Searching for a better life, Miguel Gonzalez’s family brought him to Dalton, Ga., from Guerrero, Mexico, as a child.
“My whole life in this country has been uncertain as far as my immigration status,” says Gonzalez.
Despite this, Gonzalez thrived. He attended college, landed a job as a teacher, and in 2012, became a “Dreamer” through the Obama administration’s establishment of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.
Now, Gonzalez tries to help kids from similar circumstances through the Newcomer Academy, an English language program for Spanish-language students grades six and up.
As politicians negotiate the future of DACA, these children need a place to process their feelings about their immigration status. Watch the video above to see how the Newcomer Academy and teachers like Gonzalez go beyond simply acclimating immigrant children to the American school system by creating an environment where they can feel successful and thrive.
Tag: Georgia
5 Good Governing Mayors
Focused on the issues most important to their constituents, mayors have to ensure public resources get used wisely and in a way that achieves results while respecting the law and democratic values.
As mayors from across the nation gather for The United States Conference of Mayors’ Annual Meeting this weekend, here are five that are practicing good governance in small and mid-sized cities.
Mick Cornett, Oklahoma City
Once dubbed one of the five most innovative mayors in the country by Newsweek, Cornett has been credited with helping his city shed a collective 1 million pounds through an ambitious health campaign. He’s also invested nearly $2 billion to improve schools and infrastructure and boosted civic engagement by including residents on various subcommittees. Cornett, who’s been mayor since 2004, is now the longest-serving leader among the 50 biggest cities in the U.S. and is hoping to take his changemaking ways statewide by running for governor.
Svante Myrick, Ithaca, N.Y.
First elected at age 24, Myrick – now 30 – is known for hanging an LED sign in his office that displays text messages from constituents. But more importantly, he’s tackled the heroin epidemic by proposing a detox center, methadone clinic and supervised safe injection site. “It’s a great example of good governance because although it’s experimental, there are early signs of success where it’s been done (like Vancouver, B.C.),” says Alex Torpey, former mayor of South Orange, N.J., and visiting professor of governance and technology at Seton Hall University. The idea may seem counterintuitive, but Torpey says Myrick’s team “brought in all possible stakeholders, did appropriate research and made a really brave decision to try something to help attack this problem.”
Greg Fischer, Louisville, Ky.
This Bluegrass State inventor turned businessman turned politician was elected mayor in 2010. Last year, he was voted the country’s “most innovative” mayor in a Politico survey and credited with driving the creation of a new economic development agency and an innovation office. One of his administration’s top goals includes making the city more compassionate, as well as improving education and creating “good-paying” jobs. “Throughout this tenure, the city of Louisville has moved from an old industrial town without a lot of industry to a modern creative class magnet in the Midwest,” says William Hatcher, associate professor of political science at Augusta University.
David Bieter, Boise, Idaho
This fourth-term mayor – the longest in Boise’s history – has expanded access to childhood education programs and affordable housing while taking a bold stance to protect immigrants and refugees. His city does better than many others at ensuring the safety of residents and providing them access to hospital beds and certain health outcomes, helping Boise rank at the top of the America’s best-run cities study.
Kasim Reed, Atlanta
Under his leadership, the local government of this bigger city has strengthened its economy and developed urban amenities “in a manner that is effective, efficient and fair,” notes Hatcher. The second-term mayor established a bike share program to help with traffic congestion and pushed for new transit infrastructure. Recently, Reed pledged to uphold the Paris climate accord and joined the Global Parliament of Mayors, which is tackling local issues resulting from worldwide problems. “Mayors need to be at the forefront of global challenges like immigration, social mobility, climate change and resiliency,” Reed has said.
MORE: America’s Youngest Mayor
The Solar Highway of the Future
Off Interstate 85 along the Alabama-Georgia border, an area of asphalt the size of two SUVs parked nose-to-nose is soaking up the sun. But unlike traditional blacktop, it’s capturing solar energy and using it to power a nearby information booth and electric car-charging station.
