New Court Lets Drug Addicts Choose Treatment Program Instead of Jail
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/nydrug.html

By CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

In a chill November day in Brooklyn, Bonnie Hussey tried to
finance her craving for cocaine by selling crack to an undercover
police officer.

Within hours, Ms. Hussey was standing, handcuffed and disheveled,
before Judge Jo Ann Ferdinand. The judge gave her a stark choice: Stand
trial and risk a stretch in prison, or plead guilty and enter a drug
treatment program.

Ms. Hussey, 25, is one of nearly 400 drug offenders, most of them
women, who have accepted the Brooklyn Treatment Court's alternative
to doing hard time inside New York's jammed prison system.

The program, which started last June, is the first in New York City, but
others have been started throughout the country and they are increasingly
viewed as a better way to salvage nonviolent addicts before they harden
into predatory criminals.

Without the court's intervention, Ms. Hussey might have been in prison
for a year without being treated for her addiction.

Six months later, Ms. Hussey recalled her arrest without bitterness. "It
sounds funny," she said, "but I'm glad I sold drugs that day to the
undercover cop. I know I had a problem, but when people sell drugs
they're in denial, and I was really in denial."

Drug courts work on the assumption that it makes more sense to save
scarce prison cells for bigtime drug traffickers and divert the addicts into
cheaper, more productive treatment programs.

"It's such an interesting idea that you say, 'Why didn't I think of that?'"
said Judge Ferdinand, who presides over the Brooklyn Treatment Court,
on the ninth floor of the Brooklyn Supreme Court Building.

Not everybody can get into the program. The Brooklyn court is so new
that it can accommodate only defendants arrested in roughly half of the
borough, and they must be drug abusers with no history of violence.

Most officials are not concerned that drug addicts are given priority.

"We can't forget the fact that these people were arrested for felonies,"
Erica Perel, an assistant district attorney, said. "They didn't come in
because they wanted treatment. They came here in handcuffs."

Once in treatment, participants are closely watched. If they use drugs or
fail to keep treatment or court appointments, they face graduated
penalties, from a day in the jury box watching what happens to other
offenders to a return to a jail cell. But if they complete the treatment,
which can last up to two years, their criminal record is erased.

The offenders also receive counseling and health care that includes tests
for AIDS and tuberculosis.

Detailed histories of the defendants are compiled in the court's computer
system, giving Judge Ferdinand instant knowledge of the crimes for which
they were arrested, the severity of their addiction and every occasion
when they fail to appear in court or flunk a urine test.

"My goal is to have them understand that I know everything about them,"
the judge said during an interview in her chambers. "With each person,
you're trying to figure out what it will take to move them through the
recovery process, and what the court can do."

Since the first drug court opened in Miami in 1989, 47 states and Puerto
Rico have established drug courts or plan to do so. Judge Jeffrey Tauber,
president of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, said
200 drug courts had been set up across the country and that as many
more were planned.

The Clinton Administration has budgeted $75 million to support local
drug courts in the coming fiscal year.

"It's seen as a pragmatic, very realistic approach to a problem that is not
going to go away," said Judge Tauber, who started the drug court in
Oakland, Calif., in 1990. "No one wants to put less serious offenders in
custody when jail space is so expensive and so limited."

The concept, which New York State's Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye
supports, looks likely to be adopted in other boroughs. David
Bookstaver, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration for New
York State Courts, said the courts required cooperation from each
district attorney's office and the Legal Aid Society. "We're in the process
of speaking to each of them," Mr. Bookstaver said.

In New York, drug courts are also operating in Rochester, Buffalo,
Syracuse and Central Islip in Suffolk County.

California has no fewer than 51 drug courts.

Despite its relatively late start, the Brooklyn Treatment Court is expected
to become the nation's largest, thanks in large part to $5.5 million in
Federal funds over the next five years from the Center for Substance
Abuse Treatment and $1 million from the Justice Department.

Treating drug offenders instead of locking them up appeals to many
prosecutors and defense lawyers who are weary of coping daily with the
detritus of drug addiction. "As a criminal defense lawyer, you so
frequently feel that you're at one wreckage site after another," said Valerie
Raine, who set aside her own legal defense career to run the Brooklyn
court program. "Here there is a real sense that we are building a new way
that will treat people."

There have been some complaints that drug courts pressure defendants
into pleading guilty.

"It is coercive, no question about it," Ms. Raine said, "but my feeling is
the other systems haven't worked for anybody, not for the client nor the
community."

No offenders have yet completed the Brooklyn court program, but Ms.
Raine said that the latest figures on April 25 looked encouraging. Of
1,035 people brought to the court on felony charges, 433 were found
eligible for treatment. Of those, 342 were placed in treatment programs,
and 281 are still there. The 82 percent retention rate is dramatically higher
than for voluntary drug treatment programs.

Dr. Mitchell S. Rosenthal, the president of Phoenix House, the nation's
largest drug treatment program, said: "There is very solid data that
coercive treatment works. It makes an enormous amount of sense to treat
people who are intersecting with the criminal justice system."

Any notion that drug courts coddle criminals is dispelled once Judge
Ferdinand takes the bench. One recent morning, she dispatched a sullen
young man who kept smoking marijuana while in treatment to a jail cell on
Rikers Island for five days.

"Your choice is very simple," the judge snapped. "You can either spend
the next year in jail or you can get serious about keeping your side of the
agreement. Let me know Monday if you're serious about it."

And a crack addict who failed to show up at her mandated treatment
program was brought to court in handcuffs. Judge Ferdinand sent her,
too, to Rikers Island for a long weekend.

The system of graduated sanctions begins with making someone whose
urine showed traces of drugs sit in the jury box for a day, watching what
happens to other offenders who fail to behave. "They learn that their
lawyer is not going to talk the judge out of the consequences of their
actions," Judge Ferdinand explained.

Her stern demeanor melted into a smile when she complimented the
progress made by Rondel Ramsey, a jaunty young man in dreadlocks and
a baggy sweatshirt. "It made me feel good, like she really expected it of
me," Mr. Ramsey said later. But for the judge, he admitted, "I'd be selling
drugs."

When Ms. Hussey, a high school dropout who peddled crack to finance
her cravings for marijuana and cocaine, was offered treatment, she said,
"I took it as a joke these people are crazy."

But very soon, Ms. Hussey said, "I realized these people aren't playing. I
came up with a few dirty urines and I realized they were going to send me
to jail."

She has settled down in an outpatient program called Bridge Back to Life
and reconciled with her mother. Now she wants to earn her high school
equivalency diploma and go to college.

Ms. Hussey's progress was apparent in her styled dark hair and the crisp
dress that she wore to her latest court appearance. Judge Ferdinand said
that women especially take more pride in their grooming as they step
back from drug addiction.

"I hope it's an indication of what's happening inside," the judge said. "They
no longer look like someone you'd want to sit as far away from on the
subway."


Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company