is a better deal 
than being "on paper," doing urine tests for dope month after month 
stretching into years, people looking over their shoulders, messing in 
their business, waiting for them to trip up again and send them back to the 
courthouse where the punishment will be even worse if they get "revoked."

So they go to prison, get out, do the drugs again, till they're caught 
again. If the drug habit escalates, they spend a lot of money on it, maybe 
steal from other people, hurt other people to get the money they need for 
the drug habit for which they never got treatment. They get caught again, 
go to jail again, get out and start up the drugs, the stealing and the 
hurting again.

It is a ruinous cycle of complete frustration to Judge Jan Krocker of the 
184th District Court, who says: "There's a general feeling out there that 
the courts aren't rehabilitating anyone on drugs, and that's probably true. 
The system has not been set up to handle this."

The system is set up to put offenders in jail or prison. The system also is 
set up to distribute a certain amount of grace, that dispensation of a 
second chance that is never earned, only given. Grace and rehabilitation 
are supposed to be enlightened and welcomed. Recipients are not supposed to 
thumb their noses at the offer.

"My client, initially she wanted probation," Carter says. "But she thought 
that was getting out today and not having to deal with all her problems."

His clients who want drug treatment and probation are those who've hit rock 
bottom, who're on their third felony drug arrest, Carter says. Of course, 
by then probation generally gets filed under the heading of wishful thinking.

- -----------------------------------------------------

A judge can sentence someone to a substance abuse felony punishment 
facility, shortened to the clumsy acronym SAFPF, which is pronounced 
"safe-pee" -- either an acknowledgement that it's impossible to say 
"safe-pfff" or an allusion to the frequent urinalysis people in the program 
must undergo. Or both.

SAFPF reportedly has a high success rate. Some 70 percent of people sent 
its way make it through and remain off drugs afterward, according to Holli 
Rich, SAFPF coordinator, who says they track people for up to five years 
after release. But it's not an easy tour of duty.

A judge amends the conditions of probation to include the drug treatment 
plan. After being sentenced to a SAFPF, an offender is put on a waiting 
list and may wait two months or more before even getting help. The wait is 
not done at home, but in jail. Once in the program, it will be another nine 
to 12 months before an enrollee graduates. The program is not an outpatient 
one; participants are incarcerated in a correctional facility. Then it's on 
to a halfway house for 90 days, followed by aftercare for the next two years.

If there is a mess-up anywhere along the way, the judge can order the 
person back to court, revoke probation and sentence the offender to prison. 
A participant can accumulate violations for such things as stealing, not 
participating in group discussions, or refusing to get out of bed. Major 
violations are such things as assault and sexual misconduct. Members of the 
counseling team will meet with someone who's going south, but if they can't 
turn him around, Rich says, that's reported back to the court. If probation 
is revoked, no credit is given for days and months already spent in the 
program. So 15 to 18 months of your life are already gone and you have to 
start all over with a prison sentence.

"Being eligible for parole doesn't mean being a good risk for parole," says 
defense attorney Eric Hagstette. "I think a lot of people who recognize 
that about themselves don't think they can make probation work."

Dial back to another decade when not all of Harris County's judges were 
elected on strong conservative and Republican platforms. A probationer 
could fail a drug test and get another chance. It's a whole different 
atmosphere these days.

"It's become very tough," Hagstette says. "Lots of judges, on technical 
violations, will revoke. There's closer to a zero tolerance. A lot of us 
try to encourage drug treatment. Some people just know themselves, know 
they'll fail and know they'll get slam-dunked if they do."

Attorney Aaron Howard agrees. "I tell the client, "If you're not prepared 
to change the way you live and the people you know, you're not likely to 
make it.' "

After successfully negotiating the SAFPF program, probationers face another 
terror: supporting the probationer lifestyle.

"The people we represent come from a poorer background," says attorney 
Riddhi Desai. "Probation is expensive. There's the $140 supervision fee. 
The fines to be paid off. The random urinalysis they must undergo almost 
every month; they must pay for that." Costs usually average out to $100 a 
month, she says.

"These are people who do not have $200 to get out of jail on bond," she 
says. "And people don't want to be in jail." Once in the probation system, 
they are at the mercy of the probation officer who supervises them, the 
people who do the drug testing and the judge. "Any one person complaining 
about them could wipe out all they've tried to do and start them back up."

