By Nigel Duara, CalMatters<\/p>\n
Last year, Yolo County tried an experiment: No one arrested for simple drug possession would be prosecuted or sent to drug court. Instead, those arrested with drugs were directed to the county health department.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The county was responding to a trend across California: Significantly fewer people are choosing to go to drug court,\u00a0 in part because the penalties for drug possession were reduced by the passage of Proposition 47 in 2014.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Without the threat of potential jail time, people just weren\u2019t showing up \u2013 participation in Yolo County\u2019s drug court is down 86% since 2014.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I was trying to do was test the hypothesis that this was solely a health issue,\u201d said the plan\u2019s architect, Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig. \u201cIt was a total failure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rise and fall of drug courts in California has been a 30-year saga, with California\u2019s first contemporary drug court opening in Alameda County in 1991 \u2014 the nation\u2019s second.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The vision \u2013 to offer offenders a chance to avoid criminal conviction by entering a treatment program overseen by this special court \u2013 took off in California. By 1998, the state was pouring\u00a0$4 million each year\u00a0<\/a>into the program to fund drug courts in 34 counties.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then along came Proposition 47 in 2014, slashing sentences for drug possession in California.<\/p>\n And the popularity of drug courts began their downward slide.<\/p>\n A 2020 paper<\/a>\u00a0from the New York-based Center for Court Innovation surveyed California drug courts after the passage of Prop. 47 and found participation was down statewide by 67% between 2014 and 2018.<\/p>\n After its so-called failed experiment last year, Yolo County is attempting to combat sinking drug court participation.\u00a0<\/p>\n What I was trying to do was test the hypothesis that this was solely a health issue. It was a total failure.<\/p>\n \u2013 Jeff Reisig, Yolo County District Attorney<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Data provided by the county show that fewer than 12% of people referred to the county\u2019s Health and Human Services Agency even answered an initial phone call to establish a treatment plan in the first six months of 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, Reisig is rolling out what he calls Drug Court 2.0, which expands the kinds of drug crimes eligible for drug court diversion programs. And the new program compels participants to meet with a representative from the county health department while still in the courtroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s having a lot more success than the phone calls did,\u201d Reisig said.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Drug courts are part of a larger group of \u201ccollaborative justice courts\u201d in California that includes mental health courts, homeless courts, DUI courts and veterans courts.\u00a0<\/p>\n In drug court, participants usually attend after pleading guilty to a drug-related crime. If participants graduate \u2013 which usually means completing job training in addition to staying sober \u2013 the original criminal charges are reduced or dismissed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Unlike most of the\u00a0recent criminal justice debates<\/a>\u00a0in California, this one isn\u2019t a question of conservative versus liberal, or evidence-based reforms versus tough-on-crime initiatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, the benefits of both Prop. 47 and drug court are supported by evidence. Prop 47 has\u00a0reduced recidivism rates<\/a>\u00a0and saved the state money. Drug courts have shown that, when implemented correctly, they can\u00a0reduce recidivism rates<\/a>\u00a0(and also save the state money.)\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But when these two darlings of the criminal justice reform movement collide, drug courts have lost out.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, as in Yolo County, drug courts across California are expanding eligibility requirements to draw in more participants or resigning themselves to a far smaller caseload post-Prop. 47.\u00a0<\/p>\n A look at drug court participation in the counties that provided partial or complete drug court records to CalMatters shows declining participation statewide.<\/p>\n In San Diego County, more than 650 people participated in drug court in the 2013 fiscal year, two years before Prop. 47 was enacted. That was down to 255 people last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n In Alameda County, more than 640 people attended drug courts between January 2014 and September 2015, an average of 30 people per month. After the passage of Prop. 47, that dropped to 14 people per month in the 2015 fiscal year, and it has stayed at that rate since.\u00a0<\/p>\n San Mateo County officials saw fewer than five people per month in drug court after the passage of Prop. 47. The court is now considering expanding its eligibility requirements to include felony crimes.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is no statewide repository for drug court data, nor much consistency in data collection among counties.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s not really stable funding, so many of the (drug) courts know they can\u2019t support a big program.<\/em><\/p>\n Francine Byrne, Judicial Council\u2019s drug court coordinator<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Some counties provided CalMatters every drug case since 2010; some said they didn\u2019t have the data or didn\u2019t know where to find it. Several asked for weeks to review their records. A few warned the search would be expensive.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the Wild West when it comes to drug courts,\u201d said one court executive who was not authorized to speak to a reporter, noting that there is little control at the state level over eligibility requirements or data collection.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s partly due to the Legislature, which rejected\u00a0a request from the state Judicial Council<\/a>\u00a0for five new administrative positions and $30 million each year to continue to run collaborative justice courts.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Prop 47. isn\u2019t the only cause for declining rates of participation in drug courts, said Francine Byrne, the Judicial Council\u2019s statewide adult drug court coordinator.\u00a0<\/p>\n Prison realignment,\u00a0passed in 2011 as AB 109<\/a>, took away state funding for drug courts. Instead, money was given straight to county behavioral health departments, which didn\u2019t use it all for collaborative courts.\u00a0<\/p>\n The result, Byrne said, was that funding for collaborative courts dropped significantly. Some counties have kept their drug court operations afloat through federal grants, others just muddled through.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s not really stable funding, so many of the courts know they can\u2019t support a big program,\u201d Byrne said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Realignment and Prop. 47 both seemed to dramatically affect drug court participation in San Francisco County. In 2010, one year before passage of the realignment bill, 500 people attended drug court in the county. By 2012, it was down to 335.\u00a0<\/p>\n By 2021, the total number of participants was 176.\u00a0<\/p>\n Longtime opponents of Prop. 47<\/a>, like California District Attorneys Association CEO Greg Totten, say the law hasn\u2019t lived up to its promise on drug treatment.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe promise of the law was, more treatment, less jail,\u201d Totten said. \u201cBut there\u2019s actually less treatment when\u00a0 people don\u2019t go to drug courts.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom a common sense standpoint, why go into a treatment program rather than just walk out of the courthouse free.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This article was originally published by\u00a0CalMatters<\/a>.<\/em>\n
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Featured image by CalMatters. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n