IN DRUG COURTS, JUDGES PRACTICE THEIR OWN VERSION OF JUSTICE - AND "TREATMENT"

Drug Courts Must Be Standardized, They Must Be Held Accountable and
They Must Not Be Our Primary Policy Approach to Drug Use and Addiction.

In Glynn County Georgia, reports the popular radio show This American
Life this week, Lindsey Dills is the victim of horrifying injustice
in the name of drug treatment. For forging two checks on her parents'
checking account when she was 17, one for $40 and one for $60, Ms.
Dills ended up in that county's drug court for five and a half years,
including a total of 14 months behind bars and then, when she was
finally kicked out of drug court, she faced another five-year
sentence for the original offense, including six months in state
prison. In other Georgia counties and in other states, the penalty
for this first-time, low-level offense would have been a term of
probation and/or drug treatment.

Ms. Dills' harrowing journey includes a lengthy stay in solitary
confinement, being denied access to prescribed anti-depression
medication and a suicide attempt. When she entered Glynn County drug
court, Ms. Dills had no idea that she was entering a Kafkaesque world
in which she had virtually no rights, was subject to the whims of a
single dangerous judge and would end up losing years of her life in a
dark, unexamined corner of the American criminal justice system.

Superior Court Judge Amanda Williams, who runs the Glynn County drug
court, thought she was running her drug court according to national
standards. The National Association of Drug Court Professionals
(NADCP) says she's got it all wrong. Judge Williams' drug court may
be unique. But, according to a new report by the Drug Policy
Alliance, drug courts across the country exhibit similar (though ,
one hopes, less extreme) problems.

How is it that Judge Williams is free to steal a decade of Ms. Dills'
life, wreak similar havoc in the lives of so many others and remain
on the bench? The fact is that, in drug courts across the country,
the judge is king and doctor.

The NADCP works to educate judges and other court personnel about
addiction, to urge drug courts to focus on people with a history of
law-breaking that is linked to a drug problem (rather than people
facing a first-time drug charge), and to emphasize that incarceration
does not "treat" addiction. Like other industry groups, it also
serves to promote drug courts through public relations campaigns and
to secure increases in federal funding for the programs. The NADCP
has no authority over the nation's more than 2,000 drug courts and,
as a spokesperson tells This American Life, the group is aware of at
least 150 drug courts that do not operate according to the best
practices it promotes.

The Drug Policy Alliance is concerned that the number of drug courts
whose practices may actually increase the criminal justice
involvement of people struggling with drugs as well as of people who
do not have a drug problem but are convicted of a drug law violation
may be far greater.

Drug courts are locally developed and locally run. In them, judges
have near complete freedom to choose who to accept, what kind of
treatment to mandate, who to incarcerate and for how long and when to
deem a participant a "success" or "failure." They lack national
standards and, worse, are not accountable to any authority.

Despite the NADCP's recommendation that drug courts focus on cases
involving people who have lengthy criminal histories and who actually
have a drug problem, for example, a national survey found that
roughly half of drug courts exclude people on probation or parole or
with another open criminal case, 49 percent actually exclude people
with prior treatment history and almost 69 percent exclude those with
both a drug and a mental health condition.