The hard-core, lock-em-up, drug warriors
are getting scarce these days
but we are faced with a new opponent on
the path to a rational drug policy;
the treatment folks. This is the kindler,
gentler face of the prohibitionists and
they will be just as difficult to argue
against. The idea that drug users are ALL
addicted and need treatment is just as
wrong as the idea that all drug users
need to be sent to prison. The push
toward drug courts is a mainstay of their
"humane" approach.
Drug Courts have been something that many
of us have been struggling
with. Finally, there is an excellent, detailed,
well-footnoted analysis
of drug courts in the current issue of the North
Carolina Law Review.
The nearly 100 page article, "The Drug Court Scandal,"
is written by a
state court judge from Denver, Morris B. Hoffman.
The
article deals with the research supporting drug courts (and finds it
very
weak) as well as the problems of creating a permanent drug court
bureaucracy,
a new justice system for drug offenders and the problem of
the bigger net
which will result in more people incarcerated. Some
key
conclusions:
- "We have succumbed to the lure of drug
courts, to the lure of their
federal dollars, to the lure of their hope, and
to the lure of their
popularity. Drug courts themsevles have become a kind
of institutional
narcotic upon which the entire criminal justice system
is becoming
increasingly dependent."
- ". . . the promise of
drug courts do not measure up to their harsh
reality. They are compromising
deep-seated legal values, including the
doctrine of separation of powers, the
idea that truth can best be
discovered in the fires of advocacy, and the
traditional role of judges
as quiet, rational arbiters of the truth-finding
process. In their mad
rush to dispose of cases, drug courts are risking the
due process rights
off defendants and turning all of us -- judges,
prosecutors, and public
defenders, alike -- into cogs in an out-of-control
case-processing
machine.
" And what have they delivered in exchange?
Reductions in recidivism are
so small that if they exist at all they are
statistically meaningless.
Net-widening is so large that, even if drug courts
truly were effective
in reducing recidivism, more drug defendants would
continue to jam our
prisons than ever before.
"It is time for all of
us to take a much harder look at drug courts, at
their awkward placement
straddled among the three branches, at their
true effectiveness, and at their
real operational and institutional
costs. It is time, especially for judges,
to resist the lemming-like
dash toward a society in which bedrock legal
principles that have served
us for generations are sacrificed for the
immediate gratification of a
political fad."
- "We should spend less
time feeding the fanaticism of drug courts and
more time in an honest debate
about the deep moral and social issues
inherent in drug use, drug abuse, and
drug control."
This an article very worth getting. You can
contact the NC Law Review
Chapel Hill, NC at nclrev@unc.edu, 919-962-3926 or 919-962-1527
(fax).
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