BEYOND REHABILITATION?

Treatment is "kind of like being nagged into going to church: They get
some good out of it, even if it wasn't their idea."

He may have been arrested repeatedly for DUI.

He may be among the two out of five drunk drivers who have chronic
drinking problems.

A state-ordered evaluation may recommend aggressive
treatment.

But he doesn't have to seek the treatment, and Oklahoma courts are
reluctant to order it.

"If we can identify them the first time around, why wait . . . to get
treatment?" asked Paul Inbody, executive director of Human Skills and
Resources Inc., a DUI school in Tulsa that offers out-[ 4] patient
therapy and counseling.

"You have got to break that cycle" of behavior, he
said.

A World review of more than 10 years of DUI cases from Tulsa, Oklahoma
and Cleveland counties suggests that court-ordered substance-abuse
treatment is the exception, not the rule.

``It doesn't happen,'' Tulsa Special Judge Rick Clarke
said.

For example, out of more than 50,000 drinking and driving cases in
those three counties since 1988, court records indicated that fewer
than 1,500 offenders were ordered by courts into treatment programs.

Ordering treatment requires judges and the courts to conduct follow-up
reviews on the defendant, a time-consuming process in light of such
crowded dockets, experts note.

In Tulsa District Court, caseloads run close to 3,000 cases annually
and prevent such extra review, Clarke said.

``It's a simple lack of resources. I can't spend all my time being a
probation officer,'' he said.

A 1995 statewide ``Impaired Driving Assessment'' was
critical:

``The treatment community felt frustrated that offenders with
substance-abuse problems were not being mandated to receive
treatment,'' the assessment reported.

Before sentencing, offenders who are found guilty of drinking and
driving must undergo an alcohol education course and an alcohol
assessment at a state-sanctioned facility, such as Inbody's.

After the assessment, a certificate of evaluation is sent to the
Department of Public Safety, which requires proof of it to reinstate
driving privileges.

Assessment findings are sent to the corresponding court ``for the
purpose of assisting the court in its final sentencing
determination,'' the law states.

But this is the exception in many if not most courts.

For example, Special Judge Russell Hall of the Oklahoma County
District Court said assessments are ordered at sentencing, and he
usually never sees them.

"I know it's supposed to be prior (to sentencing), but that's not how
it happens," Hall, who handles Oklahoma County DUI cases, said.

Hall said he sometimes orders treatment, but "I prefer
punishment."

Assessments that identify abuse problems may recommend from 72 hours
of outpatient treatment to 30 days of inpatient treatment, Inbody said.

``A good assessment doesn't just say he is or isn't an alcoholic.
There are levels of severity,'' he said.

But nothing more is required of the offender unless it's by a
judge.

"In Oklahoma, you have to wonder why we make people get assessments if
they are not going to do anything with it but prove they had one
done," said Dennis Lewelling of the state Department of Mental Health,
which oversees the DUI schools and assessments.

The small number of offenders who are sent to prison are treated only
when and if space opens in the already-crowded prison substance-abuse
programs, prison officials said.

It's not uncommon for drunk drivers to be freed from prison without
treatment even if an assessment recommends it, because offenders often
complete their sentence before space in such programs becomes
available, officials said.

The cost of treatment can also be an issue. Insurance companies rarely
pay for more than five days of inpatient treatment, and state funding
is limited, officials said.

At House of Hope, a nonprofit treatment center in Grove, treatment is
based on the 12-step programs embraced and developed by Alcoholics
Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous.

Success rates are hard to determine. The center's studies found that
37 percent of clients are clean and sober and staying out of trouble
with the law some time later, director George Pilkinton said.

But he doubted the accuracy of the phone surveys, noting a 6 percent
or 7 percent margin of error.

Pilkinton also said that fewer than 3 percent of those who come to his
facility believe that they have a problem.

Lewelling said that in general there is cynicism about treatment's
effectiveness. "A lot of people . . . have heard about people who have
been through treatment 10 times," he said.

Other states, such as Arkansas, require treatment of DUI offenders as
prerequisites to having their driving privileges returned, Inbody said.

Some counties with lighter caseloads, such as Washington, Osage and
Rogers counties, make treatment a part of the sentencing if the
assessment calls for it.

"We take that assessment, and if it says treatment, you go do
treatment," Osage County District Attorney Larry Stuart said.

Other counties, such as Craig and Creek, are turning to fledgling drug
courts as a way to handle chronic drunk drivers.

Drug courts require that the offender have no prior violent felonies.
They force defendants into treatment if it is needed and require them
to return to court every two weeks. The trade-off is that criminal
charges may be dismissed entirely.

``Simply sending someone to prison for six years, for instance, would
not necessarily get rid of the problem,'' Creek County District
Attorney Max Cook said.

Inbody agreed: "It's kind of like being nagged into going to church:
They get some good out of it, even if it wasn't their idea."

Checked-by: Rich O'Grady