COURTING ADDICTION

Drug Court Gives Addicted Felons One Last Chance--And They're Making Good
Use Of It

Outside Courtroom One of the Butte County Courthouse in Oroville, a group
of people gather on benches to await their day in Drug Court. As they talk
among themselves, the sense of an unspoken bond emerges--all of them are
addicts, criminals, substance abusers. All of them have been caught and
convicted. All know that if they screw up this time, as they typically have
so many times before, their lives will be handed over to the Department of
Corrections, and they may never get them back. You can spot the newcomers
right away. They look curious and out of place. Some seem cocky, perhaps
thinking that they have fooled the system, that they have landed a free and
easy ride out of the joint.

The ones who have stuck with the program know better. They smile and joke
with each other, talking about all the hoops they have had to jump through,
the friends they have lost, the wild times lurking attractively in their
memories, calling out to them every time something goes wrong or
right--memories that beckon the addict to pick up the needle, pipe or straw
just once more for old time's sake.

For the participants in Drug Court, life isn't easy. While these nonviolent
drug offenders are getting a second chance, they will have to put out their
maximum effort to make it work. Many began using drugs and alcohol so long
ago, they barely remember sobriety. They cluster together outside court,
sharing tips on programs, anecdotes about their feared and favorite
authorities, their meetings and steps. In this place, this final detour
from prison, they are all in various stages of finding their way.

But the story behind Drug Court is much bigger than the battle for
self-control that these addicts are facing. The approach Butte County has
taken in dealing with substance-addicted criminals may be nothing short of
a revolution in criminal justice, a revolution that the Butte County Drug
Court team wants to spread to every court system in the country. If it
works here, they argue, it can work anywhere.

For Tricia Nuki, Drug Court was literally a lifesaver. Less than two years
ago, she was homeless, Dumpster diving, high on speed, and had a warrant
out for her arrest when she was picked up by Chico police. A teenage
alcoholic who went on to become an intravenous meth addict, Nuki had been
in and out of jail for various hustles related to her addiction. This time,
she was facing serious prison time. Her family had tired of her bad
decisions and had all but given up on her. Her only friends were fellow
users. The law was breathing down her neck. When she landed in Drug Court,
observed a bailiff, "she was tore up."

"I was ready to take my own life," Nuki said. "I was out there on the
streets, I knew I was wanted [by the police], and the drugs weren't working
any more. I didn't know where else to turn. I didn't want to be here any
more, just wanted to check out."

Even once she had started the program, many thought she wouldn't get
through it.

"We almost gave up on Tricia Nuki, but there was something about [her], a
flicker of hope," announced Butte County Superior Court Judge Darrell
Stevens at Nuki's graduation two weeks ago. Standing with his arm around
the clean and sober, gainfully employed, eight-months-pregnant and
soon-to-be married Nuki, Judge Stevens beamed with a fatherly pride, gently
chiding those who had been ready to let her slip through the cracks.

"Today is a great day for me," Stevens said. "I get to say, "I told you so."

Stevens, perhaps the main driving force behind Butte County's enormously
successful experiment with "collaborative" or "treatment" courts, has
earned the privilege of issuing a lot of "I told you so"s. In the eight
years drug court has been in existence in Butte County, it has graduated
more than 450 addicts, saving most of them from lengthy prison stays. But
more than that, it has proven that the criminal-justice system works better
when the courts temper punishment with research and compassion.

The premise is simple: Forcing drug addicts to give up the lifestyle that
has turned them into criminals saves not only the lives of the addicts; it
also saves society the cost of their addiction. If the court can find a way
to address the reasons people commit crimes in the first place, it can stop
them from committing more crimes, thereby saving countless lives and
taxpayer dollars in the process. It sounds to many like a "touchy-feely"
approach, but as drug courts continue to crop up all over the country, the
number of its detractors is in decline.

The fact is, whereas traditional criminal courts often fail to rehabilitate
people, the drug court model actually works, and the numbers don't lie. A
third of all felony convictions in state courts are drug offenders. In
federal courts, the percentage is even higher. Most of those convicted will
serve about a year in jail or prison, and most will return to jail or
prison within a few years of their release. The United States currently has
almost 7 million people under some form of criminal supervision and is
spending some $50 billion a year to keep criminals locked up and fed--an
expenditure that rises almost every year. Only the tiniest fraction of that
money goes to stopping the vicious cycle that keeps criminals in the system.

Drug courts, on the other hand, take people out of the system. According to
a recent report, Butte County alone (once it makes up certain
implementation costs) stands to save $1 million a year for every 100 Drug
Court participants it graduates. While Drug Court is more expensive to run
than regular court, it saves money in public health and safety, jail beds,
probation, law enforcement and other costs related to addiction.

