ANOTHER CHANCE: HOLDING OUT HOPE

City Juvenile Drug Court Helps Offenders Help Themselves

Fabian Dixon rubs his palm around and around, feeling his close-cropped
hair and thinking about the rest of the day. He needs a haircut.

And a job.

And a place to live. The Salvation Army is fine for a few days but not for
long term.

He needs to buy a birthday present for his baby girl, Ayana. She'll be 1 soon.

And he needs to stay away from the weed and pills.

Fabian, 18, is a third-generation drug addict.

His parents have spent years in prison, and his grandmother is doing time.

It was no surprise, then, that he started dealing and using when he was a
young teenager.

He has burned through three chances to get his life on track.

This is his last opportunity. If he fails again, he'll do time - a year,
possibly more.

"I'm tired of going to jails, institutions, group homes," he said, as he
rubbed his head again. "I have a daughter to support. If I mess up again,
I'm going to jail and I won't see her. I've hit rock bottom."

It's early March, and Fabian is trying to pull himself up with the help of
Richmond's juvenile drug court, an innovative program that integrates drug
treatment, counseling, education and public safety.

He is one of a handful of teenagers with substance-abuse problems who are
selected by the drug court team to work through their addictions in lieu of
being locked up. If they graduate from the program, they can move on with
their lives. If not, they face incarceration in a juvenile correctional center.

Last month, Fabian started his fourth and final go-round at drug court.
This time, he thinks he can succeed.

Because for the first time in his life, he realizes he has people who care
about him.

But those people aren't his parents. Or his grandmother.

They're the counselors and clinicians at drug court.

"They care about me. I want to do the right thing, not just because of me,
but because they've been supportive of me," he said. "I want to show them I
can do right."

Fabian Dixon was born in Danville to a drug-addicted mother of four.

At 6, he went to live with his aunt when his mother's drug addiction made
it too difficult for her to keep the kids. His siblings went to other
families or were adopted.

Several times, his mother thought she had her life in order, and she
reclaimed Fabian.

"I was happy because I was with my mom. She had her act together for a long
time," he said.

But she returned to drugs again and again, and Fabian always was sent away.
Once, he went to his grandmother's house. She, too, used drugs and often
left him home alone.

Fabian felt most comfortable with his aunt because there was a man in the
house - his uncle - and no one was using drugs. And for once in his life,
he had some parenting, some discipline.

"I wanted to stay there, but I didn't want to follow the rules," he said.

Fabian started breaking into homes, stealing things, smoking marijuana and
getting drunk.

"I used to stay away from the house for a long time," he said. "And I
started catching serious charges."

For all of his teenage years, he was in and out of group homes and
detention centers. All he wanted, he said, was to live with his mother.

In 2000, he saw her for the first time in two years.

"She was high on crack," he said. "It hurt me."

The two rented a room in a house on Chamberlayne Avenue. He worked at
McDonald's, and she worked, and they saved enough money for an apartment.

"Everything was going so good. That's how I got introduced to Percocet," a
highly addictive prescription painkiller.

At 16, Fabian had a routine. He smoked weed every day, and he popped
painkillers, too. On special occasions, or when the money was rolling in
from crack deals, he laced his marijuana with cocaine.

He assaulted a girl, but she dropped the charges. He bought stolen clothes
from a neighbor. He sold drugs.

And he finally wound up in Richmond's drug court last March after he tried
to steal a woman's purse - while he was as high as a kite.

"Fabian really is a kid who's been thrown away by society," said Nancy
Bacot, the drug court's coordinator.

It's 3 p.m. on a Thursday.

Their friends are hanging out on the corner, shooting hoops, smoking weed,
getting drunk.

Seven young black men sit side by side in Judge Kimberly B. O'Donnell's
courtroom in the Oliver Hill Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court
building.

They are wearing dress slacks and ties. A few play with their braids. One
mother motions for her son to pull up his pants.

O'Donnell enters.

Rather than taking her seat behind the bench, she circles it and steps down
in front of the boys.

"How is everyone today?" she asks.

O'Donnell, a tall woman with warm, blue eyes, calls each youth up and asks
about his week.

"I heard you went to all your meetings this week. Good for you," she tells one.

"Your urine was clean this week, right? Great," she tells another.

She hugs everyone. O'Donnell said she uses that physical closeness to
connect on a personal level with each young man.

"What a judge has to have to do this is authenticity. That's just who I am.
I'm a very physical person, and I'm a very compassionate person, and I show
that," she said.

The boys like O'Donnell.

"She's fair," Fabian said.

