Pubdate: Sun, 25 Jun 2000
Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (AR)
Copyright: 2000 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc.
Contact:  121 East Capitol Avenue, Little Rock, Arkansas, 72201
Website: http://www.ardemgaz.com/
Forum: http://www.ardemgaz.com/info/voices.html
Author: Julia Silverman

DRUG COURT GIVES 2ND CHANCE

The woman with a face that could belong to a Junior League society
matron and the shoes -- gold, spangly, strappy, precariously high --
of another kind of madam entirely, stood with her eyes cast down,
ready for drug court Judge Mary Spencer McGowan's scolding.

She didn't have long to wait.

"You can't be playing that game," McGowan lectured. "You need to have
a little more confidence in yourself."

The woman was in for a double tongue lashing, for dabbling in both
prostitution and the drugs that had corrupted her weekly urine screen,
the results of which McGowan was looking at in black and white.

She could have tried lying, but there wouldn't have been much point.
McGowan's already heard just about every excuse in the book. 

So, like most people when there is nowhere else in the courtroom to
look, she ended up looking at the judge, telling McGowan that she
would try harder to do better, to live up to the judge's high
expectations. Then she got to sit down, and the next person stood up.

In the six years since Pulaski and Perry counties founded the state's
first drug court, hundreds and hundreds of people like the woman in
the dead-giveaway shoes have passed through the drug courtroom on the
third floor of the Pulaski County courthouse in Little Rock. They are
white and black, old and young, in jail and high profile.

They have only two things in common.

The first is that they are addicted to an illegal drug: cocaine,
marijuana or, increasingly, methamphetamines.

The second is that they are getting another chance.

When the first drug court started up in Dade County, Fla., in 1989,
the idea seemed obvious in its simplicity: a court that gives
first-time, nonviolent offenders a get-out-of-jail-free card by
providing the option of intensive treatment in lieu of a trip to
criminal court and possible incarceration.

Proponents said it would cut down on the rising number of people
convicted of drug-related crimes clogging the jails, where the cost
for one person per year can total tens of thousands of dollars. The
Pulaski County jail estimates its cost at about $38.16 a day, or
almost $14,000 annually per inmate, according to Major Skipper Polk.

Drug courts had the potential to turn people on the brink of a
criminal lifestyle into productive members of society, while trimming
costs in the process, its proponents said.

The idea spread quickly to urban areas across the country, landing in
Little Rock in 1994. Today there are more than 500 drug courts across
America, with 200 more in the works. In Arkansas alone, a drug court
recently opened in Washington County, and judges in Fort Smith, Van
Buren, Jonesboro, Searcy, El Dorado, Magnolia, Harrison, Paragould and
Monticello are looking to open their own versions.

Moreover, 70 percent of people who have cycled through drug court
nationally do not commit another crime during their treatment period,
according to the most recent set of statistics compiled by the
National Association of Drug Court Professionals, which includes data
through 1998. The Clinton administration is also a promoter of the
concept, releasing $27 million in federal funding in 1998 to create
150 new drug courts around the country.

So the numbers look good.

But drug courts haven't entirely won the day.

Some have argued that the courts are coercive, pressuring defendants
into pleading guilty, with the promise of an expunged criminal record
dangling before them like bait on a hook.

"One can argue about what all a defendant is forced to waive," said
Jeff Rosenzweig, a Little Rock criminal defense attorney, who said he
supports drug courts nevertheless. "The state sometimes demands too
much of a waiver of things as a precondition."

Others contend that the program's success stories have been
disproportionately found among whites, or that the courts -- which
often receive federal seed money through their first few years of
operation -- are too expensive for states to support in the long run.

And even drug court's most consistent cheerleaders, like McGowan
herself, acknowledge that it's not a panacea. Plenty of people fail,
and temporary relapses are almost a given.

"It's a lot harder row to hoe than regular probation, and it won't
work for everybody," McGowan said. "Not everyone can be a
self-starter."

In Pulaski County, drug court has gone through some major overhauls
since Judge Jack Lessenberry opened its doors in 1994.

The basic premise remains the same: Drug court participants have to
agree to weekly drug screens, appear in court once a month for
progress reports before the judge, and attend both state-provided
counseling and group sessions and any of several 12-step programs.
After a year or so of clean drug screens and regular attendance at
group sessions and court, the requirements become less stringent --
drug screens once a month, instead of weekly, for example.

After about a year, people "graduate," a ceremony usually accompanied
by a round of applause from others in the courtroom, and an invitation
by the judge to speak out about what changes, if any, the program has
brought to their lives. Then, for the next two years, they are under
more general probation, sporadically getting screened for drugs, and
meeting periodically with an assigned probation officer.

When they complete the program, their criminal records are expunged.

Those who mess up risk paying fines, getting sent to a residential
treatment facility, or in some cases, getting thrown in jail.

