GIVE DRUG COURTS NEW LOOK

A revived role for drug courts should result from a recent study revealing
the historical effectiveness of these courts.

The study was made by the Judicial Council of California and the state
Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs. The Judicial Council is the
state's court administration and policy-making agency.

The drug court partnership program brings together on a regular,
coordinated and relatively seamless basis public and private agencies and
resources to deal with convicted drug offenders.

Specially trained judges and probation officers work with qualifying
defendants to seek both diversion from expensive incarceration and curing
the addiction -- with strict accountability for compliance by the defendant.

Drug courts have slipped from prominence since the November 2000 passage of
Proposition 36. The ballot initiative required diversion from prosecution
and jail for most low-level offenders.

Unless the drug use was part of a much greater crime, the act required
offenders to be given probation, treatment and, ultimately, have charges
dismissed for conviction of possession, use, transportation for personal
use, and being under the influence of controlled substances, even if such
charges were violation of previously imposed parole conditions.

The differences between the two approaches are control and selectivity. In
drug courts, judges always had the threat of immediate jail or prison to
deter participants from deviating from the program. In addition, not
everyone could qualify, and lapses of conditions of the program were not
mandated to be forgiven, as they partly are under Proposition 36.

Under Proposition 36, that strict and close court control has been weakened
substantially and cannot be imposed even for a second lapse of treatment
conditions, except in rare instances.

Drug courts were part of a national movement started in 1989 and initiated
in California in 1993. In Kern County the courts were pioneered by Superior
Court Judge Frank Hoover, now a family law court judge. There are three
drug courts in the county.

The state study showed that many participants in the drug court program
were not mere recreational or intermittent drug users, but people with
severe multiple addictions, high rates of homelessness, chronic
unemployment, poor education and severe social involvement or estrangement
from families.

Virtually all those pathologies improved significantly among successful
"graduates" of the program.

There also was a huge decrease in arrests and conviction of participants in
the first two years after completion of the program. State and local
governments saved approximately $43 million in a nearly two-year period
from September 2000. The savings came from a combination of avoided prison
and jail terms, as well as payment of fines and fees by program participants.

The report is the first of several the Judicial Council will issue on the
subject. We hope future ones compare how traditional drug courts work
compared with Proposition 36.

We hope they will show how drug courts can be more purposefully and
usefully integrated in a program that combines the best attributes of drug
courts and Proposition 36's greater application but less control.