POLITICAL NOTEBOOK: DRUG COURT CLASSES SET GRADS FREE

There was an abundance of thanks given to God on Thursday, and to a judge
and prosecutors and counselors.

Five proud drug court program graduates stood in front of the
Charlottesville Circuit Court bench and spoke of how Judge Ted Hogshire's
program had freed them from a modern form of slavery.

Their slave master in most cases was cocaine, in some cocaine plus alcohol.

For one year or more now, the five graduates of the drug court program have
been free of their slave master. Their gratitude was unmistakable and moving.

"Addiction is like slavery," said Raymond Eugene Shipman, who called the
program his underground railroad to freedom.

"I thank God for this program being here," Shipman told a crowded courtroom
full of supportive faces. "I've been very fortunate." He called his arrest
on a cocaine charge and placement in the program a blessing in disguise.

New leaf

Gainfully employed and drug-free for the past year, he is preparing to pick
up a college degree in the spring.

The Rev. Bruce A. Beard was Thursday's graduation speaker and called the
drug court "an exciting program, a good program."

Beard, who is pastor of First Baptist Church on West Main Street, said he
has never heard a child say "I want to be a crack addict when I grow up,"
and yet he has seen young people slip away voluntarily into slavery to cocaine.

"Something happens between the time they want to be an astronaut, a judge
and the time they end up an alcoholic, a prostitute, a crack addict," Beard
said. Some people call these bright young people useless and stupid, he
said, and if they start calling themselves useless and stupid they become
useless and stupid. If they think of themselves as having integrity and a
future, they do.

When they are freed of slavery to cocaine, then God is not just setting
them free but is also setting free everyone they come in contact with and
freeing the neighborhoods in which they live and interact, Beard said.

He urged the friends and families of the graduates to help them if they see
one slip back toward cocaine, "and let them know that this is not why they
were put on this planet."

Hogshire, who received thanks from Shipman and other graduates of his drug
court program, called them "five bright lights."

Unsung heroes

"You folks are our heroes," Hogshire said of the 73rd through 77th
graduates of the Charlottesville program in the past five years. "Instead
of being five addicts, we've now got five people in positive recovery."

After the hourlong ceremony, Hogshire said he is saddened and dismayed to
have learned in recent days that state officials are planning to cut out
funding for the successful program.

"It's a real shame because this is one of the few things we have that
actually works," the judge said.

The program's numbers tend to bear this out. While about 50 percent of the
state's drug offenders wind up back in court with a felony conviction, only
nine of the local program's first 72 graduates have been back in court for
a felony.

Faced with a nearly $2 billion budget shortfall, Gov. Mark R. Warner is
expected to slash funding for drug court programs because they are
relatively recent additions to the state budget and do not operate
statewide, Charlottesville officials said.

"It's shortsighted to cut it," said Dave Chapman, Charlottesville's
commonwealth's attorney. "They are looking for cash that can be cut and no
further than that."

Not only is drug court a cost-effective program, but cutting it will cost
the state more money to incarcerate inmates who could better be helped by
the program, he said.

"If they cut this out, we are going to have to pay substantially more" to
incarcerate more people, said Thomas von Hemert, criminal justice planner
for the Charlottesville area.

"With this program, they have to be working, paying their child support,"
he said. "None of that happens when they are in jail."

Hogshire and others are working to create a community group that will seek
public and private funding to keep the drug court program alive.

The judge said Chesterfield County also has an effective drug court program
and Charlottesville may follow the lead of that community in establishing a
tax-exempt corporation to seek funds.

Saving the program "is a real no-brainer," Hogshire said, because without
the program, local jails and prisons "are going to start filling up."

Incarceration costs more than $20,000 a year, whereas the drug court offers
far more treatment for $3,000 to $5,000 per person, von Hemert said.

Of course, drug courts would be but one of dozens of state social service,
mental health and rehabilitation programs to be hard hit next month by deep
budget cuts.

Patricia Smith, longtime director of Offender Aid and Restoration in
Charlottesville, said the next round of state budget cuts will hit her
agency very hard, perhaps wiping out 25 percent of its state funding.

She will be going to local governments for support and many programs will
join the drug court advocates in seeking money from foundations and
individuals as well.

"The government is going to be competing for private sector donors for
contributions to meet its responsibilities," Chapman said. "There are going
to be people who are going to give to this [drug court program], but it's
going to be at the expense of something else" that will not get private
charitable donations.

Von Hemert said the local drug court receives $237,500 to operate, with the
majority allocated to treatment and supervision. OAR gets $71,564, which
includes $15,000 for extensive drug testing for court programs. The Region
Ten Community Services Board gets $123,617.

Saving a few dollars by slashing drug court funding "is penny-wise and
pound foolish," Hogshire said. Then he thought a moment and said, "It's not
even penny-wise. It's absurd."