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The Wind Beneath My Wings: A Visit to the Drug Courtby Valerie White, Esq. Sitting in the courtroom were thirty or so defendants. They were a diverse group: cocky, dapper, Hispanic-looking men, a black man in a jogging suit who must have weighed 300 pounds, black women in tight slit skirts and big gold hoop earrings, a blond woman whose hair was a mass of ringlets, a woman in a body cast who walked on crutches, boys just out of their teens, mature men, even a dwarf. They all had something in common with each other and with me. They were all addicts or alcoholics. As part of my job at a licensed private non-profit outpatient substance abuse facility in Boston, I had gone to observe the "drug court" in action. Technically called the Intensive Treatment Unit, the drug court deals only with defendants who have chemical dependency. Such defendants have their cases transferred to this innovative program for sentencing and probation supervision. Before the court session started, the assistant chief probation officer welcomed me to what they call the "judge's conference" - a meeting between the judge and probation officers, representatives from service providers and defense attorneys. The judge went through the list of probationers who were expected at the session that afternoon, and the other attendees would bring him up to date about the defendant's situation. Judge Anderson was a youngish, white man who seemed to take a genuine human interest in the cases as he went through the list. He was full of the experience he had had the week before at the "relapse prevention group" graduation. I learned that the defendants go through three phases. In Phase One, they must appear at the drug court session once a week, bearing with them verification and employment, letters from their counselors, and verification of three NA and AA meetings they were required to attend during the previous week. In Phase Two, they come every two weeks, and in Phase Three only once a month. They have to submit to random drug or alcohol testing. They must remain drug and alcohol free. After the Judge's Conference we went into the courtroom and I saw the defendants in person whose names I had heard in the meeting. Each defendant rose and came forward as the judge called his or her name. The probation officer in charge of the case came up and took from the defendant the sheet of papers which the defendant extracted folded wadded or crumpled from various pockets or handbags. The office shuffled through the papers so as to advise the judge whether everything was in order. If the defendant had had a period of "clean urines," had cooperated in treatment, and had generally done well, the judge complimented him or her. "You've done very well; you're going to get a star. What color would you like?" When I was a kid, my piano teacher used to put a star on each piece I learned and a second, larger star when I had it memorized. I was less than eleven at the time. I sat flabbergasted as the defendants, rough, streetwise, world-weary as they were, chose their colors. One woman said, "Well, I'd like purple, but I know you don't got none. So I'll take silver." Each defendant who got a star made a color choice, and the judge peeled off the star and stuck in ceremoniously in the file. When he had finished affixing the star, the judge began a round of applause which was joined in enthusiastically by the probation officers, the bailiffs, the lawyers, and the motley assembly of hardened criminal drug addicts and drunks. It was amazing. It seemed to work. With commendable efficiency and compassion, the judge went through the cases. A few times, he took a guilty plea to a charge of violation of probation. He did seem to understand that relapse was an expected part of these folks' route to recovery, and he didn't lower the boom on them if they handled their slip appropriately. One fellow was about to get a star when he confessed to having slipped: the judge could have locked him up on the spot, but he rewarded the man's honesty by simply setting a violation hearing for a later date. The woman in the body cast was in custody. She had been ejected from (or had left-this point was in dispute) a residential program, and had been arrested and jailed. Her mother was in the courtroom. The probation officer said that a bed was soon to be available in another program, and recommended she be transported to it from the jail. The woman's attorney asked the judge to let her wait for the bed at her mother's home. While she was in jail, she was missing her physical therapy appointments and her mother was having trouble controlling her daughter's pre-teen children the attorney said. The judge listened to the arguments and did as the lawyer asked. The judge was scrupulous about the rights of the defendants. I practiced criminal law in Vermont for 14 years and I often served as acting judge. I know innovating, competent, respectful jurisprudence when I see it, and I saw it in Judge Anderson's drug court. Of course I groaned inwardly when I realized that the defendants were being ordered to NA and AA. (Five days after I went to the drug court, the US Supreme Court let stand a lower court decision that mandating NA and AA in unconstitutional.) But I still think that what went on in the courtroom of the Intensive Treatment Unit is the most hopeful development I've seen in the fight against chemical dependency.
"The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts."
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