DISARRAY IN DRUG COURT

Employing a tough blend of encouragement, judgment, and discipline, Judge
Carol Brosnahan deals every day with the chaotic reality of drug abuse.
Since last November's passage of Proposition 36 she's had to deal with
another thing: the damage caused by our attempt to help.

The Berkeley Courthouse is small and not very intimidating.
Nevertheless, I am nervous as I walk in the door. The queasy feeling
in the pit of my stomach is familiar, though I haven't felt it
inyears: it's the same feeling I used to get on my way to the
principal's office.

In movies, courtrooms are always dramatic places filled with gleaming
wooden fixtures and ceiling fans swirling overhead.

But this courtroom is utilitarian, as boring and prosaic as your
average office.

A clerk works quietly on a computer, and a sheriff's deputy looks over
some papers.

And like at any office, fluorescent lights line the
ceiling.

In their yellowish glow, seven men and two women sit in movie
theater-style rows of seats and wait patiently for Drug Court Judge
Carol Brosnahan.

The people in Drug Court are what focus group organizers would call a
"good cross-section of the community." Every age group and every race
is represented. The younger men sit in back wearing bored,
let's-get-this-over-with expressions. Older men in ties, well into
their fifties, look around expectantly, as if they're waiting to be
interviewed for a job at Radio Shack. Most everyone has made an
attempt to look nice. A man of about twenty stands up to stretch, and
I notice that his baggy pants have been freshly ironed.

Another young man has brought his mother.

She stares straight ahead, her mouth set into a firm line. Not once do
they look at each other.

I look around at all the faces and wonder if anyone in the courtroom
is high.

"I'd like to start with five minutes of silence," says Drug Court
coordinator Davida Coady. "Let's slow down and get in the proper frame
of mind." She shuts her eyes and bows her head as the fluorescent
lights are dimmed. I peek and see that everyone's head is lowered,
eyes closed.

During the five minutes of silence, I think about how radically
attitudes toward drugs have changed in the past two decades.

I remember visiting my father and leafing through his collection of
High Times magazines.

The pictures of cocaine, magnified until the drug looked like a
flowering bouquet of crystal blossoms, seemed beautiful to me and not
in the least bit deadly.

My sister and I would watch Cheech and Chong movies while my father
smoked fat joints filled with homegrown weed. Several years later, my
friends and I would try almost every drug you can think of. I don't
blame my dad's permissive attitude or the pictures in High Times. But
still, I look at the people here waiting to be judged, and I can't
help wondering why I am not among them.

Judge Brosnahan shuffles papers and summons a tall, spindly,
red-bearded man I'll call Derrick. (Names and identifying case details
have been altered.) He stands up and clears his throat.

Earlier, Judge Brosnahan had given me a roster with the names of
everyone set to appear today at Drug Court, along with a brief
synopsis of his or her employment status, family situation, and drug
history.

Derrick has a full-time job in the health care industry. He has been
fighting an ongoing battle with meth, pills, and alcohol and,
unfortunately, that combo seems to win most of the time. After an
arrest for speed while on probation for an earlier drug conviction, he
was given a choice: go to jail for a couple of months or go to
Berkeley's Drug Court. That was a month ago. He's been attending
Narcotics Anonymous meetings twice a week. So far, his weekly urine
tests have been clean.

"How are you today?" Brosnahan asks. Her tone is kindly and concerned;
she sounds like she really wants to know.

"Well, actually, I just got my car stolen and my girlfriend left me,"
Derrick replies.

In the face of these dual upsets, he doesn't sound too sad, just
mildly pissed off. He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his
jeans.

Robert Davies--a counselor at a recovery center called Options
Plus--asks if Derrick has been tempted to use. Sure he's been tempted,
Derrick replies. "With all this shit, who wouldn't be?" He laughs wryly.

I scrutinize Derrick, trying to determine whether he's on
drugs.

He looks sober to me.

"I think I'd like you to have a test," Brosnahan tells him. Derrick
looks surprised but acquiescent. "Sure, I'd be happy to," he tells the
judge.

A few minutes later, the deputy escorts him to the
bathroom.

In about five minutes, his lab results come back. "Well, Derrick,"
Brosnahan says sadly, "your test is dirty." I have to admit I'm
surprised. Derrick looks sheepish and mumbles that he had forgotten
but, yeah, he had done a little meth. "I want you to go to three NA
meetings this week and to report back next Wednesday. After the next
dirty test you'll have to go to jail for thirty days," the judge tells
him. He nods slowly, resignedly.

