How America Overdosed on Drug Courts

[n2doc]

MAIA SZALAVITZ

When Ellen Sousares learned that her 22-year-old son, Darren, had been arrested in 2014 for felony possession of heroin and diverted into drug court, she wasn’t upset or ashamed. She was overjoyed. Darren had been addicted to heroin for six years. At the time of his arrest, he was living on the street in Colorado, far from her home in California. He’d already overdosed seriously enough to require emergency care at least six times. He had repeatedly tried rehab, but he’d never stayed long enough to get his mental health properly evaluated. Finally, Ellen thought, he’d be forced to get the help he really needed.

Drug courts celebrated their 25th anniversary last year. Designed for defendants who have committed non-violent felonies such as drug dealing or burglary while addicted, they have been touted as a perfect balance of treatment and punishment, and as a way for the most corrigible offenders to avoid the harsh sentences mandated by drug-war laws. The idea is appealingly simple. If defendants complete a program of drug testing and mandatory treatment—often including short jail terms, known as flash incarcerations, in the case of serious rule violations—they can avoid lengthy mandatory prison terms. Those who fail to “graduate” from the program, in the self- improvement-geared parlance of drug courts, face the mandated sentence, or sometimes an even harsher one. Coercion, the theory goes, is the key to rehabilitation.

More than 2,800 drug courts now exist in the United States, serving approximately 120,000 defendants annually. They enjoy broad political popularity, with supporters ranging from William Bennett and Newt Gingrich on the right to Al Franken and the Clintons on the left. George W. Bush and Barack Obama both expanded funding for them. The press loves them too. Until very recently, it’s been hard to find a newspaper or a magazine that has taken a position on the issue other than hearty endorsement. There’s even a sense nationally that drug courts produce better results than voluntary treatment. In 2008, when voters in California were considering a proposition designed to use less punishment and more treatment in handling drug offenders, Governor Jerry Brown recommended voting against it because, he claimed, less-punitive sentencing would hurt drug courts. “We know that the hammer of incarceration is often what is needed,” he said, “to assist an addict to get off his dependency.”

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http://www.psmag.com/politics-and-law/how-america-overdosed-on-drug-courts