- ---------------------------------------------------

While many folks around the country say it's frightening that we 
incarcerate so many people for drugs, Kaylynn Williford, chief prosecutor 
in Judge Krocker's courtroom, flips that argument on its back. What's 
frightening to her, she says, is that we have a lot of violent crimes 
committed because someone was high on drugs or was breaking into someone's 
house to get money for drugs. Drug use is often cited by victims as the 
reason someone attacked them, the assistant district attorney says.

"It's not my job as a prosecutor to fix everyone," says Williford. It is 
her job, she says firmly, to put people in prison who break the law.

Yet it's a mistake to just dismiss Williford as a knee-jerk prosecutor, 
intent only on her conviction record. In court one day last week, she made 
a plea for a drug offender to receive a second chance, and she was doing 
more of the talking to the judge than the defendant's own attorney. She 
sees some grays; she remains rigid, however, in her belief that people need 
to accept responsibility for their own actions and accept the punishment 
due them.

"You choose to take those drugs, and you hurt someone because of it," she 
says. Her philosophy: Refuse drug treatment, great, go into prison and go 
cold turkey. At least you're not out on Harris County streets with drugs.

- ----------------------------------------------------

No attorney, judge or parent can force a defendant to opt for the SAFPF 
program. For the $1,600-a-person program to work, like all programs for 
addicts, those enrolled have to be committed to changing, Krocker and many 
others say. Besides, putting someone in a program who is disruptive just 
makes it difficult for others in the group to make any progress and can 
endanger the personnel running the program, says Williford.

While inmates can get drug treatment in Texas state prisons, Rich says only 
the Kyle unit offers a therapeutic drug program. And in any case, there's 
no incentive like probation revocation to keep a prisoner going to those 
counseling sessions.

So what's the solution? Carter says he would like to see an alternative to 
jail or prison. Desai says she thinks all drug offenders should be forced 
into mandatory treatment whether they go to jail or not. A lot of people 
are in denial, she says, and they need help to face what they're really doing.

"Many people say, "I don't have any problem with drugs. It's just I can't 
take the test today,' " Desai says.

Although she believes violators should have their probation revoked, 
sending first-time drug offenders on to prison in Texas isn't working, 
Desai says. "What we are doing, we're writing them off when we send them to 
TDC or the state. When he gets out, he's just going to come back to the 
only thing he knows. A lot of people come back."

Judge Krocker is a conservative Republican who believes in the war on 
drugs. "To sit here day after day, to see the cruel things that people do 
while on drugs.People can't work. They can't take care of their families. 
They lie, steal. It's a tragedy. We need to stop it." At the same time, she 
can't get people to agree to enroll in the kind of program she believes 
stands a good chance of stopping the recycling.

Going cold turkey for six months or a year in prison isn't solving the drug 
problem. The state sounds like it has come up with a great treatment plan, 
but if many first-time offenders won't go to it, then we're not getting 
where we want to be. We have a probation system that deals sternly with 
people, using up most of their resources of time and money. It hits hardest 
and most often at the poor rather than the rich, who have their private 
clinics to turn to for retooling sessions.

This is the classic conflict between the rights of the individual and the 
rights of society. It isn't desirable to have drug addicts out in our 
communities unable to take care of themselves or their children, stealing 
money, endangering other people. Society is not served by that. But let's 
also recognize that everyone who's caught doing drugs isn't an addict, 
isn't stealing and attacking other people.

Let's recognize too that it's also not desirable to write people off when 
they're 18, consigning them in many cases to ruined lives, and consigning 
the rest of us to paying for their room and board in prison for the rest of 
those lives.

And finally, let us recognize that many of us are just incredibly lucky 
that we were never caught when we experimented, used regularly or depended 
upon drugs to get us through.

Ah, for those clearer, less convoluted days when "Just Say No" reigned in 
the land. Those of us who thought that was a pretty stupid motto could just 
chortle away. Others embraced the phrase like a protective shield. But 
there's no laughter and little protection in the notion of an 18-year-old 
crackhead mother going to prison because she thinks that's her best option. 
Not when no one with any surety can really say it's not.
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