DRUG COURT WINS FIGHT FOR EXISTENCE

A $150,000 Grant Will Keep The Program Up Another Year

After nearly going bust, Montgomery County's Drug Court is on the road to
recovery.

The program, established three years ago to steer drug offenders away from
prison and into productive lives, stopped taking on new participants in
December after federal funding ran out. District Attorney Ellen Brooks
seemed ready to write Drug Court's obituary.

"I thought it had tremendous potential, but when you lose your money, you
lose your mechanism to do this, and you have to rely on a Band-Aid
approach," said Brooks, whose office prosecutes cases in Drug Court.

But officials say community-based, treatment-intensive corrections programs
such as Drug Court are the wave of the future as Alabama seeks to relieve
the stress on its overcrowded prison system by having nonviolent offenders
serve their sentences closer to home. There, they can work, support their
families, pay taxes and get their lives back on track.

So letting Drug Court fail wasn't considered an option, especially in
Montgomery County, which supplies more than its share of the state's prison
population. The county's 15th Judicial Circuit sends 282 people to prison
per 100,000 population, second only to the 289-per-100,000 rate in Russell
County's 26th Judicial Circuit, according to Department of Correction
records from 1995 to 1998. The state rate is 178 per 100,000 population.

"We've got plenty of people going to prison who could be punished right
here in the community," said Alan Tapley, executive director of the
Sentencing Institute, a nonprofit, state-funded agency based at Auburn
University Montgomery.

At the urging of Circuit Judge Charles Price, who presides over the 15th
Judicial Circuit, the Sentencing Institute will supply $150,000 to keep
Drug Court afloat another year. Tapley said he expects to find recurring
state and federal money to fund the program after that.

Program benefits visible

Price was no big fan of Drug Court when it started in 1998 with a $399,000
grant from the Department of Justice. He described himself as "a
penitentiary man" who believes someone should do the time if he commits the
crime.

But with substance abuse connected to roughly 70 percent of all crime,
Price said he has come to realize the wide-ranging benefits of getting
offenders into effective treatment programs rather than prison.

"It helps people overcome their addictions and get on with their lives so
that they don't have to keep committing crimes to support their addiction,"
he said.

"They are still in prison, they are just serving their time outside the walls."

Indeed, Drug Court is no country club. In exchange for a guilty plea, a
participant can have the felony conviction erased from his record if he
completes the stringent yearlong program that places a premium on personal
responsibility. Those who pick up a new charge or fail to show steady
progress toward rehabilitation are terminated from the program and
sentenced to prison.

Praise and penalties

District Judge Lynn Bright presides over the Friday Drug Court sessions
like a mother trying to raise difficult children. Participants who have
made their treatment sessions on time or found a job earn praise and
encouragement.

"Mr. Wright, you are doing great. I'm proud of you," Bright told one
participant recently. "Just keep it up until the end. Good luck to you."
Those who are late for a drug test or suffer a relapse catch at least a
stern lecture, if not jail time.

"Ms. Gilliland, I'm just tired of being lied to," Bright told another
participant who had failed a drug test. "You are paving the way to Tutwiler
(prison) for yourself. You've got 10 days to serve in the county jail to
see if you can get yourself straightened out."

Along with regular appearances before Bright, participants undergo drug
tests three times a week and must go to treatment three times a week during
the program's early stages. They also are required to pay restitution, work
a full-time job, get a driver's license, do 50 hours of community service
work and pay $1,700 in fees before they can graduate.

A tough sell

Takeo Jackson, 25, came into Drug Court as a casual drug user who had never
had a full-time job or a driver's license. Rather than be stuck with a
felony for two marijuana convictions, he opted for Drug Court and graduated
in May as a changed man with a full-time job and ambitions to attend college.

"It forced me to look at myself and where I was going," said Jackson, who
works at Harbin's-Stern Brothers Office Furniture. "It was like 'OK, Keo.
You got to get right. This program will benefit you in a lot of ways if you
just do it.' Something clicked inside and I just decided to make it work.
It wasn't that hard after that."

Despite such reviews, Drug Court is not an easy sell. Many nonviolent
offenders know they are likely to get probation rather than prison and that
supervision under probation officers with heavy caseloads is much less
stringent than Drug Court.

"Probation is the easy way out," said Dari Oberbeck, executive director of
the Montgomery Area Court Referral Program, a state-contracted agency that
oversees Drug Court as well as drunken-driving programs in Montgomery,
Autauga and Elmore counties.

"We have to try and recruit people for Drug Court from the jail, and it's
tough," Oberbeck said. "You have to find someone who is motivated to turn
their life around."

Measuring success

Just from the numbers, the Drug Court hasn't been especially successful at
turning lives around. Of the 126 people who have entered the program, only
30 have graduated, while 22 have been terminated and sent to prison and 10
more are AWOL. The rest are still active in various stages of the program.

When the federal grant expired last year, only 14 people had completed the
program - an unimpressive return on a $373,000 investment, Oberbeck said.

The program was in disarray when his office was brought in to manage it in
2000. Then, Oberbeck said, Drug Court suffered from poor management, high
turnover among key personnel and a general lack of direction by the
program's judicial, treatment, prosecutorial and management arms.

Oberbeck assigned one of his most accomplished case managers, Cheryl Plato,
to the program and started pressing to collect fees from participants who
lagged behind in payments.

The result, Oberbeck said, was that "Drug Court started off slow but was
just getting on a roll" when the federal grant ran out last fall.

The $150,000 from the Sentencing Institute will provide enough money for 30
new participants to enter the program.

Putting Drug Court on stable financial footing is only the first part of a
plan to create a model community-based corrections program, the Sentencing
Institute's Tapley said.

He and Price indicated they are close to securing state and federal money
to not only underwrite Drug Court but also create a 50-bed facility that
could treat nonviolent addicts locally instead of sending them to prison
for treatment.

Tapley estimated that keeping an inmate in an Alabama prison costs roughly
$10,000 a year, compared to only $3,000 in a community-based program.

"In Alabama, we get our people treatment in prison, and that's much too
late, not to mention a foolish expense for taxpayers," he said. "Someone
with authority has to intervene in the addiction situation early on. That's
the future."