States should seek alternatives to drug courts for addicts, but if they can’t, they should use New Jersey’s program as model, according to two reports released today by watchdog groups.
Drug courts in most states, the reports said, tend to "cherry pick" participants they feel will do best in the program, such as recreational users, and not necessarily select those who need help the most.
New Jersey’s drug courts, which started experimentally in 1996 and expanded to all 21 counties by 2002, focus on the more difficult cases, a model that serves well for other states, said Nastassia Walsh, a researcher for the Justice Policy Institute who authored "Addicted to Courts: How a Growing Dependence on Drug Courts Impacts People and Communities."
"We like this model because it is more of an ‘alternative’ to incarceration," she said. "Instead of going to prison, this is diverting people from somewhere else."
Drug courts are designed to divert offenders to treatment, rather than prison, through intensive supervision.
Gov. Chris Christie’s proposed budget recommends $43.34 million for the operation of drug courts this year, said Winnie Comfort, a spokeswoman for the state Administrative Office of the Courts. Since their inception, New Jersey’s drug courts graduated 2,073 people by the end of last year, There are another 3,845 active participants in drug courts statewide, Comfort said.
Nationwide, drug courts enroll about 55,000 people annually but a third do not have a drug problem and wind up clogging the courts, according to the Drug Policy Alliance’s report called "Drug Courts Are Not the Answer: Toward a Health-Centered Approach to Drug Use.’’
Others who are low-level offenders often serve hefty prison sentences — longer than they would have if they had not been in drug court — because these programs use jail time as sanctions for those who relapse, said Margaret Dooley-Sammuli, deputy state director for the Drug Policy Alliance
"Many of these participants will be worse off for choosing drug court than if they had opted for conventional sentencing," Dooley-Sammuli said. "This is because many people will spend more time incarcerated while in drug court than if they had been conventionally sentenced at the outset."
The reports don’t recommend disbanding drug courts.
"What we are concerned about is that as long as they’re seen as a sort of solution, that we are unlikely to see attention drawn to the real problem which is that there are inadequate resources for people in the community before the get caught up in the criminal justice system," Walsh said.
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