Dylan is next. He's the one with his mother.

His bio states that he's been smoking pot, drinking, and doing
hallucinogens since he was eleven, and that he dropped out of school
in the tenth grade.

He got busted with pot last year when he was eighteen.

But now, he tells the judge, he thinks he's about finished with
drugs.

"I want you to be enrolled in school," Brosnahan tells him, bossy as
any grandma.

"Yeah, I'm taking GED classes and I'm going to take the test next
week," Dylan says. "If I pass, I'm going to enroll in Laney." His tone
is flat, bored almost.

But there's a small, proud smile on his face that belies his tone. He
glances at his mother, who doesn't move a muscle.

"So have you used this past week?" the judge asks.

"No, I haven't." Dylan himself sounds astonished. He says his family
can't believe it either, this new drug-free life of his. As he admits
that, I wonder if it's because they've heard it so many times or that
they'd given up hope because he'd never tried to clean up before.

He says he'll be finished with his court-mandated diversion this
month. "I guess we're going to graduate you," a beaming Coady declares.

Almost everyone in Drug Court has been arrested previously on other
drug charges. And most of them aren't here today because they got
arrested for the likes of a few joints.

This is felony Drug Court and possession of pot is not a
felony.

The drugs of choice among these men and women are speed, cocaine, and
ecstasy.

Most of the people here have let their drug use interfere with their
lives; jobs have been lost and they're estranged from their families.

In short, almost all of them are here because their drug use blossomed
out of the range of recreational and into the realm of addiction.

At the close of the session, Davies, the Options Plus counselor, tells
everyone in the court to be strong, especially with the holidays on
their way. "Be careful," he says. "It's a vulnerable time." At the
mention of the holidays, I notice that a few participants look anxious.

I'm amazed at how thorough the process is, how the Drug Court staffers
know so much about each of these offenders.

Nobody here has the chance to slip through any cracks, no matter how
badly he or she might want to.

It is not a coincidence that the first Drug Court was started in Miami
in 1989. Crack was exploding then and there, and the jails were doing
a booming business.

After witnessing the same people being arrested over and over, the
police, judges, and substance abuse professionals finally agreed on
one thing: that the addiction had to be treated before anything else
could change.

Since that time, every state has now implemented its own version of
Drug Court at the county level.

Although Drug Courts do seem to be chipping away at the mammoth drug
problem, there is still much work that needs to be done. In its 1997
study, the US Bureau of Justice reported that 33 percent of state and
22 percent of federal prisoners had committed their current offenses
while under the influence of drugs.

About one in six of both state and federal inmates said they had
committed their offenses to get money to buy drugs.

This past election, California voters--tired of insipid "Just Say No"
sloganeering--voiced their dissent regarding a penal system that
wasn't helping the drug problem.

What motivated those 61 percent of voters (myself included) who said
yes to Proposition 36 was that it offered an alternative to jail.
Under the new law, set to take effect on July 1, anyone arrested for a
first or second felony drug offense (excluding those with prior
serious or violent felony convictions and those convicted of intent to
sell) would not go to jail. Instead, the person would be remanded to
either a live-in or a day treatment program.

To me and to the other voters who passed it, Prop. 36 sounded both
compassionate and likely to be effective in helping people overcome
their addictions.

It might surprise you to discover, then, that Carol Brosnahan, Davida
Coady, and even some of the people sitting in their courtroom are
seriously concerned that Prop. 36 will make it more difficult to help
drug users in California, and that it may well have a negative impact
on substance abuse programs that have been in place for years.

A carrot-and-stick approach is now in danger of turning into just a
carrot--and many people, including the addicts it's supposed to cure,
don't think this new formula will work.

Much of the problem in the new law boils down to the fact that it was
meant to address inequities in the existing system.

Each county in California has its own method of prosecuting drug
convictions. If you get busted with cocaine anywhere in the state, you
will almost certainly face a felony charge, but in the more liberal
metropolitan areas, that charge will probably be reduced to a
misdemeanor. In some counties, possession of less than an ounce of
marijuana is winked at; some district attorneys are lenient, while
officials in more conservative counties will haul your sorry
drug-taking ass to jail and throw away the key for relatively minor
offenses. And then there is "intent to sell." By what definition is
intent determined--possessing less than an ounce, more than an ounce,
a few pills? Offenders who have been through the system will explain
that "intent to sell" depends on the county you're busted in, the mood
of the arresting officer, how much money you make, and the color of
your skin.

