COURTS ALLOWING PEOPLE ANOTHER CHANCE

Rehabilitation Effort Helping Participants Face, Overcome Their Demons

At 2:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, a Sutter County courtroom is alive with people
clustered in small groups, chatting, smiling and reacquainting themselves
with one another.

For some, this is a weekly ritual, for others a bi-weekly one. But, for
all, it is a necessity - not merely to satisfy a court requirement, but to
nourish the bond that has blossomed between those who are in one phase or
another of Sutter County's Drug Court program.

Drug court, originally conceived of in Florida in 1989, was designed to
provide habitual drug users with an alternative to incarceration, focusing
instead on rehabilitation through counseling, intense supervision and drug
testing.

Both Yuba and Sutter counties have drug court programs. Yuba County's has
been in operation for five years and was the first of its kind in Northern
California. Sutter's has been in operation just over a year.

The objective is to break the cycle of criminal activity and addiction,
said Sutter County Judge Chris Chandler, who presides over drug court.

Established in Sutter County in January 2000, there have been approximately
30 drug court participants to date.

The program can accommodate up to 25 people at a time. Since its inception,
five people have graduated from the stringent one-year program and two more
are expected to graduate this month, Chandler said.

Three have failed to complete the program and were sent to state prison
while two others, who couldn't comply with the requirements, were put back
on felony probation and have been admitted into one-year residential
treatment facilities, he said.

None of the participants have reoffended, Chandler said.

"I suspect that within the next five to 10 years, as more efforts are made
to see why people go back to drugs, we'll be more successful than we are
now," Chandler said.

A test of positive for drugs in the Sutter County program will result in 90
days in jail the first time and 120 the second. Continued offenses could
result in removal from the program.

Chandler said he sees the implementation of Proposition 36 as complementary
to, but different than drug court.

In each county, drug court incorporates a team of professionals from
probation, mental health, police and sheriff's departments, the district
attorney's and public defender's offices, who meet weekly.