Programs help Children, Parents suceed

U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader praises efforts of local initiative
By Ruth Liao • Statesman Journal • February 17, 2010

"When northeast Salem esident Lucas Carpenter, 35, was arrested in June on theft and meth charges, he just felt failure and regret. He was having problems with his marriage, his children and his self-esteem.





But Carpenter underwent a turnaround as a participant of the Center for Family Success, a nonprofit program for parents with criminal backgrounds. He's going through drug treatment, family counseling, financial management and parenting classes.

"My life's in the middle of a complete overhaul," he said.

Carpenter shared his story with U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore. and representatives from Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden on Tuesday.

The presentation showed the efforts of Marion County Kids First Initiative, a collaboration of programs and services for children whose parents are addicted to methamphetamine.

In 2008, Kids First was awarded federal grant funds of about $380,000, which were given in October 2008 and last until June of this year, said Barb Young, Marion County senior policy analyst.

Marion County also received $740,000 for its next phase of funding, which is set to come in October, Young said.

According to a survey conducted in 2005, 73 percent of inmates in the Marion County jail were parents, said Marion County Commissioner Janet Carlson.

"A lot of times, we don't think of people in the criminal justice system as parents, just individuals," she said.

Marion County Sheriff's Cmdr. Jeff Wood, who supervises the parole and probation division, said his agency is using evidence-based programs to help clients feel motivated to change, not simply referring them to a drug and alcohol treatment program.

Schrader said he was impressed to hear of the "wraparound" approach in the programs. Schrader said he wanted to invest in these types of programs.

"You cannot have success if you lock up people for an 'X' amount of time," he said.

He said he hoped to see smaller towns and rural communities adopt a similar approach.

The Center for Family Success is run by the Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action Agency. The program helps to motivate participants with skills and services such as goal-setting, housing referrals, financial management, parenting classes and mentoring in order to reunify families broken by incarceration or drug abuse.

In all, 65 men and women have participated at the center; 60 people took part in job and skills training and 25 people were placed in jobs.

For Carpenter, who began using alcohol and drugs when he was 9 years old, meth was the hardest addiction to overcome. He used meth for eight years before his arrest last summer. Then, he took part in Marion County drug court and the Center for Family Success. Carpenter said staying clean has helped improve his family relationships and ongoing job search, especially having a relationship with his mentor Christopher Hupp, the program's director.

"He's helped me dust off the tools that I have," he said."

rliao@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 589-6941

Woman Shares Drug Court Experiences

02/07/2010, 5:39 pm
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Dan Churney, danc@mywebtimes.com, 815-431-4050
Theresa Boyle wasn't sincere when she first entered Grundy County drug court. She said she was in it to keep two felony convictions off her record. Not to stop using drugs and alcohol. Not to straighten out her life. Nothing else.

But that changed.

The 24-year-old Minooka woman, who has relatives in Streator, was arrested in early 2007 in Grundy County and charged with possession of cocaine and fraud. While in the jail in Morris, another woman there told her about the drug court program, which then was a few months old. Boyle shrugged, not thinking much of it.

Later, Boyle's attorney also told her about the program in greater detail and she gave it some thought, but didn't like the sound of it — too much supervision. However, she didn't want a felony record to dog her in the coming years, so she entered the program. She went into it addicted daily to alcohol and smoking. At one time for about six months, she had a $150-per-day cocaine habit, but she weaned herself from the white powder before drug court. She can't credit drug court with that, but she can credit it with keeping her off it and everything else.

"I realized I had no self-esteem, no values. I thought I was invincible. I had grown up too fast."

She attributed her substance abuse problems to not having a father in her life, which made her feel worthless, as if something was always wrong with her. She saw other children with fathers, but hers wasn't there.

Drug court showed her she wasn't the spoiled goods she believed.