This bright idea to cover a roadway with solar tiles stems from the notion that highways should be dual purpose.
“Roads are an extremely underutilized resource right now. They’re just asphalt that takes us from Point A to Point B,” says Anna Cullen, director of external relations for The Ray, the Atlanta-based project that installed the tiles. “We don’t have anything in our lives today that is just one purpose. A road should be the same.”
Solar roads have already been installed in the Netherlands and France. Georgia’s patch is the first in the United States.
But cost is a significant roadblock. The tiles — which are thankfully skid resistant — are composed of expensive materials imported from France. Plus, they must be laid on top of existing pavement, which is labor intensive.
MORE: Building the Future: Sustainable Infrastructure
And there’s the question of whether the tiles will generate as much energy as is projected. In Sandpoint, Idaho, a company called Solar Roadways paved a town square with hexagonal solar panels that were meant to generate electricity for nearby restrooms and a fountain. The multi-million-dollar project collects just a fraction of the energy it intended — only enough to operate a hairdryer.
“Aside from road dust, particularly black tire dust and diesel exhaust, which will quickly cover a portion of each panel, the continuous traffic covering panels will reduce their solar output,” Stanford University Engineering Professor Mark Jacobson told National Geographic last year.
If successful, however, Georgia’s project could become the model for the entire United States, where hundreds of thousands of roadways are in need of repair.
Homepage photo courtesy of The Ray.
7 States Making Bold Criminal Justice Reforms
No other sitting Commander in Chief, including Ronald Reagan, who took office in 1981 when prison populations spiked upward rapidly, or George W. Bush, the hang-’em-high leader who presided over 152 executions as Texas governor, had ever set foot inside a federal penitentiary. But last month, President Barack Obama stepped behind bars — hinting that he’s conscious of the legacy he’ll leave and is eyeing criminal justice reform as his next issue to tackle.
“When they describe their youth and their childhood, these are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different than the mistakes I made,” Obama said after speaking to six nonviolent offenders at El Reno prison, about 30 miles west of Oklahoma City. “The difference is they did not have the kinds of support structures, the second chances, the resources that would allow them to survive those mistakes.” He added, “It’s not normal. It’s not what happens in other countries. What is normal is teenagers doing stupid things. What is normal is young people making mistakes.”
As bipartisan momentum grows in Washington, D.C., reform efforts are also sweeping the nation, many led by conservative governors. Here’s the latest innovations to come out of our country’s statehouses:
TEXAS SHUTTERS PRISONS
Everything’s bigger in Texas, including its correctional facilities. That is, until recently. Starting in 2007, Gov. Rick Perry, Bush’s successor in a “tough on crime” state and now a Republican presidential candidate, led the conservative state in reining in the size of its prison populations. Texas focused on expanding treatment programs and diverting offenders through probation and parole. In 2011, three juvenile facilities were closed, halving the number of incarcerated youth in the state. Cuts continued in 2013, when legislators reduced the corrections budget by $97 million, a clear sign they intended to scale back the system’s capacity. Two prisons near Dallas mired in scandal and operated by Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest for-profit prison company, looked to be on the chopping block. When Sen. John Whitimire, the longest-serving legislator, called for the closure of the prisons built during his watch, the decision seemed final. Through the budget process, both were defunded.
UTAH REDEFINES A PRISON-WORTHY OFFENSE
Obama didn’t selected El Reno prison for his visit at random. He picked the institution because half of its inmates are behind bars for drug offenses — the same proportion for the country as a whole. Utah faced the same situation. While crime fell for two decades, the state’s prison population increased without bound: From 2004 to 2013, the number of inmates grew by 18 percent, six times faster than the national average. This March, Gov. Gary Herbert, a Republican, signed a comprehensive reform package (developed by a commission of state and local officials) that reclassified all first- and second-time drug possession violations as misdemeanors, instead of felonies. Along with creating new guidelines for parole violations and adding “re-entry specialists” to smooth the transition from prison, the Beehive State’s new law is expected to eliminate the 2,700 projected incarcerations and save the public $500 million over the next 20 years.