It's no wonder that trying to standardize this system seemed like a
good idea to Proposition 36 proponents. Besides, we all know--don't
we?--that sending drug offenders to jail is an expensive, punitive
gesture that accomplishes nothing.

We shouldn't waste time or money locking people up--we should send
them to a treatment program where they can get some real help. And
while we're at it, writing a sensible, humane new law, let's redefine
treatment.

In the past, even treatment has been interpreted in a punitive way.
Drug Courts and rehab centers have given offenders urine tests, and
when those tests come back dirty, off goes the offender to jail. The
tests, in fact, just seemed another way to shoot people off to
jail--and sometimes treatment became synonymous with testing.

Therefore, the language in 36 specifically prohibits any of the money
to be spent on urine tests.

So there go jail and testing--and exit the "sticks" that most
substance abuse professionals believe are vital to many addicts'
recoveries, particularly in those early days of trying desperately to
stay clean, when sobriety seems neither imaginable nor attainable.

"Mandatory testing is absolutely essential," Brosnahan tells me after
Drug Court has adjourned for the day. "If you don't have testing, you
don't have any real way of monitoring." Brosnahan believes that most
people mandated to Drug Court really want to get better. "Sometimes at
graduation, they'll say, 'I want to thank you,' or 'I want to thank
the cops for arresting me. I never would've made it if you hadn't
pushed me. I want to thank you for putting me in jail,'" says the
judge, who has been on the bench since 1979, after being appointed by
then-governor Jerry Brown. "I think that doing drugs is so
debilitating that people lose their strength to fight.

They need somebody to help them."

I ask Brosnahan if she's concerned that Prop. 36 will lead to the
legalization of drugs. "Granted, alcohol is legal," she answers, "but
how can you go about decriminalizing something like crack?

A crack baby is born; it's brain-damaged. There's a huge cost to
society from the use of drugs and with Drug Courts, there's a balance.

Drug Courts say to the user, 'You're in the criminal justice system;
what we're trying to do is get you clean and keep you out [of the
system] in the future.'" The problem with Prop. 36, she explains, is
that "we [won't] know if somebody's getting clean or not. If you have
no sanctions, you might as well not have a Drug Court. If there are no
consequences to using," she says, then she might as well be "wearing a
black robe with nothing on underneath."

Lest you think that Prop. 36 will set up more Drug Courts, think
again.

The proposition's supporters estimate that "nonviolent drug possession
would divert about 12,000 eligible offenders annually" from jail
sentences to probation supervision and community drug treatment centers.

That means a tremendous increase (the estimate is tenfold) over the
number of people diverted to Drug Courts today.

All these individuals will need to be served by day and residential
treatment centers.

Counties are expected to save about $40 million annually (with fewer
people in county jails for drug offenses), while the state prison
system is expected to save $200-$250 million from diversion programs.

Of that, $120 million would be allocated to the Substance Abuse
Treatment Fund set up by the proposition; this money will pay for
probation and treatment programs.

But since the funds are allocated only for Prop. 36 programs, it's
doubtful that Drug Courts--or already existing treatment
alternatives--will see any of this money.

And Drug Courts can be written in--or written out--of future state
budgets.

Instead, Prop. 36 sets up a new parallel structure of state-funded
treatment centers, both drop-in and residential. How these will link
up with the existing system is unclear.

Substance abuse professionals wonder how the new centers will be run,
and even whether they'll be licensed. Judge Brosnahan has heard rumors
that addicts will be allowed to design their own treatment regimens.
"There are no guidelines [being set up] that constitute appropriate
treatment," she says. "One of the questions [that's come up] is, can
you have 'moderate' use? Every alcoholic who's serious [about
sobriety] knows you can't."

Then there is the issue of monitoring and cost. Under 36, those
convicted are expected to pay a portion of the cost of their
treatment, but how will that happen?

Will Medi-Cal cover the expense for those who qualify?

At this point, no one knows the answers to any of these questions--and
we're six months away from July 1, when not only should the structure
be in place, but also the link-ups made (or not made) to the present
system, and the new centers up and operating.