"I loved drug court. They forced me to get a job. I'm lucky I'm alive, but I wasn't sincere at first. I drank the night before my first day in court. The toughest part was organizing everything, because they expect a lot. I was wasting a lot of time. They taught me to prioritize."

Boyle remembered the turning point came early, when Halloween approached shortly after she entered the program and she was invited to several parties where liquor and drugs would flow.

"Halloween is my favorite holiday. It was a big temptation, but I used the tools (drug court counselors) put in front of me. I resisted because of the consequences. My attorney told me I was walking a fine line and my life was at stake."

Boyle graduated from drug court in March 2009. Boyle and her 4-year-old son live with her mother. She also has aunts involved in her life. Boyle attends a community college full time.

"I put my whole life into my son and school."

However, in the process, she said she has lost four friends from childhood because they're "still in the scene," as she described the drug culture. "My medication is positive people."

Boyle agreed to go out of her way to speak to The Times about her experience with drug court because she'll do "anything to help the cause."

HOPE program pilots strong probation methods for addicts without mandatory drug treatment:Grits for breakfast

Monday, January 25, 2010
HOPE program pilots strong probation methods for addicts without mandatory drug treatment

"Drug courts have been at the forefront of using strong probation methods in Texas and throughout the country, but evidence-based practices in community supervision are applicable to all sorts of crimes and don't necessarily involve drug treatment. So I was interested to read this discussion from Reuters distinguishing drug courts from the much-ballyhooed HOPE program out of Hawaii:


The first drug court was founded in the Miami area more than 20 years ago and there are now nearly 2,400 nationwide.

They focus on probationers "because if you use drugs for a long period of time, sooner or later you will more than likely end up in trouble with the law," RAND's Kilmer said.

A number of studies have shown that drug courts reduce crime in their area by up to 40 percent and cut rearrests and convictions by up to 26 percent. According to an April 2008 Urban Institute study, for every $1 spent on drug courts, $2.21 is saved through reduced police, hospital and other costs.

Treatment programs also cost about 50 percent less than incarceration, a fact that has apparently grabbed the attention of many cash-starved U.S. states.

"Quite frankly, we're in a very tough economy," Kerlikowske said. "That is spurring people to look at different solutions, especially ones that cost less than incarceration."

Domanick of John Jay College estimates 800,000 Americans a year are arrested for marijuana and said the situation has become unsustainable. "All of the data shows drug treatment works for people who are ready... if it works, you don't have to spend $50,000 to incarcerate people," he said.

Federal funding for drug courts was increased in the fiscal 2010 budget to $88.8 million from $63.8 million in 2009. West Huddleston, head of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, said the group aims to use bipartisan support in Congress to seek $1 billion in federal funding over four years to expand drug courts because they only reach about 10 percent of people who need them.

Others like Mark A. R. Kleiman, a professor of public policy at UCLA, argue in favor of a new approach used in Hawaii, called Project Hope. Started by Judge Steven Alm, Hope uses swift punishment of a few nights in jail for those who fail drug tests and makes drug treatment voluntary -- in drug court, participation in treatment is mandatory.

Kleiman said the program had led to a 50 percent reduction in crime and a recidivism rate of 7 percent. "Drug courts are resource hogs," he said. "This system is much cheaper and more effective."

Critics of the program say without treatment for addiction, they doubt that drug addicts can go clean.

Drug Czar Kerlikowske said the Hope program would also be considered by the administration as part of the drug strategy it will make public in February.

For people like Chief Lamkin in St Charles, working with the drug court involves partnering closely with judges and defense attorneys to work out who has a chance of making it through the treatment program and who would be better off going to jail.

"But one thing is clear," he said. "If we locked up all the drug users we'd break the bank. It just isn't physically possible."


I tend to agree that not everyone convicted of drug possession needs mandatory treatment, and many (probably most) drug users who quit do so without treatment. But I know quite a few drug court judges (starting with John Creuzot up in Dallas) who would balk at the prospect of making treatment voluntary.

