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POSTED: Monday, Jul. 21, 2008

Drug court offers offenders a future

BELLINGHAM — Orlin Cochran’s dad gave him psychedelic mushrooms when he was 8 years old. The 35-yearold first smoked pot with his dad and his older brother. He was raised in a household of “extreme violence,” he said.

He was arrested in 2005 for possession of a controlled substance after abusing methamphetamines for three years.

Jeremiah Williams spent about eight years in prison. He did meth for the first time when he was 14. Drinking alcohol started at 12.

Williams, 31, was arrested in 2006 three months after he had gotten out of prison.

Scott Amundsen, 34, was from a “Leave it to Beaver” family, as he describes it. It didn’t protect him from alcoholism and going to work in advertising with the smell of Yukon Jack whiskey on his breath. He got addicted to painkillers. He used meth.

On Oct. 17, 2005, he was arrested for possession of a controlled substance at his parents’ home, just across the street from a Whatcom County judge’s home.

These are the faces of the Whatcom County Drug Court program.

Cochran and Amundsen are graduates of the program, while Williams is progressing through it as he attends Whatcom Community College.

They are just three among 80 people in the program at a time. The system could be expanded by hiring another case worker, who could serve 30 more addicts trying to get clean and make something of themselves.

Whatcom County Council members are preparing to discuss a proposed one-tenth of 1 percent sales tax increase that would support expansion or creation of more mentalhealth and substance-abuse programs in the county — including drug court — where funding is tight and not enough is coming in from the state and federal levels, proponents of the tax say.

THE PROGRAM

Drug court is a form of alternative correction, a sort of get-out-of-jail free card that can be revoked at any time if participants break their promises to society: to get clean, to stay clean, to work or go to school.

And they have to be able to prove all of it with paperwork, said county Drug Court Coordinator Leigh Wirth.

It costs about $4,600 for one year of drug court per person, according to a drug court fact sheet. The average time in the program is about two years, Wirth said. That doesn’t include chemical dependency treatment, which is about another $2,200, she said.

But the costs of drug court, designed to clean people up so they can be productive members of society again, are minimal compared to simply putting men like Cochran, Williams and Amundsen in jail.

Taxpayers shell out about $24,820 to house one person in Whatcom County Jail for one year, according to Wirth’s fact sheet. It costs about $31,811 per year to send that person to state prison.

The program is extremely strict. Violent offenders aren’t allowed in. Urine tests are done regularly for the participants throughout the program. They’re stepped down if they can show they’ve been clean for awhile.

Participants must meet once a week with a case worker. They also have to go in for a group session to learn news of the program: when the picnic is, who has moved on, who went to jail.

It’s designed for people who committed crimes to support a drug habit, Wirth said. It’s not for criminals who simply did drugs.

“That’s a big difference,” Wirth said.

And, she said, some good candidates get turned down.

Participants must pay $60 a month to participate in the program. It’s cheaper than if they had to pay for treatment themselves, which they might not even go to in the first place if they’re high and not thinking straight, Wirth said.

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

Wirth points to the three men as program success stories.

Cochran is now a construction worker making $35 per hour helping to build the Whatcom Museum’s new Art and Children’s Museum complex. He graduated from the drug court program after about one year.

His life is very different from the way it was when he was a drug addict.

About $30,000 behind on child support, Cochran would prowl the county looking for places to steal metals, like copper. Burned-out homes were good targets. He could recycle the wire and get cash right away.

It went toward drugs, not his two little boys, he said.

He’s now down to about $8,000 in owed child support. And he credits Wirth and others who work in the program for his success.

“It was easy for me to change when I had someone to guide me,” he said. That didn’t happen when he simply saw a probation officer or a judge once a month.

Williams and his girlfriend have a baby daughter on the way and he’s attending school. He’s working toward a degree in human services.

“I told Leigh I was going to take her job,” he said, “and she said come and get it.”

Amundsen has a full-time internship working at a lockdown treatment center. He’s in a chemical-dependency professional-training program there.

“Scott gets to feed his child and work and pay his taxes,” Wirth said.

These men likely wouldn’t have these opportunities with a felony arrest on their record. Williams faces seven years in prison if he doesn’t complete drug court.

Their records now show that the felony charge against them has been dismissed. They can ask a judge to remove it completely two years after graduation from the program, Wirth said.

THE NUMBERS

But the drug court coordinator, who has worked for the county for about 5½ years — four as coordinator — said she’s also “a realist.”

“It’s not going to work for everybody, OK?” she said.

About 29 percent of people who enroll re-offend. They have lost their second chance. But without drug court the people in the same situations re-offend more often: about 60 percent for men and 48 percent for women.

Wirth estimates that taxpayers have saved about $5.1 million since the inception of drug court in 1999.

“Our job is to make sure they’re moving forward,” she said. “We need accountability, and we need proof.”

The three drug court participants also want to tell their stories to Whatcom County Council members when they vote on the proposed new tax.

“I’m skipping Lamaze class to go,” Williams said.