REMEMBERING THE CASE LOAD IN DRUG COURT

"YOU were even right to send me to jail."

That is the last sentence in a letter I received from a woman on Sept. 21,
2004.

They are words that I never expected and that jolted me back to 1977 and
1978 and a 15-month grind in drug court.

Drug court 1978: A zoo exhibiting human wreckage of addiction and
trafficking; too small, poorly designed.

It often reeked of stale air and occasional clouds of cigarette smoke from
adjacent holding cells.

At times it resembled a night court in New York: crowded, grotesque,
incongruous. Addicts, traffickers, and their supporters coming and going or
sitting in the stun of narcotics. There were always a few police officers,
interpreters, Salvation Army, mental-patient and native court workers.

There were also regular court watchers and an endless stream of lawyers.

One after another in-custody defendants would slump out of the jail and
into the prisoner's dock, six feet away from me.

Their eyes were befuddled and beseeching, slack-jawed words tumbling a
constant refrain: "Please! Please let me out! I'm clean! I won't go back on
the street!"

If a lawyer spoke for them it was the same refrain.

Almost invariably my response was, "No bail. You're locked up until your
trial is over," or "No discharge, no suspended sentence, no fine. This time
you're going to jail."

Twenty-five years later I was transfixed by this woman's words. She wrote,
"I have read most of your book, but on this day I feel compelled to write
to you. I must tell you that you and I have met before.

"In 1978, two days before my 18th birthday, I stood before you in a
courtroom for possession of a narcotic, to wit heroin. I had been before
you once before for soliciting. You looked sternly down your nose and
stated to everyone in the courtroom 'You, young lady are on the wrong path
in life.' And then you sentenced me to some time in jail.

"Trust me - when I saw the ad for your book I had no idea that it was
written by the judge who sent me to jail. My God has a sense of humour. . . "

In 1977 and 1978 at least 1,500 young men and women stood before me for
guilty plea, preliminary inquiry or trial.

Again and again, I read this woman's letter, but my mind's eye and memory
failed me and I cannot single her out. She continued in her letter: "Today,
25 years later and a long way from Davie and Granville streets I work in
Skid Road trying to make a difference in the lives of people who are like I
once was. Though I must say that 2004 is a lot different than the '70s and
'80s. I would not survive out there if I had to do it again.

"Nothing is changing down here, sir. If anything it is getting worse.
Tweedledee and Tweedledum's big idea will never change anything. You are
right when you say that only money from the federal government will make a
change.

"If there had been a safe injection site when I was an addict I never would
have stopped using. The safe injection site is now the biggest enabler this
city has.

"Crime has gone up. It is worse now than it ever was. Illegal immigrants
rule our skid road. They still use young native girls to sell and hold
their drugs. People are getting beaten and sometimes murdered over $5.

"And you are right on another thing. Our justice system is too soft, too
lenient on criminals, criminals of any kind from drug dealers to murderers.

"Today, the governor general came for a little walk down here. I've never
seen so many police. But a few weeks ago I watched a young man being beaten
by another young man who was in psychosis. And where were the police then?
It seems to be about what you are rather than that you are a human.

"The way you view the city and the people who run it - you are so right.
You were even right to send me to jail."

I think that because of this woman and others like her, there is hope for
Skid Road and its suffering addicts. I met with this woman just before
Christmas. She is a special woman.