ALABAMA DOESN’T JAIL FOR PROBATION VIOLATIONS
Alabama has one of the nation’s highest incarceration rates, jailing more than 30,000 people in a system designed to hold only 12,000 prisoners — leading officials to call it a “time bomb waiting to explode.” Almost a quarter of newly admitted inmates were thrown into overcrowded cells because they violated the terms of their parole or probation. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, half of those cases were for “minor technical violations,” such as missed appointments, unpaid fines, moving to a new home without permission or losing a job, “that did not result in a new offense.” A law signed in 2010 by Gov. Robert Riley limited incarceration for those who committed an administrative error but didn’t break any laws. The alternatives saved the southern state an estimated $18 million.
INDIANA RETOOLS DRUG-FREE ZONE LAWS
The signs are so commonplace you might not notice them: “Drug-Free School Zones.” In fine print, they’ll inform you that selling drugs within 1,000 feet of school property, a public park, a housing project or a youth center in Indiana is a Class A felony, automatically upping the recommended sentence to 20 to 50 years in prison. The creation of these areas were one of the government’s first salvos in the War on Drugs, passed by Congress in 1970, more than a decade before Ronald Reagan escalated the battle. Indiana’s reform began in 2007 in an unlikely way: bills in each chamber of the legislature initially set out to expand the drug-free zone to include bus stops and churches. Kelsey Kauffman, a professor at DePauw University, tasked her students with evaluating the law’s effectiveness. Over an eight-year campaign, they presented their findings — that more than 75 percent of the defendants affected by the zones were black — to multiple Senate committees. By 2013, new legislation cut the zones in half, limiting them to a 500-foot radius. A bill last year sought to scale them back even further to 250 feet, but political maneuvering killed the attempt.
NEBRASKA OVERTURNS DEATH PENALTY
Smack in the middle of America’s heartland, the Cornhusker State became the first conservative state in four decades to repeal capital punishment this May. Nebraska’s nonpartisan, unicameral legislature defied Gov. Pete Ricketts, a fierce advocate for the death penalty, with a 30-to-19 vote, just barely enough to overturn a veto. Liberals and conservatives alike believed the death penalty was inefficient, costly and immoral. “Today we are doing something that transcends me, that transcends this Legislature, that transcends this state,” Sen. Ernie Chambers, an independent from Omaha, said before the vote. “We are talking about human dignity.” Along with Washington, D.C., Nebraska joined 17 other states in banning capital punishment.
MISSOURI REPEALS SELECT BAN ON FOOD STAMPS
The federal welfare overhaul in 1996, passed by Rep. Newt Gingrich’s Republican stronghold in Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, revoked the ability of felons convicted of drug offenses to receive welfare benefits. The lifetime disqualification from food stamps seemed so vengeful and contrary to public safety that 19 states have chosen to opt out of the provision entirely and 24 states created exceptions, according to a tally by The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Stateline blog. Barring someone from benefits “increases the odds they will commit new crimes by virtue of the fact that you’re creating a significant financial obstacle,” says Marc Mauer, the executive director of The Sentencing Project. A grassroots push, particularly by religious leaders in St. Louis and Kansas City, united lawmakers in values-based support and won the governor’s signature.
GEORGIA WIPES THE SLATE CLEAN
Once a person’s made contact with the criminal justice system, it’s hard to allude its grasp. A criminal record follows you into every job interview. It’s a red flag on every background check for a new apartment or a loan. That’s the case — even if a person isn’t a felon who spent years in the pen or if a judge dismisses the case or a jury agrees the accused is innocent. With prodding from the Georgia Justice Project and others, legislators overhauled the state’s burdensome and limited expungement law. On the day the law went into effect, one-third of Georgia’s population had a record expunged. Bolstered by the success, Georgia Justice Project convinced Gov. Nathan Deal to issue an executive order to “ban the box” asking criminal history questions on state employment applications this February — the first state in the Deep South to change its hiring policy.