As you can imagine, a lot of frantic people are spending hours every
week in committee meetings across the state, trying to hammer out policy.

So how will the new law change an offender's experience? Say I was
arrested last week for possession of meth in Alameda County. As a
first-time offender, criminal proceedings would be suspended for two
years, providing that I stay in a court-mandated recovery program for
its duration.

I'd be diverted to Drug Court, required to show up in front of Judge
Brosnahan, take drug tests, and attend AIDS awareness classes, drug
counseling sessions, and NA meetings.

If I tested dirty during those 24 months, and a test can be ordered
anytime, I might have to go into custody for a day--or if I kept
screwing up, I might have to go to jail or be sent to a residential
drug program.

Ultimately, my freedom is dependent on my staying clean.

After July 1, when Prop. 36 goes into effect, my future as an arrestee
would look different.

I would likely be ordered to attend a day-treatment program that could
last no longer than a year. During that year, I could not be tested,
and I could rack up three probation violations (additional drug
offenses) before finally being sent to jail for a year. No more fear
of "shock incarceration"--which, under the pre-36 system, meant that
if I just didn't seem to be getting on board, Judge Brosnahan could
toss me in the slammer for a few days to see if I got the message.

Many proponents of the Drug Courts say that shock incarcerations are
very effective for offenders who aren't responding to NA meetings and
counseling. Under the new law, judges won't be able to send offenders
to jail unless there are new charges.

Across the street from Berkeley's Drug Court is the old Veterans'
Building. Beyond a sign for the men's shelter is a weathered wooden
door that leads to Options Plus. Brosnahan works closely with director
Dr. Davida Coady; the people Brosnahan sees in Drug Court are required
to attend meetings and participate in recovery programs at Options
Plus.

When I walked in, a meeting was in progress.

If you've ever sat in a cold folding chair at an AA or an NA meeting,
you know the stories by heart and you've probably told them yourself.

Old men who look like they've been camping on the streets for years
hold hot cups of coffee in shaking hands; well-dressed women who'd be
comfortable in front of a flow chart tell stories that curl your hair.
I listened for a few minutes and then caught up with Coady.

A tall, thin woman with long, graying hair pulled back into a
ponytail, Coady was a pediatrician at Children's Hospital in Oakland
before she became coordinator of the program at Berkeley's Drug Court.
She also taught medicine at UCLA and built medical clinics alongside
the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. I ask her what she thinks of Drug
Court's now-hazy future.

"I think we don't know the details," she muses.

This is literally true since the committees currently meeting in every
county haven't come up with anything resembling a final plan. "The
only thing that will be the same is the number of very badly addicted
people" who need help, she says. Coady explains that many of those
diverted to Drug Court are very poor, some of them homeless, many of
them addicted "for many, many years." What's sad, she says, is that
Drug Court really seemed to be making progress in treating people,
even those with very long-term addictions.

"Very few seriously addicted people get into treatment without an
intervention," Coady explains. "Most have to be coerced.

With middle-class people, that [intervention] happens with their
families.

They might hire someone to do an intervention or their spouse will
say, 'I'm out of here.' Or they have an enlightened employer who will
say, 'Look, you've got a drinking problem.

If you want to keep your job, get treatment and we'll pay for it.' But
intervention with poor people is done in the courtroom."

Coady was the spearhead behind Berkeley's Drug Court, which began in
1996. "I went to the judges and said, 'I want to volunteer,' and we
started the Drug Court and Options Plus." She says that her opinion
about the best way to fight addiction has changed during her years at
Options Plus. "At first I wanted to get everybody out of jail and into
a treatment program.

Then I began to see some interesting things.

They'd be out of the treatment program and back into jail within a
week." Coady tells about one man who was given sixty days in jail
after he fell off the program; he said it was the first time he'd
learned anything. "I've dealt with a lot of people who we were getting
nowhere with and then they do a few weeks of the program in jail. When
they get released, they come in here and say. 'Okay, I'm ready for
treatment now. I'm not court-ordered, but I'm ready.'"

Coady is eloquent when describing the invisible costs of addiction.
"I've never seen a battered child where alcohol and drugs haven't been
involved--ever--and it's just ignored.

We know that 93 percent of domestic violence involves alcohol, and
that gets ignored."

(Please see part 2 http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n128/a04.html )