{"id":7801,"date":"2009-11-03T15:22:44","date_gmt":"2009-11-03T20:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=7801"},"modified":"2009-11-03T15:22:44","modified_gmt":"2009-11-03T20:22:44","slug":"drug-courts-after-twenty-years-what-next","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2009\/11\/drug-courts-after-twenty-years-what-next\/","title":{"rendered":"Drug Courts after Twenty Years: What Next?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been meaning to blog about the interesting new report from the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers on drug courts<\/a>, but alum Tony Cotton (a member of the NACDL Board of Directors) has beaten me to the\u00a0punch.\u00a0 (For my own take on drug courts — voicing some of the same concerns as Tony —\u00a0see this recent article<\/a>.)\u00a0 Tony offers these insightful and timely\u00a0thoughts on drug courts:<\/p>\n

This year marks the\u00a0twentieth anniversary of a criminal justice innovation that was supposed to help solve the drug problem in this country and reduce the mass incarceration of men and women whose substance abuse habits lead them toward criminal behavior and, more often than not, to prison.<\/p>\n

In 1989, then-State\u2019s Attorney for Miami-Dade County, Florida (later United States Attorney General) Janet Reno designed a new approach to mitigate the crushing loads of drug-related criminal cases in South Florida. Defendants charged with low-level drug felonies would be diverted into treatment programs instead of prison. The idea caught on, and today there are 2,100 such \u201cproblem solving\u201d courts around the country, receiving federal funds and dealing with not only\u00a0drug abuse, but also drunk drivers and domestic violence offenders.\u00a0 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Whatever relief these reforms brought about, in 2008 there were more than 1.7 million individuals arrested and more than 500,000 men and women in jail or prison for drug offenses, according to the FBI\u2019s new Uniform Crime Report.\u00a0 Someone is arrested in this country for drug possession or related infractions every\u00a0eighteen seconds.<\/p>\n

Reno\u2019s drug court idea was compassionate: use the trauma of the moment to move individuals caught in the system into treatment in the hope of breaking the addiction and transitioning them toward a less dangerous existence. There are many success stories, people whose downward spiral reversed and who live normal, productive lives.<\/p>\n

Wisconsin has at least\u00a0twenty-one problem-solving courts, all in different counties. These courts focus on a variety of problems, from repeat drunk driving to drug charges. These courts have both positive and negative components. Three years ago, Waukesha County began an alcohol treatment court for defendants convicted of a third-offense DUI. A recent study completed by Temple University compared the 141 Waukesha residents who entered the program against the 81 others who were denied entry for lack of space. The 141 defendants who completed the program had a\u00a0twenty-nine percent recidivism rate, as opposed to a\u00a0forty-five percent recidivism rate for those who did not.<\/p>\n

Another success story comes out of Milwaukee County. Shortly after his election in 2006, District Attorney John Chisholm, with the input of the defense bar and judiciary, developed protocols to allow for diversion or deferred prosecution for many low-level drug users. At the end of 2007, more than 700 people had benefited from a diversion or deferred prosecution agreement, with a sixty-five-percent success rate.<\/p>\n

However, for every case with a happy ending, there are examples of lives ruined and families disrupted when treatment fails and the offending individual winds up in prison or jail. One of the central problems with specialty courts is that they have grown in an ad hoc way, so that each operates differently. Most of the courts were created by prosecutors and judges without the input of defense counsel. In response to the twenty-year anniversary of the creation of the first problem solving court, the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys (NACDL) commenced a national in-depth study of the effectiveness of these courts. This report can be located at www.nacdl.org\/drugcourts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some of the findings published in the NACDL study include:<\/p>\n