Just Because You’re a Member of the Far Right Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Believe in the Importance of Solar Energy
They’ve been called an “unholy alliance” and “strange bedfellows,” and it’s partly true: Debbie Dooley, a Tea Party firebrand, is solar power’s most unlikely ally.
A lifetime campaign operative for the Republican Party and an organizer of the first nationwide Tea Party protests in 2009, Dooley is making some very persuasive arguments for why conservatives should support renewable energy. She’s reached across the aisle to form the Green Tea Coalition, breaking with Republican candidates she says are in the energy sector’s pocket. By teaming up with progressive groups like the Sierra Club, Dooley is taking on a utility and fighting to bring solar power to the Sunshine State.
Dooley’s reasons for selecting clean energy as her pet project may sound somewhat trite — her baby grandson became an in-the-flesh reminder of the urgent necessity of conserving the planet for future generations — but her reason for supporting solar power is fresh. Unlike liberals who tout the environmental benefits of solar’s clean technology, Dooley makes her argument based on Tea Party mainstays like free market economics and self-sufficiency.
A New Orleans native and a preacher’s daughter, Dooley’s always been involved in politics, usually of the right-wing brand. Fifty miles north of The Big Easy, her grandfather ran a popular gas station and became well-known in political circles as a “power broker,” she says. “When someone ran for political office, they always paid him a visit.” Dooley spent much of her childhood at political events, accompanying him to rallies and town hall meetings.
She got involved in her first serious campaign as a high school senior in Montgomery, Ala., staffing the phone bank and canvassing door-to-door during Ronald Reagan’s first attempt at the presidency. When she moved to Georgia at the tail end of George H.W. Bush’s presidency, she became an active member of the state’s Republican party.
But it’s policy, not party, that matters to Dooley. She’s unafraid to call out politicians on both sides when they shy away from their principles. Her interest in founding the Tea Party — when the “teapot started boiling,” she says — was prompted by disappointment with President George W. Bush’s policies, particularly the Wall Street bailouts. “I began to feel like the Republican Party had lost its way. They began to be the party of big spenders,” she explains. She co-founded of the Atlanta Tea Party, and she’s still on the board of directors for the national Tea Party Patriots.
“Debbie is somebody that has a lot of integrity in the positions that she takes,” says Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), a nonpartisan energy watchdog group, since 1993. “She will point out inconsistencies where there are conservatives that are on the financial take from utilities and fossil fuel companies. Debbie is an absolute watchdog on the political right when conservatives start taking positions that aren’t true to conservative values.”
In 2012, Dooley won her first victories for solar power before the Georgia Public Service Commission, the regulatory authority for the energy utility. Competition is virtually nonexistent in the utility business because there’s no need to construct multiple overlapping grids (a neighborhood only needs one set of power lines), and shakeups are rare. To ensure there’s no blackouts and that customers get a fair price, utilities are monitored — and often protected — by government. In Georgia, the state had a number of laws on the books that stifled better technology. Essentially, “If I purchase electricity, I must purchase it from this government-created monopoly,” Dooley explains. She promised that expanding access to solar would create “competition and choice,” two values that persuaded the commission to open the market.
In Florida, Dooley faces a similar battle, but against an even stronger opponent. Florida Power & Light has huge influence over legislators, killing some bills before they ever reach the floor for a debate and, along with three other utilities, spending $12 million on Florida’s legislative races since 2010. The Sunshine State is one of only five states that forces consumers to buy electricity from a utility, meaning a resident can’t install a solar array and sell the excess power to neighbors or lease panels from a solar company to reduce up-front costs. That power — Dooley calls it “corruption” — is why she’s asking voters to pass a constitutional amendment tearing down barriers to supplying local solar power. (NationSwell reached out to Florida Power & Light for comment, but did not receive a response.)
