“I Didn’t Know How to Get Sober.” * Drug Treatment Courts Are Changing the Way Bexar County Views Justice By Claire Treu and Steven Treu
Cherie Reed’s booking photo from the start of her Drug Court treatment (left). Photo courtesy of Court Manager Roberto Ruiz. Cherie Reed, with her new smile, after completing the Drug Court program (right). Photo courtesy of Cherie Reed.
14 San Antonio Lawyer | sabar.org
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herie Reed did not even know what getting sober was. As she saw it, addiction was “just how life was going to be.” That was true until she met Judge Tommy Stolhandske and his Bexar County Drug Treatment Court in 2018. Over ten years of narcotic use, life in and out of homelessness, and isolation from her family and children kept her hopeless. However, “through drug court,” Reed says, “I learned how to literally live life as a person in society.” Drug courts are relatively new. They were developed in Miami in the 1980s and were implemented in Bexar County in the early 2000s by Judge Alfonso Alonso. Drug courts are different from the regular court system because of their specific focus on populations struggling with chemical addiction. “It’s a program of choice. It’s a program of learning, and it helps you grow if you’re willing to take the tools that they give you,” Reed explains. In traditional probation, the treatment provider never talks to the judge, but in the drug court, the treatment provider is a part of the staff. Judge Stolhandske sees the provider every two weeks, and the two keep regular contact. “What I saw as a judge,” Stolhandske says, “is that the same people were coming back, and we weren’t really helping them, just kind of processing them through the system.” In drug courts, though, the role of the judge is different. Stolhandske does not wear a robe and stands right across from where participants speak as they have a conversation. “When I saw him [Stolhandske] just in normal clothes and talking to us like we were normal people, and we were laughing, I was like, this is awkward, this is weird, but I liked it,” Reed recalls about her first Drug Court review. Bexar County Drug Treatment Courts treat substance abusing offenders in the community, rather than convicting and incarcerating them over and over again. For an addict, gelled in the realities of addiction, the reward of using easily outweighs jail time, according to Stolhandske. Drug courts, though, focus on the needs of their target population, rather than on the strictures of the law. They offer treatment forward, including frequent substance testing, intensive supervision, regular contact with the supervising judge, individualized sanctions and, most importantly, rewards. They target high-risk, high-need individuals—in other words, people who are not responding to the “don’t-do-that-again-or-else” model of the traditional justice system. Stolhandske argues that drug courts reduce recidivism rates, give individuals tools to change their lives, and save taxpayers money. The statistics prove him right. “We know that drug courts outperform virtually all other strategies that have been attempted for drug-involved offenders,” wrote Douglas Marlowe, David DeMatteo, and David Festinger for the VERA Institute of Justice in 2003.1 The value of drug courts is seen in their success in reducing recidivism enormously.2 In 2006, for instance, Marc Levin found that offenders completing drug court programs in Texas had a 28.5% re-arrest rate, as compared to 58.5% for those who did not complete a drug court program.3 “The best drug courts reduce crime by as much as 45% over other dispositions,” Huddleston and Marlowe note.4 Judge Tommy Stolhandske (middle, grey suit) with graduates of the Treatment Recovery Accountability Court A, team members and the Therapeutic Court Mentors at the 2019 Winter Commencement. Photo courtesy of Court Manager Roberto Ruiz.
