For Some Addicts, Drug Court Offers
a New Kind of Fix
By Tom Breihan
“Baltimore City was one of the first 10 or 12 [drug courts] in the entire
country,” recalls Baltimore City District Court Judge Jamey H. Weitzman,
who started the Baltimore City Drug Court. “We were at the beginning
stages, the ground floor, when the whole drug court movement was being set
up.”
Weitzman may not have started the country’s first drug
court – Janet Reno did that in 1989, when she was District Attorney of
Dade County, Florida. But when Weitzman launched the Baltimore City Drug Court
in 1994, she became the first to apply the innovative, humane solution to Maryland’s
drug problem, helping its victims and their families and giving much-needed
relief to backlogged court systems and overcrowded prisons. Today, nearly every
county in Maryland has a drug court in place or in planning. Weitzman remains
at the head of the movement as head of the Drug Treatment Court Commission
of Maryland, the umbrella organization for all of Maryland’s drug courts.
Weitzman began Baltimore’s Drug Court after the Bar
Association of Baltimore City released its Russell Committee Report in 1990,
revealing the strain that a plague of drug cases had placed on the court system. “We
got the Drug Court going to try to address the chronic drug-addicted population
here in the city,” says Weitzman. “The rest is history.”
The Drug Court offers drug treatment as an alternative to
prison for those addicts who pass its screening procedures. The Court weeds
out offenders with histories of violence and drug-dealing, focusing instead
on those who can be helped by the process. “We’re really targeting
the folks that are committing crimes because of their addiction,” says
Weitzman. “But for drug addiction, our theory is that these people would
not be in the criminal justice system. We’re able to screen out those
who we think would still be criminals or pathological.”
Once a candidate is selected for the Drug Court and agrees
to participate in its program, she signs a contract and enters a treatment
program. “Once they’re stable and doing well, we then make sure
they get a job, job training, job placement, G.E.D., try to support their other
needs,” says Weitzman. “We believe that drug addiction is just
one of the many problems; there are many other associated problems. You have
to address them all holistically – the piecemeal approach doesn’t
work. So we provide lots of support services as well: a mentoring group, an
alumni program that brings in defendants who are actively in drug court as
well as graduates and give them a support network. We have speakers, and we’re
planning social activities, things like that. We have an acupuncture program.”
With the Drug Treatment Court Commission, Weitzman has overseen
the creation of similar drug courts elsewhere in the state for the past two
years. In Maryland’s different counties, the drug court faces new problems
and challenges. “Some of the counties are rural, some are urban,” she
says. “Some have a large population, some are small. Some have a big
alcohol problem, others [have] heroin and cocaine like us. There are no two
alike. Having said that, though, all drug courts have to follow the certain
key components. That’s one of our jobs, to make sure that any drug court
that’s starting is meeting the best practices, minimal standards, and
that while each drug court will have a different personality, they’ll
all have to meet certain criteria.”
