Pubdate: Thu, 01 May 2008
Source: Billings Gazette, The (MT)
Copyright: 2008 The Billings Gazette
Contact:  http://www.billingsgazette.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/515
Author: Ed Kemmick
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?159 (Drug Courts)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

DRUG COURT PEP TALK: INCARCERATION WITHOUT TREATMENT A WASTE

Benefits of diversion programs touted at Rimrock confab

The drug court coordinator for the  state of Montana made a strong
case for the  effectiveness of jail diversion programs Wednesday 
during the annual meeting of the Rimrock Foundation.

Jeffrey Kushner, who was hired for the new position in January, told
a lunchtime audience at the Mansfield  Health Education Center that
when the criminal justice  system teams up with treatment providers
like Rimrock  Foundation, governments save money, prison populations 
decline, and more offenders kick their drug addictions.

States that continue to lock up criminals without treating their
alcohol and drug problems are just  "throwing money down a rat hole,"
he said.

The gathering Wednesday was the 40th annual meeting of the Rimrock
Foundation, and David Cunningham, the  foundation's chief executive
officer, used the occasion  to praise Mona Sumner, who helped found
Rimrock in June  of 1968. He said Sumner, now the foundation's chief 
operating officer, has played an important part in  helping change the
lives of 80,000 clients over the  years.

"What a wonderful gift you've given all of us," he 
said.

Among her accomplishments was helping to start the Adult Misdemeanor
Drug Court in Billings Municipal  Court and a program that provides
addiction treatment  to jail inmates at the foundation's Silver Leaf
Center.

Kushner said those kinds of programs must become more widespread if
the United States wants to reduce its  ballooning inmate population.

The problem in a nutshell, Kushner said, is that the United States
has 5 percent of the world's population  but 25 percent of the world's
incarcerated population. And one-quarter of the people behind bars in
America  are there for drug-related crimes, he said.

One of the best solutions to that problem appears to be drug courts,
said Kushner, who headed drug treatment  agencies for Oregon, Colorado
and Nebraska, then became  the drug court administrator for the 22nd
Judicial  Circuit in St. Louis, Mo., the job he held before coming to
Montana.

Of the 20 states that admit the most people to drug treatment
programs, 19 had incarceration rates below  the national average, he
said. In addition, while  admissions to drug treatment programs
nationwide rose  37.4 percent between 1995 and 2005, violent crime
rates  fell 31.5 percent during the same period.

Kushner said the results are not nearly as good if the criminal
justice system fails to work closely with  treatment providers. A case
in point is California, he  said, where passage of Proposition 36
eight years ago  changed sentencing laws to require nonviolent
offenders  convicted of drug possession to be sentenced to  treatment
and prohibited sending them to jail or  prison.

Because judges couldn't hold any sanctions over the offenders' heads,
Kushner said, criminals had no  incentive to seek treatment or stay
out of trouble. The  result was that 25 percent of them never even
showed up  for treatment, and of those who did complete treatment,  86
percent were arrested on new drug charges within 30  months.

By contrast, offenders who pass through the municipal drug court in
Billings have to meet specific benchmarks  or they can be subject to a
range of sanctions,  including incarceration, he said. Of the 163
people  served by the court since 2005, he said, 95 percent  were
employed 12 months after completing the program,  94 percent passed
random drug screens, and no graduates  of the program interviewed 12
months later had been  re-arrested.

Kushner said similar results have been seen at the Silver Leaf
Center, where jail inmates admitted to drug  court go for daytime
treatment programs. It has served  69 people since 2006, and more than
98.5 percent of the  participants remain drug-free, he said, and
everyone  who completed the program was employed six months  later.

Those statistics were familiar to many people in the audience, but
what many did not know, judging from the  reaction to Kushner's
telling, was that former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno started the
first drug  court in the county in Miami-Dade County, Fla., in  1989.

Now, Kushner said, there are 2,000 drugs courts in the country - 12
in Montana - serving 120,000 clients at  any given time. Kushner said
after the meeting that his  job as state drug court coordinator is to
monitor the  drug courts, help find grant funding, work with the 
Legislature on drug court issues and maintain a  statewide data
system, which he recently established.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin