DRUG COURT'S SUCCESS STORY IS PRICELESS

Accounting 101 teaches us that stocks are assets and taxes are liabilities.
But it's not always that simple.

This week, for instance, I visited an Oakland County courtroom where my tax
dollars are returning dividends bigger than anything my pathetic investment
portfolio has generated in years.

And although it would be premature to make long-term projections, the
county's year-old treatment court for substance-abusing felons is beginning
to look like one of this century's shrewder investments.

The Adult Treatment Court in Pontiac gives habitual nonviolent felons facing
jail or prison time the option to participate in an intensive, yearlong
treatment program.

Participants typically spend their first 90 days in a residential treatment
facility. Those who remain clean and sober are permitted to move on to
intensive outpatient treatment and full-time employment.

A World Of Criminal Trouble

These are not young adults who were caught with a few joints in their shirt
pockets. These are grown men and women whose stubborn addictions have
already landed them in a world of criminal trouble. Most are crowding middle
age, and many have lost their driver's licenses, their jobs or their
families by the time they enter the treatment court program.

The soul of the program is a five-member core team composed of Oakland
County Visiting Drug Judge David Breck, probation officer John Lampman,
Assistant Prosecutor Gerry Gleeson, veteran criminal defense attorney Diana
Bare and treatment court coordinator Ellen Zehnder.

Treatment court participants discuss their progress during mandatory court
appearances every two weeks. Dirty urine tests and other violations, such as
failing to appear in court or attend counseling sessions, subject
backsliding offenders to sanctions ranging from a short jail term to
expulsion from the program.

In the treatment court's first year, 10 of the 37 offenders invited to
participate have been expelled and had their original jail or prison
sentences reinstated. Many others have been sanctioned for relapsing.

But substance abuse experts know that even those most determined to beat
their addictions typically stumble on the road to recovery, so most
relapsers are sent back to the starting linerepeatedly before they are
banished from treatment altogether.

First 2 Men Complete Program

Wednesday, as most of the 25 offenders still progressing through earlier
stages of the program looked on hopefully, the treatment court recognized
the first two men to complete the program.

Gregory -- I have chosen to honor the custom, common to most recovery
groups, of dispensing with last names -- is a 45-year-old truck driver who
began drinking when he was 8 years old. He completed the 52-week program
without a relapse and is credited with helping other addicts remain in
treatment.

Alex has been clean and sober since Sept. 11, 2001 -- "the day all the
trouble started, and the day my own trouble ended." Now a middle-aged
waiter, he accepted his graduation certificate as his aging father looked
on. The older man looked as if someone had just hoisted a Greyhound bus off
his chest.

About two-thirds of the addicts paroled from prison are back behind bars
within three years of their release. If Gregory and Alex persevere in their
sobriety, every taxpayer will share their victory.

Their lives. Our money.