Judge Stevens, who presides over the court, at first seems an unlikely
person to have been an early supporter of drug courts. Known throughout
county government as a staunch conservative, Stevens said it wasn't easy to
make the switch from being tough on crime to being "smart on crime." Having
been a judge for 12 years, he spent the first four years of his tenure in
criminal proceedings, where he developed a reputation as the "just do it"
judge for his impatience in dealing with the excuses of both his defendants
and his bureaucratic colleagues.

But somewhere along the line, Stevens became convinced that something was
wrong with the court system. 'We kept seeing the same people, over and over
again," he said. 'It was this revolving door. It wasn't working."

Many of the defendants he saw were obviously self-medicating themselves to
avoid facing their problems. Stevens developed a nagging feeling that many
of the people he sent to prison might have been better served had they been
given the tools to deal with the issues that had got them into trouble in
the first place.

"Addiction is a horrible disease," he said. "Just like you cannot deal with
diabetes or pneumonia without treatment, you can not deal with addiction
without treatment."

Realizing the need for a different approach, Stevens looked into the ways
other court systems had tried to deal with addicts. The first drug courts
began to appear in the Miami area in 1989. The experiment spread to
California in 1995, when Oakland first began providing treatment for
drug-addicted criminals. Studying the flaws and successes of those
programs, Stevens sought to discern the fine line between coddling addicts
and helping them. His reputation as a tough judge helped him sell the idea
to the county.

"Here they have an opportunity to be praised and receive recognition for
what they do right. Many have never had any praise from authority figures
before," Stevens said. "One of the best incentives for them is to see that
person in the black robe smiling at them. If you ask [participants] what
the worst thing about Drug Court is, it's not going to jail but
disappointing the [Drug Court] team."

One of the more unsung heroes of Butte County's Drug Court is Public
Defender Steven Trenholme. A fervent believer in the collaborative-court
approach, Trenholme lets his clients know right off the bat that he is
there to help them, but if they really want to get better, they're going to
have to help themselves.

"I try to establish a different kind of relationship with clients,"
Trenholme said. "I'm not doing the traditional public defender thing here,
Helen [Harberts] isn't doing the traditional D.A. thing here, the judge
isn't doing the traditional judge thing."

When Trenholme first meets with clients, he lends them a well-worn copy of
Alcoholics Anonymous and goes over the 12 steps with them. He tells them
that if they succumb to the urge to drink or use drugs, they need to 'fess
up immediately if they want to stay out of jail.

"I tell them, 'If you lie to me, or you lie to your parole officer, I can't
help you.' It turns out to be a great defense. If you're honest and you
stay clean, Judge Stevens won't send you to jail."

As with the other team members, Trenholme has had to retrain himself to
think less like a legal pit bull and more like a court-appointed caregiver.
He, like Harberts and Stevens, travels extensively to teach other attorneys
how to be part of a drug court team. A quiet man with a calm demeanor,
Trenholme turns positively evangelistic when he talks about the enormous
potential he sees in collaborative courts.

"Is it a revolution? Absolutely. As more judges begin to understand it and
begin to see the potential in it, this model will mushroom and spread to
the benefit of society. All you have to do is sit and watch--you can tell
the difference right off."

Trenholme is right on both counts. There are now 1,200-1,400 collaborative
courts in the United States. But one need only to visit the far end of the
Butte County Courthouse to see the results.

In Courtroom Two, where criminal cases are being tried, the defendants show
up in street or jail clothes to stand before a humorless judge who peers
down at the accused with a withering glare. Defendants invariably look
sick, defiant or confused. Having spent only a few minutes with a public
defender, most have only the slightest involvement with their defense.
Outside the courtroom, families of the convicted sob and hold each other,
knowing that the next time they see their loved one it will be behind
reinforced glass at a facility where criminals are basically warehoused
with other criminals until the day they are set loose, often with no money,
no job prospects, no supervision--worse or at least no better off than when
they were sent away.

Next door at Drug Court, the contrast is almost unbelievable. Instead of
families broken apart, they are smiling, hugging, being reunited. Bailiffs
are helping defendants--tellingly called "participants" in drug court--tie
their ties. Everyone is talking about how the court is transforming their
lives.

"My life is totally changed," said Nuki. "It's really about being
conscientious. I'm not as selfish as I used to be. I'm more responsible. I
have my family back in my life."

As Nuki puts it, "I'm not a bad person trying to be good; I'm a sick person
trying to get better."