The program couldn't work without O'Donnell's commitment.

"She is absolutely passionate about what she does," Bacot said. "That
caring comes across to these kids. Sometimes, they are not working for
themselves. They are working because they don't want to let the judge down
or the staff down."

O'Donnell's hands-on approach wins her points.

"You can't be phony with kids. They absolutely know who's gaming them and
who's in their corner," she said. "We don't always see eye-to-eye with
them, and they don't like being punished for their bad behavior, but
there's no doubt in my mind that after the first month, these kids know we
care."

O'Donnell schedules the drug court work in her spare time, and she doesn't
receive any compensation for it.

"It's one of the most rewarding things that I do, and it's by far the most
difficult thing I do every week," she said. "Every Thursday, when we sit
together as a team, I am brutally reminded of how complicated the lives of
these kids are."

Overwhelmingly, it's a program of young, black teenage males. Only one girl
and one or two white boys have participated.

Drug court operates on about $340,000 a year, a mix of state and local
funding that covers salaries of Bacot; two full-time substance-abuse
clinicians from Richmond Behavioral Health Authority; a full-time community
service monitor; and a few other expenses.

The program costs about $13,500 per youth, and most of them complete the
program in a year. There are 16 spots available, and 11 are full right now.
Seven boys are being assessed.

Nancy Ross, director of juvenile justice services for the city, oversees
the drug court program. She said it is important to know why teenagers
self-medicate.

"Substance abuse is so much in the fabric of many of our delinquent kids'
lives. They've got a lot of painful stuff to deal with," she said.

Before drug court every Thursday, the drug court team meets on Wednesdays
to discuss what to do next with each youth.

They have a difficult task.

Work isn't 9-to-5. They work long hours and have to be on call late at
night. They make home visits. They take the boys out to lunch, sometimes at
their own expense.

And rarely do they see a big payout for all their efforts.

"Sometimes we're planting a seed now. There's not a lot of immediate
gratification for the staff," Bacot said.

Marisa Harris is Fabian's case manager.

"I grew up in foster care, so I've always wanted to help kids. Working with
Fabian is a challenge at times, but it is rewarding to see him grow. It's
like therapy for myself to see what he goes through."

The biggest challenge for Fabian, she said, is getting him to live through
situations, rather than using drugs to avoid them.

"When something happens to him, he shuts down, shuts the world out, lays
around in pity," she said.

Fabian has a very low tolerance for frustration.

A few weeks ago, he walked off his new job at Burger King.

Then, he got high.

"One of the issues for our kids - and certainly for Fabian being
third-generation criminal family - is that they self-sabotage," Bacot said.

"These kids are coming to us with tremendous baggage. It's amazing that
most of them are not using hard-core drugs or haven't gotten involved in
serious delinquency."

Drug use kept him from getting a janitorial job at VCU Medical Center. The
drug court test showed he was clean, but a test performed by the hospital
was positive for marijuana.

Still, Fabian continues to attend all his meetings and is looking for work.

He was living at the Salvation Army for a few weeks, then with his baby's
mother and grandmother. Now, he's between friends and family and may get
some housing assistance from the Department of Social Services.

He has enrolled in school because he wants to earn his GED.

"I want to put myself in a situation where I can take my daughter away from
all of this craziness," he said. His girlfriend is expecting their second
child later this year.

For the most part, Fabian sees himself as a role model to the younger boys
in drug court, "especially for the ones who are still using all the time."

"I was just like them. I was too caught up in my own feelings and emotions.
I figured, 'Why should I care for people if no one cares for me?'" he said.
"Now I realize I've been doing the same thing to my daughter that my mom
and dad did to me. It was a reality check."

What drug court programs boil down to, O'Donnell said, is a chance for kids
like Fabian to change their lives.

"When I see what these kids have to deal with in their communities - being
shot at on the way home, dealing with grief because their friends are
murdered - I think, 'How do they survive? How do they do this on a daily
basis?'" she said.

"But in spite of the frustrations, I absolutely know that we're doing the
right thing, that as a juvenile court system, we are providing honest
opportunity for change for these kids."

Some turn around. Some don't. One who got a chance to change was Peytron
Johnson. He participated in drug court last year but withdrew.

He was the city's first homicide victim this year.

But O'Donnell is optimistic about Fabian.

Last year, when he disappeared from the program for a while, she worried
that he was lost for good. He wanted to serve his jail time and not deal
with his substance abuse and other issues.

"He really picked himself up and learned how to handle mistakes and move
on," she said. "Fabian knows now where his support systems are and how to
reach out to them. I am very, very hopeful for him."