But there are significant differences. Pulaski County drug court
started out with a catchy name: STEP court, short for Supervised
Training and Education Program. Back then, the drug court was open
only to first-time offenders, charged with drug possession or
paraphernalia. Drug court participants were routed to the court from
the municipal court level in Pulaski and Perry counties -- and
eventually, 590 people found their way to STEP court. Of those, 352
have successfully completed the program, and 34 remain in it.

But in 1997, STEP court, by then under McGowan's jurisdiction, ran out
of money. That meant starting from scratch, the judge said,
reinventing the court as a full-fledged chancery-circuit court
division, not just a diversionary court, and applying to the federal
government for funding.

That secured a two-year grant, replenished by $225,000 in state money
allocated at the end of the 1999 legislative session, money that will
have to be scrounged for again when it runs out, despite McGowan's
perpetual refrain: "It is cheaper to treat than it is to incarcerate.
It costs $35 a day to incarcerate someone, and only 25 cents to treat
them."

But the next time the court comes looking for funding, McGowan said
she hopes it will be less of a pinch, since the court has begun
working closely with the state Department of Community Punishment and
has received some support from the governor's office and several state
senators and representatives.

The changes also meant allowing in people with previous convictions or
crimes connected to their drug addictions. That's what accounts for
the steady parade of people in orange -- the color of the jumpsuits
worn by Pulaski County jail inmates -- who applaud the graduates with
their hands cuffed together, while waiting their turn in front of McGowan.

Other judges in the Pulaski County courthouse say drug court has been
a boon.

"It helps our docket," said Circuit Judge John Langston, who presides
over a heavy slate of criminal cases from his fourth-floor courtroom.
"We can spend more time on the cases we need to be spending more time
on, because it has taken some of the nonviolent offenders, who just
possess a small amount of drugs, off our heavily burdened dockets."

For lawyers, drug court is a new experience. In the drug courtroom,
prosecuting attorneys, defense lawyers and the judge are pretty much
all on the same side: the defendant's.

"What will happen with drug offenders, especially with the crowded
jails, is that they will be eligible for parole in five, maybe six
months, and they won't get any help," said Hugh Finkelstein, a deputy
prosecuting attorney who sometimes appears in drug court. "They won't
get any help, and they are not going to be able to make themselves
more productive in society. This way, with extended treatment, they
can get some help."

Problems crop up though, Finkelstein added, when hard-core dealers,
whose primary source of income is selling drugs, try to get into drug
court. That's when court personnel need to cooperate with police, he
said.

That's been especially true since the methamphetamine corridor in
Arkansas blew up, almost literally, as hundreds and hundreds of people
brewed the highly combustible, very potent drug. The methamphetamine
explosion has spiked the drug court rolls, McGowan said.

As of May 31, 400 people have passed through the revamped drug court,
with the first class of graduates --18 so far -- just reaching their
end mark. But 135 of those didn't make it through the program. Some
were placed on traditional probation with the threat of incarceration
for violating the terms of their drug court agreement.

Still, McGowan has faith. A chancery-circuit judge tapped to preside
over drug court in part because of her experience with the families
who appeared in front of her petitioning to have their relatives
legally committed to substance abuse centers, she kicked an addiction
once herself -- to cigarettes. So she believes she knows what it is
like for those who stand before her, whether it's the older woman
whose addiction to prescription drugs made her forge her doctor's
signature, or the young man who robbed a store to have enough money to
buy crack, or the athlete who was caught in the wrong place at the
wrong time.

She knows people don't miss their group session because they have to
go to a funeral, or because they have to baby-sit, or because of an
accident on the interstate from Jacksonville that tied up traffic for
three hours.

And drug screens aren't positive because stepsons were laying out
lines of cocaine on the coffee table, and the outrage of it all was
just too much, enough to make someone charge the coffee table in fury,
and somehow all the cocaine on the table flew into the air and up a
nose -- an actual excuse from her lexicon.

In drug court, which meets on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday afternoons,
a curious mix of levity, sarcasm and respect prevails. McGowan
dispenses advice, metes out punishment and gives credit where credit
is due.

"They have given me an education," she said. "They tell me [about] the
street drugs, like sherm, which is marijuana, dipped in formaldehyde.
And I'm also learning a lot about myself. The challenge is not to get
cynical and jaded, or depressed because of failure. The bar is set
just about to perfection. But they can do it."

Don, from Little Rock, isn't so sure. Sitting outside McGowan's
courtroom one day recently, waiting for his turn in front of the
judge, he sighed when talking about his habitual drug use, and about
his recent relapse that he knew would show up on the dirty urine
screen that he would have to answer for that day in court.

"It can't be 100 percent effective," he said. "There's people with bad
attitudes who don't want the help. They just want to get through this
so they can go back to doing drugs. But you can't sit there and say
that it has to be 100 percent effective in order to work. If it keeps
me out of prison, well, I think it's effective."
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