CITIZEN 'JUDGES' SOFTEN STING AT DRUG COURTS

An Iowa City Tweaks A National Tactic To Find Workable Alternatives To
Prison For Addicts.

MASON CITY, Iowa -- The judges ate goulash. They nibbled on garlic bread as
they leafed through probation reports. They finished their salads in time
to hear a teary-eyed drug addict confess how, despite the threat of prison,
she had taken a hit off a crack pipe.

"I'm just really scared," she said, dabbing her eyes with a tissue offered
by the probation officer sitting beside her. "We're here to support you, to
help you beat your addiction,' judge Alan Love told her.

More precisely, that would be Alan Love, police dispatcher. He was sitting
next to another "judge," Don True, butcher at a local grocery store.
Rounding out the four-person panel were a community planner and a social
worker.

So goes another typical session of drug court in this north-central Iowa
factory town. Since their creation in South Florida more than a decade ago,
drug courts have spread across the country, from the Criminal Courts
building at 26th and California on Chicago's Southwest Side to the prairie
towns of Iowa.

Now the essence of drug courts--offering offenders treatment instead of
prison--is being credited with helping to cut the number of inmates in
state prisons for the first time in nearly three decades.

Usually, black-robed judges run drug courts. But one of the most innovative
approaches to this softer strategy in America's war on drugs is on display
in a halfway house in Mason City.

It is here, every Wednesday, that citizen volunteers such as Love and True
take time off from their regular jobs to sit on community drug panels. They
are the front line in a nationwide push to address America's drug problem
as a public health issue, not just a criminal one.

Mason City, whose drug court started in April, and other Iowa courts have
taken the idea a step further: harnessing the street smarts and varied
perspectives of community residents to reduce drug usage and crime.

Love, True and their fellow volunteers help lighten the caseload of a local
court calendar that otherwise would be clogged by methamphetamine addicts
and other drug users. At no cost, they also provide a mix of discipline and
encouragement--from a kind word to a job tip--that organizers hope will
motivate repeat offenders to stay clean.

A mix of state and federal funding pays for the frequent drug testing and
probation visits that most experts say are crucial to the success of such
courts.

"The bottom line is, we don't have the prison space to put every one of
these people behind bars," said James Drew, the Iowa District Court judge
in Mason City who holds the threat of jail or prison for any drug court
failures. "This is high intensity. It's not easy. It's done with the
understanding that if you screw up, you're going down."

Treatment experts call it "coerced abstinence," as did President Bush
earlier this year when he announced John Walters as his nominee to be
America's new drug czar. Walters, who has yet to be confirmed by the
Senate, is a veteran of the drug czar's office and has a reputation for
focusing on interdiction and incarceration rather than treatment.

But at Walter's nomination ceremony Bush also asked Atty. Gen. John
Ashcroft to draft a plan by mid-September to expand drug testing for
probationers and parolees "and to strengthen our system of drug courts
around the nation."

State lawmakers are doing so already. About 30 legislatures have enacted
laws meant to promote drug courts. In Texas, for instance, a new statute
takes effect Saturday that requires heavily populated counties to create
drug courts or lose certain state funds.

Such moves reflect a growing consensus that treating people while they are
under criminal justice control can reduce by as much as 70 percent the
likelihood that an offender will return to drug use and crime, according to
Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

With such figures in mind, drug courts are growing nationwide at the rate
of about 100 a year, with 710 established and another 521 planned,
according to U.S. Department of Justice figures.

Even with that explosive growth, however, most estimates indicate that only
about 5 percent of the nation's drug offenders are involved in drug courts;
that limited reach has led some treatment proponents to push other approaches.

"It's not that what they do is bad, it's that they can't serve enough
people," said Bill Zimmerman, executive director of the Campaign for New
Drug Policies. Zimmerman's group led the fight in California last fall to
pass Proposition 36, a ballot measure that is expected to send 24,000 drug
offenders a year to treatment instead of prison.

Though Prop 36 took effect July 1, California's 100 drug courts continue to
cover people not eligible under the new measure, such as offenders arrested
on charges that involve more than just drug possession. The drug courts
also continue to hold out a bigger threat of jail time than the Prop 36
program, which allows offenders up to three violations before facing
mandatory incarceration.

Threat keeps many in line

Many repeat offenders say it is the drug courts' threat of prison that
keeps them motivated.

Lori Awe, a 38-year-old mother of three and longtime methamphetamine
addict, entered drug court in Mason City after testing positive for
marijuana the week she was graduating from a local treatment center. She
already was on probation for forgery, a crime she had committed to get
money to buy drugs; failing the urinalysis could have sent her to prison
for five years.

She chose drug court instead, which typically takes at least a year to
complete. After more than four months in the program, Awe said she has her
family and church praying for her. "But if I didn't have the drug courts
and my [urinalysis], I can't say I would stay straight," she said after
another visit with her probation officer.

Those who volunteer to sit on Iowa's community drug panels often have
equally personal reasons for doing so. For True, the Mason City butcher, it
was the neighbor who has been dealing methamphetamine next door.

True, the father of two teenagers, put up a fence. But as he said, "You can
put your fence up [only] so high." So he volunteered for Mason City's drug
court. "Who knows, I may see him in here one day and I can say, 'I'm not
with the police. I can help if you just want to talk.' When he needs help
to get straight, maybe I can help get him a job."

But like others involved in drug courts around the country, True is under
no illusion that his town has found a panacea. "There is a war out there
against drugs. We're not going to win it overnight," he said. "I just
wanted to do my part as a citizen."

While cautioning that more research needs to be done to determine which
types of drug courts work best, Leshner and other experts applaud the
philosophy behind experiments such as Mason City's. "The more we make the
recovery of the offender a community priority, the better off we are
because, obviously, if you get them recovered they'll stop committing
crimes," he said.

Lab seizures soar

Iowa officials added Mason City to the state's system of drug courts after
watching methamphetamine lab seizures jump statewide from 320 in 1998 to
660 last year. Through mid-August, the state already had completed 415
seizures, according to Logan Wernet, a Mason City police investigator
assigned to the North Central Iowa Narcotic Task Force.

As elsewhere, methamphetamine hasn't discriminated much in cutting a swath
through Mason City: Offenders range in age from 18 to 45, they are men and
women, single and married, some of them parents, Wernet said.

By the time they are offered a chance at drug court, many of these
offenders have committed forgeries, burglaries and other crimes to support
their habits. So if drug court can keep them clean, the offenders aren't
the only ones to benefit.

"They keep their families intact. They hold down jobs. And they pay taxes,"
said Mike McGuire, who heads the drug court in Mason City, which has 10
offenders enrolled. "They become productive members of society."

How long they will remain so is a question. Steven Belenko, a fellow at the
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse who has reviewed studies
of drug courts nationwide, said drug courts appear to reduce offenders'
return to crime "for at least a year" after leaving the program. "But
beyond that we don't know," he said.