By Anna Kartashova
The Salt Lake Tribune
SALT LAKE CITY — Taylorsville’s drug court has helped hundreds of people turn their lives around and celebrated its 10th anniversary with a graduation Jan. 29.
About a dozen people graduate from the drug/DUI court program every four months, said Taylorsville City Judge Michael Kwan, who is in charge of the program.
The system is designed to give intensive supervision to people with substance abuse problems and misdemeanor court cases.
“If we don’t address the addiction disease, statistically they will have another offence,” Kwan said.
The most common nonviolent crimes law-breakers commit before qualifying for drug court are substance possession, retail theft or driving under the influence. Although not all participants are Taylorsville residents, all have committed a crime within its boundaries.
Participation is voluntary, and charges against violators are often dismissed if they opt for the drug court program, unless it’s a DUI case .
“A lot of the people, and all of the DUI people, are doing it because they want to change their life,” Kwan said. “There’s no legal incentive.”
The program’s participants are the ones you wave at while picking up your mail, bump carts with at a grocery store or see walking their dog at a park. They are men and women, teens and senior citizens.
“Addiction doesn’t care who you are,” Kwan said. “It’s like cancer ... All it cares about is getting you hooked and keeping you hooked.”
When people decide to end their addiction, a defense attorney tells them whether they qualify for drug court. If the answer is positive, they receive a clinical assessment to determine the proper care, which can range anywhere from education treatment to inpatient care at a medical facility.
Drug/DUI court is different from traditional court in that it involves a lot of work on a way to a clean path.
In other courts, violators meet with a judge, enter a plea, receive a sentence, and it could be the last time they ever see the judge. In a drug court, offenders constantly take steps toward recovery.
Although some participants -- those who are young and have their first experience with drugs or alcohol -- can fast-track through the program in three to six months, most spend about a year to 18 months completing drug court.
“It’s a commitment of time,” Kwan said. “It’s not a very easy problem to solve. It’s a tenacious decease.”
During the program’s first level, substance abusers have weekly meetings with the court, prosecutor, public defender, county sheriff and treatment provider. They must take a minimum of two drug tests each week and show a commitment to sobriety.
If participants show progress, they move to Level 2, which reduces meetings to every other week and drug screenings to once a week. At that time, offenders begin peer reviewing fellow participants, discussing what type of treatment or punishment they need.
Level 3 retains weekly drug tests but reduces meetings, and Level 4 eliminates court reviews but includes monthly drug screens.
“The best aspect of drug court is it’s individualized,” said Karena Jackson, director of Judicial Supervision Services, a nonprofit organization that provides treatment and counseling to offenders. “Everyone’s supervised and drug-tested, but their treatment is individualized to their needs.”
Based on their progress, or retreat, participants either receive acknowledgements with poker-like chips or penalties.
The less they commit, the more the punishment increases, Kwan said. They can use their earned chips to “pay for” drug tests or counseling, so the incentive to improve their condition increases.
“I know every one of them,” Jackson said. “I know what they go through. I’m there as a tool. I’m not there as a hammer. I’ll put that hammer down if I need to.”
The national statistics of drug court effectiveness show one or two people out of every 100 remain to finish the program. Taylorsville’s results have a 95 percent completion rate, Kwan said.
The reason for success might be, the state doesn’t use taxpayers’ money to fund the program. Patients invest in their own recovery.
“Some of these people never used to pay for a hamburger, let alone a drug test,” Jackson said, so accountability is involved. When people pay for their services, they have the best interest in succeeding, she said.
Kwan said the average amount a participant spends on drug tests and treatment is about $2,000 for the course.
“That’s more than what we’d generally impose for a single crime, ... but we use it to make people healthy and give them their lives,” Kwan said.
“It’s because their life is worth more than that.”
The peer mentoring isn’t done in other drug courts, and it’s another part of success, Jackson said, because substance abusers not only have to rely on the supervision team, but also on their peers.
Wendy Colton, a Provo resident and one graduation speakers, entered the program in 2002 and spent four years in it. She originally landed in drug court after getting caught shoplifting.
“When they searched me, I had paraphernalia on me,” Colton said.
She used heroine through the first two years of the program. Colton racked up 13 felony charges, lost custody of her children and became homeless. She spent a month in jail and decided it wasn’t the life she wanted.
“In the beginning, [drug court] was mostly a manipulation to stay out of jail, but things changed after I started making better choices,” Colton said.
Every choice she made since that day has been based on some level of honesty and integrity and has brought her in peace with herself, she said in her speech.
“She’s awesome,” Jackson said. “She got her kids back. She’s a complete turnaround in her life. She’s the reason we keep doing this.”
Taylorsville’s drug court began in 1998 and was Utah’s first to handle both drug abuse and DUI cases. There are five misdemeanor drug courts statewide.
“It doesn’t cost us, taxpayers, extra money to run these courts,” said Mary Phillips, public policy director of Freeway Watch, a nonprofit organization that focuses on drunken driving. “They’re effective, yet we only have a few.”
Phillips’ daughter, Elizabeth, died in a drunken driving accident in August 1995.
The 15-year-old’s life ended when Laramie Huntzinger, who was then 16 and didn’t have a driver license, got behind a wheel of a truck while under the influence of alcohol and ran into three girls walking on a sidewalk near Brighton High School.
Huntzinger has had other DUI charges, but the system failed to monitor his progress, Phillips said. The reason Taylorsville’s drug court is effective is its regular testing.
"[Kwan] is really pushing people to sobriety,” she said. “He doesn’t take chances. They’re not just looking at you, asking you questions. They really assess substance abusers.”
Copyright 2009 The Salt Lake Tribune
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