By 2003, New York will become the first state in the nation to offer all nonviolent offenders with substance abuse problems an opportunity to seek treatment in lieu of prison time -- part of a sweeping package of reforms based on the recommendations of a special commission.Many states have experimented with drug courts and other diversion programs, but New York is breaking new ground by implementing a mandated-treatment policy system-wide. "The court system is seeking to end the unproductive recycling of immense numbers of drug cases, which have pushed to the limit our already overburdened court dockets," said Chief Judge Judith Kaye, who convened the New York State Commission on Drugs and the Courts last October. The panel included judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, representatives from state agencies, scholars, and addiction experts.
All non-violent offenders except serious drug dealers -- including parents charged in Family Court -- will be eligible for treatment under the new system, which includes comprehensive drug testing and assessment in all criminal cases. According to the Commission's report, "Confronting the Cycle of Addiction and Recidivism," while members believed that those who sell drugs for profit should continue to face tough prosecution, non-violent addicts and low-level dealers whose crimes were motivated by addiction should be handled with more discretion.
The new initiative does not directly address what many critics see as the fundamental problem with New York's criminal-justice system: the state's harsh, Rockefeller-era mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. But Edward Nowak, public defender for Monroe County and a commission member, tells Join Together that prosecutors can use their discretion in the charging phase of adjudication to waive an indictment on a Rockefeller felony in exchange for treatment participation. Those who complete treatment would be allowed to plead guilty to a lesser (misdemeanor) offense; those who drop out would face reinstatement of the original indictment, Nowak explained.
Leaders battling addiction problems in communities have long supported the drug-court concept and called for expansion of treatment in the criminal justice system. In 1998, Join Together's Fourth National Survey on Community Efforts to Reduce Substance Abuse and Gun Violence found that 90 percent of community leaders supported mandatory treatment for non-violent offenders and drunk drivers. "Participants find no contradiction between favoring strong law enforcement and treating those who need it," the Join Together report noted.
"New York has taken a major step toward improving the lives of thousands of people by providing the treatment they need to reenter society as law-abiding citizens," says David Rosenbloom, director of Join Together. "The message from New York is this must be done at scale for every criminal defendant ... This decision shows that it is time to move drug treatment within the criminal-justice system from small-scale demonstrations to a universal policy." Asked if he expects other states to follow New York's lead, Rosenbloom replied, "If they're smart, they will."
New York has been a pioneer in the use of Drug Treatment Alternatives to Prison (DTAP) programs, and has implemented a number of local drug courts in recent years. But as the commission report noted, "If this type of treatment is to have a true impact, it must be expanded considerably in some coordinated way." Currently, about 4,000 people receive addiction treatment through New York's criminal-justice system; up to 10,000 additional non-violent addicts per year could be eligible for treatment as an alternative to prison in New York, experts say.
A mix of state and federal funding will be used to pay for setting up drug courts statewide over the next three years, according to Mai Yee, a spokesperson for the State of New York's Unified Court System. Treatment would largely be paid for by Medicaid. Treatment providers in the state currently have excess capacity that can be used to meet increased demand, Yee added, although some expansion may be required in the coming years.
Under the new initiative, drug courts will be set up in every metropolitan area and jurisdiction in the state, and specialty drug courts will be established for persistent misdemeanor offenders in New York City, probation violators, and child-neglect cases. Offenders who test positive for drugs and plead guilty will be eligible for treatment, and prosecutors also will have to power to send to treatment defendants who plead not guilty but test positive for drugs. "The emphasis will be on early intervention -- attacking substance abuse issues from the onset of a case, before they tax the resources of the courts and the public," said state Chief Administrative Judge Jonathan Lippman, who said the new policy represents a "sea change" in the courts' handling of drug-related cases. "The end result of our efforts will be to reduce recidivism and costs and build a new architecture to tackle the modern-day scourge of drug addiction."
The Commission report said the volume of drug cases in New York has risen more than 400 percent over the past 20 years, and the state prison system currently spends about $650 million annually to house drug offenders. About 70 percent of abuse and neglect cases in Family Court involve parents with alcohol or other drug problems, the report added.
New York officials are taking pains to emphasize that treatment will be "coerced," that participants in the program will be closely monitored by judges and prosecutors, and that both sanctions and rewards will be use to motivate offenders. The commission called for a statewide educational program to help sell the treatment concept to judges, criminal-justice officials and the public. "The importance of such an educational campaign cannot be overstated," according to the report. "All too often, addiction is tacitly accepted as a 'fact of life' in our society and in our justice system. Education can help to change that perspective; just as there has been an attitudinal change toward domestic violence and drug driving offenses in recent years, we believe that addiction-related crimes can be reduced by an attitudinal change toward substance abuse."
Many in the criminal-justice field are already convinced that treatment offers the best hope for addressing addiction and unclogging the nation's prisons and courts. As far back as 1995, a policy panel convened by Join Together recommended that substance abuse treatment be expanded throughout the criminal justice system and that mandatory sentencing be repealed. The panel's report, "Fixing a Failing System," said that the current justice system "pushes prison as a cure, when the truth is that merely locking someone up rarely ends addiction. It pretends to know what is best for substance abusers, even when it has no training in treatment. The time has come to stop the lies. The time has come to face facts and begin to build a criminal-justice system that will be effective in reducing substance abuse."
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