OTOH, Dr. Edward Latessa and others have argued for focusing treatment resources on only the most high-risk offenders, and that high treatment levels for low-risk offenders actually increase recidivism. That mitigates in favor of HOPE's approach. It's likely the majority of drug-possession defendants don't fit into the "high risk" category.

Latessa argues for use of screening and assessment tools to figure out where is that dividing line among drug users - who would benefit from mandatory treatment and who would not. At the HOPE program, though, the process is essentially self selective. Treatment is not initially required, but "repeat offenders are often ordered into residential treatment."

In any event, with all the attention paid recently to Hawaii's HOPE program, which has been touted as among the most promising strong-probation methodologies, I hadn't realized that key distinction compared to drug courts - the lack of mandatory treatment, at least on the front end. That probably represents better stewardship of scarce resources than a one-size-fits-all approach.

MORE: Thanks to Jake Horowitz for letting me know that the Pew Trusts' Public Safety Performance Project this month released a research brief (pdf) on the HOPE program based on an evaluation (pdf) funded by the National Institute of Justice that came out in December."
From Grits for Breakfast blog.

Opposing Opinion: Drug Courts Don't Work

Well, let's face it...since drug courts exist, and you happen to be headed for one, you may be the one to have to make drug court work. This can only be done by a determination to do the home work, get through it and get out. Otherwise, it can be a revolving door.

Try to muster a support group to back you, parents, drug free friends, anyone and everyone that will back your efforts. Failing drug court has some very unpleasant ramifications. You don't want to go there.

Go to NA, go to counseling, show up for drug court meetings on time. Dress like you care about yourself. Don't cheat and do some drugs, fail your UA, and then try to lie to the judge or your drug court supervisor. Stay away from druggie ex-pals, and yes, do make them EX-pals. This is a temptation you don't need.

If you follow the rules, take one day at a time, before you know it, you'll be a drug court graduate, and drug free. That's a pretty good feeling. Then, the next step is starting your new and improved life.

So, don't let anyone discourage you. Drug courts do have problems, but you can make it just like others have, and on the plus side, they may just be your way out to being drug free. It's really your call, no one else's.~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


By Morris Hoffman


"There are only two problems with drug courts. They don't work, and they turn judges into intrusive agents of the Nanny State.

Independent evaluations of drug courts have been mixed, but many show that drug courts have no, or very little, impact on re-arrest recidivism. In Denver, for example, where I sit as a trial judge, an evaluation of our drug court done by the insiders who ran it claimed enormous reductions in recidivism. But when independent evaluators from the University of Denver looked at the program, they found that it reduced recidivism from a depressing 58% down to a still depressing 53%. Even that 5-point drop was well within the study's margin of error.

But it's not just that drug courts don't work, or don't work well. They have the perverse effect of sending more drug defendants to prison, because their poor treatment results get swamped by an increase in the number of drug arrests. By virtue of a phenomenon social scientists call "net-widening," the very existence of drug courts stimulates drug arrests.

Police are no longer arresting criminals, they are trolling for patients. Denver's drug arrests almost tripled in the two years after we began our drug court. At the end of those two years, we were sending almost twice the number of drug defendants to prison than we did before drug court.

Drug courts also turn judges from neutral magistrates into a combination of treatment cheerleader and substitute parent. When we try to treat addiction either as a simple disease or a matter of criminal choice, and drug users as moral inpatients, the only thing we accomplish is to create a dangerous and untrained judiciary that thinks it can intrude into the lives of citizens for as long as it takes to cure them.

As a state felony trial judge, I understand the scourge of drugs as well as anyone. But trying to cover up our national schizophrenia over drug policy with the veneer of ineffective, even counterproductive, drug courts does no good, except perhaps to make judges feel better when we send our treatment failures to prison.

Morris Hoffman is a state trial judge in Denver and an adjunct professor of law at the University of Colorado.