REHABILITATION METHOD POPULAR ACROSS COUNTRY

National research is split on the effectiveness of drug courts such as the
one that has recently been established in Grant County.

While many criminal justice experts believe the concept of restorative
justice is sound, the execution of such ideas of rehabilitation over
punishment is where debate still exists.

The best drug court programs are the ones where different segments of the
community are on the same page and willing to work toward a common goal,
said Professor John Goldkamp, chair of the criminal justice department at
Temple University, Philadelphia, and a longtime researcher of drug courts.

"You need to full support of judicial leadership, No. 1," he said. "No. 2,
you need really close collegial collaboration between the courts and
related agencies, including prosecutors, defenders and treatment agencies.
Not lip service, or polite support, but an actual good working
relationship. You need a focus on the role of drugs in criminal behavior,
and how thinking about addressing drug addiction should improve behavior.
If those things can come together, we see some really effective drug courts."

In Grant County, members of the drug court planning team have long been
trumpeting the cooperation of local agencies, including the prosecutor's
office, the probation department and Cornerstone Behavioral Health Center.

"We have all come here to assist individuals to make a change," said Paul
Kuczora, CEO of Cornerstone. "Our jails are overcrowded, and incarceration,
in and of itself, doesn't make that much of a difference."

The first drug court was implemented in 1989 in Miami by Judge Herbert M.
Klein. That court became a model program for the nation, and more than a
thousand drug courts are now in existence.

Doug McVay, the research director for Lancaster, Pa.-based research center
Common Sense for Drug Policy, said common concerns surrounding drug courts
are the resources that are diverted to those programs and possibly away
from other services, and the perception that the programs coddle offenders
and don't give them harsh enough punishments for committing a crime.

"Many people feel that they must be punished. Just because it's an
addiction crime doesn't matter - if they commit a crime, that's the end of
the story," he said. "It's understandable in some respects. It's a very
law-and-order, if you do the crime, you do the time, approach. But it's
really short sighted. It ignores what happens when they come out of prison."

Although drug courts have been around for 15 years, the relatively recent
explosion of the concept means there aren't a lot of statistics to prove
that they're working, McVay said.

But the shift to the rehabilitative concept of justice isn't one that's
going to vanish anytime soon, Goldkamp said.

"I was in it from the beginning. At the beginning, they said it was just a
passing fad, which is true of anything you don't try," he said.

"It looks like it has legs, and the ultimate question is going to be what
form will a drug court take? It has spawned a lot of related innovations.
It's changed as the judiciary has thought about a problem-solving approach.
The concept is a good one."