Pubdate: Fri, 18 May 2012
Source: Bay City Times, The (MI)
Copyright: 2012 The Bay City Times
Contact: http://www.mlive.com/mailforms/bctimes/letters/index.ssf/
Website: http://www.mlive.com/bay-city/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1453
Author: Cole Waterman

BAY COUNTY DRUG COURT: PROGRAM ADDRESSES CAUSES OF CRIME

This is the first installment of a three-part series.

BAY CITY, MI - Two new programs in the Bay County justice system aim
to proactively address causes of crime, rather than going after the
symptoms.

Bay County Circuit and Probate courts began drug treatment programs
designed to tackle addictions to illegal and controlled substances in
October.

"The purpose of the criminal justice system is severalfold," said
Circuit Judge Harry P. Gill, who oversees the circuit court program.
"One, you want to keep the community safe, and two, in doing that, you
want to rehabilitate people who have run afoul of the law."

The seven participants in Gill's court are addicted to various drugs,
but the judge said opiates and benzodiazepines are the most prevalent.
In Probate Judge Karen A.Tighe's juvenile drug court, the six
participating teens' drug of choice is marijuana.

"We've seen everything in family treatment court, from alcohol all the
way to meth," Tighe said. "They seem to gravitate to pills. We see a
lot of prescription drugs."

Gill said he considers the three largest factors leading people to
crime to be alcohol, drugs and mental health. If you remove those
triggers or treat their volatility, the crime they cause will likewise
decrease, he said.

"And those three areas are not unrelated," he said. "Where you find
one, you're likely to find at least the mental health aspect. The idea
with treatment court is to help people deal with their addictions and
also help them learn new ways to think and new ways to express their
emotions in the hope that they will be able to move on beyond those
addictions, which will do a number of things if successful. First, it
should curtail their behavior, so that they're not repeat offenders,
and, two, they will more readily become productive members of society
and no longer be a problem for the criminal justice system, but also
people who are healthy enough to have families and jobs and pay taxes."

The new programs join Bay County's two established treatment programs
- - Tighe's family drug court and District Judge Dawn A. Klida's
sobriety court, the latter limited to issues of alcohol dependence.

The circuit drug and district sobriety courts operate on the same
$100,000 federal grant, renewed each year at a different amount.

To be eligible for the adult drug court, defendants must be charged
with a felony directly caused by chemical dependency, such as drug
possession, larceny or home invasion. Perpetrators of violent crimes
generally are not admitted into the program.

For admission into sobriety court, defendants must be charged with a
third driving-while-intoxicated offense.

Dawn Widman, Bay County's treatment court coordinator, screens
defendants to see if they meet eligibility requirements, then presents
the information to an admission committee of Bay County Prosecutor
Kurt C. Asbury, two defense attorneys, two officials from the Michigan
Department of Corrections, a therapist from Sacred Heart
Rehabilitation Center and police officers. The committee comes to a
consensus on whether a defendant is appropriate for admission into
either court.

Defendants must plead guilty to the charges they're facing before Gill
or Klida can sentence them to treatment court. Both the drug and
sobriety courts comprise four phases completed over 15 months to two
years. The program is at its most intense early on, with more frequent
drug tests and visits to the court, to counselors and generally higher
demands, then gradually tapers off as it progresses.

Each phase is about 13 weeks long, with the exception of Phase III,
which lasts 26 weeks. Participants must be drug- and alcohol-free for
the last six months before graduation.

Successful graduation means defendants avoid incarceration, and the
crime to which they pleaded can be reduced to a lesser offense.

With the new programs, Michigan now has 86 drug treatment courts, 33
of which address adults with drug issues and 23 of which deal with
sobriety. Midland and Genesee counties also have adult drug courts,
while Saginaw County has a family dependency court.

Bay County's sobriety and drug courts have accepted 218 participants
since former District Judge Craig D. Alston started the
alcohol-focused program in 2005. Of those, 24 now are enrolled in
sobriety court, seven people are in drug court, 108 have successfully
graduated, 47 were terminated due to noncompliance, 13 were terminated
due to absconding, nine were terminated for committing a new offense,
six voluntarily withdrew and one died.

Three of the sobriety court's participants - one man and two women -
graduated Wednesday, the first time so many people completed the
program at one time.

Each of the graduates received a framed certificate of completion, a
dog tag announcing their accomplishment and a copy of their original
mug shots. As they accepted the items, rounds of applause of friends,
family, court staff and previous graduates filled Klida's courtroom.

According to the above figures, Bay County's rate of successful
completion is 59.3 percent. The average success rate for state
sobriety courts is 65 percent, while the national average is between
27 and 66 percent, according to the state court administrative office.

"The thing that attracted me to drug court is the fact that it changes
lives," said Tighe. "The thread I see running through all of my cases
is that almost everyone who is involved in my family treatment court =C2=85

have had some extreme trauma in their lives. They are attracted to
mind-numbing behavior because of the trauma, which has led them into
addiction."

Having their children taken from them and running the risk of losing
parental rights tends to be rock bottom for most young parents, Tighe
said, prompting them to get serious about getting clean.

The therapeutic element of treatment court is what makes it most
effective, Tighe said.

"I've seen it reunify families to the point where the trauma has been
somewhat resolved, the addiction has been curbed, and the children are
safe with their parents again, and that's why I do it," she said.

Widman said for every $1 spent on treatment court, $7 is saved in lieu
of incarceration.

"When you think about the cost of savings that these programs offer,
it's huge," she said.

Klida added that the savings are felt locally as well, as each
participant is spared jail time. By the nature of their pleas, each of
the participants in Klida's sobriety court would be in jail if they
were not in the program.

When defendants falter and relapse, they are not immediately ousted
from the program, though they are sanctioned with various penalties,
such as a few days in jail or increased drug testing.

"It takes a really long time to get over an addiction, and you do
slip," Tighe said. "You understand that there is going to be a slip,
and you deal with it gently but appropriately, and sometimes you have
to come down hard. I've placed moms and dads in jail, and oftentimes a
couple of days in jail is the wake-up call they need to get back on
track and stay there."

"You look at their participation as a whole," Klida added. "We would
be shocked if these people came in and from start to finish" stayed
clean.

The judges said participants in the adult drug court range in age from
19 to 31, while those in the sobriety court make up an older crowd,
from their mid-20s to early 70s, with 45 or 50 as the average age.
They theorized the reason for this is that alcohol use is more
socially acceptable and an alcoholic can be higher functioning for a
longer span of time than a person addicted to a street drug.

"There's a societal backdrop to the drinking," Klida said, adding that
it is more common and acceptable to be, for example, a
high-functioning alcoholic than a high-functioning heroin addict. "It
is interesting to see some of these older folks and their health
problems they have from =C2=85 their  drinking."

The judges said that when participants are introduced to the program,
they can start out on the defensive, suspicious of the courts. As they
progress, though, most lower their guard as they recognize the judges'
sincerity and they, in turn, genuinely want to kick their habits.

"Their whole attitude toward the court system changes," Widman said.
"We're not out to get them. We're here to help, and I think that
surprises them."

Tighe's family treatment court started in 2008 and has since admitted
41 parents of 68 children. To date, there have been 13 successful
re-unifications of families. If the seven current participants
complete the program, it will net a 50 percent success rate.
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MAP posted-by: Matt