The Sacramento Bee
October
16, 2010
Drug courts unfairly attacked
by West
Huddleston, Chief Executive Officer, NADCP
Re "Fresh look at
drug courts could also ease prison crisis" (Viewpoints, Nov. 9): In its
latest attack on drug courts, the National Association of Criminal
Defense Lawyers reveals a startling comfort with distorting facts and
ignoring the truth. In misrepresenting its recent anecdotal report as a
"study," the NACDL chooses to ignore two decades of conclusive research,
including hundreds of studies that prove drug courts reduce crime,
reduce drug abuse, reunite families and save considerable money for
taxpayers.
Here are the facts. Nationwide, 70 percent of the
approximately 120,000 seriously addicted individuals who voluntarily
enter drug courts with the assistance of their defense attorney complete
it a year or more later and 75 percent of them remain arrest-free. A
drug court participant is more than twice as likely to stay clean and
remain arrest-free than is a newly released state inmate. Research also
concludes that drug courts reduce drug abuse and improve employment and
family functioning.
These effects are not short-lived. The
longest study on drug courts to date shows these outcomes last as long
as 14 years. Clearly, drug courts are not an experiment. They must be
expanded to serve the 1.2 million substance-abusing arrestees before the
courts. That is the real issue.
With every blind attack on drug
courts, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers calls into
question only its own credibility.