“It shall be the policy of the state to encourage and promote local small-scale solar-generated electricity production and to enhance the availability of solar power to customers,” the measure reads. “This section is intended to accomplish this purpose by limiting and preventing regulatory and economic barriers that discourage the supply of electricity generated from solar.”
In an early telephone poll of 600 registered voters in Florida (commissioned by SACE and executed by North Star Opinion Research), nearly three quarters of voters said they would support a proposal to amend the current law to allow solar companies to install panels at no up-front cost and sell the power to the resident. More than half — 54 percent — believed their average monthly electricity bill was too high.
Dooley’s “been a very strong voice from the beginning. She recognized the tremendous national significance of opening the Sunshine State to solar. There, the utilities have an absolute stranglehold on the market. It has enormous potential but it continues to underperform,” says Smith, who also serves on the board of Floridians for Solar Choice. “There’s a lot of issues that Debbie and I disagree on, but on opening markets for solar power, we’re in lockstep. There’s no daylight between our positions there.”
Her campaign has already collected over 100,000 signatures in the first five weeks, Dooley says, but it needs several hundred thousand more to qualify for the election and the Florida Supreme Court’s approval of the ballot text, which the utility has promised to challenge.
Dooley couldn’t have chosen a better proving ground to test her ideas. The fourth largest state, Florida has a huge energy market powering homes for 19.9 million residents. But unlike other massive states — California, New York and Texas — Florida is a swing state. Her proposition will likely appear on the November 2016 ballot, downticket from the race that will decide Obama’s successor. If she’s successful, the Sunshine State’s expansion of solar power would be a beacon of bipartisan unity, potentially igniting a movement across the nation.
[ph]
Forget Calculus and Gym Class. At This High School, Students Are Trained for Workplace Success
What is the purpose of high school?
At Camden County High School (CCHS) in Georgia, the school employs a “career technical” approach: using various academies aimed at different career fields to create a pre-professional, engaging environment for its almost 2,800 students.
All freshman are enrolled in the Freshman Academy, where they’re introduced to the curriculum and get acclimated to the school, as well as take most of the traditional academic core. From there, students pick one of the five career academies to enroll in, where they receive first-hand experience from people in that respective field, reports the Atlantic.
In the Government and Public Services Academy, students can follow the law and justice curriculum and take a class with Navy-Kings Bay NCIS official Rich Gamble. In Gamble’s class, students are trained in appropriate investigative procedures and court room preparation.
For those students looking for more technical work, there’s the Engineering and Industrial Technology Academy. This field includes a wide variety of careers, but CCHS covers many, including woodwork, welding, auto-repair, electrical work, computer-aided design and robotics program. Learning doesn’t just take place in the classroom; students actually sell products and perform services for the community, too.
Within the Health and Environmental Sciences Academy, students interested in the medical field can bring textbooks to life as they diagnose and care for dummies. The models are also used as test prep for certification exams.
There’s also a Fine Arts Academy (which covers all facets from theater to cooking) and one for Business and Marketing, where students learn the keys to success in the corporate world.
At CCHS, students are shown that there’s more to high school than just surviving class: a thriving career.
MORE: How Can a Mayor Enact Change Once He’s Left Office?
The 10 Most Inspiring Books of 2014
In a year where our country witnessed a widening gap between rich and poor, a toxic chemical leak, long delays for veterans at hospitals and clinics, botched lethal injections, racially-charged protests, record low voter turnout and stunning Congressional dysfunction, we at NationSwell turned to these ten books for stories of hope. Confronted by complex issues, these authors never flinched. Instead, they brought us creative solutions and unwavering heroics. Read on for our top ten books of 2014 (alphabetized by author):
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
Are there any inspiring books we missed? Let us know in the comments below.
When Cities Get Connected, Civic Engagement Improves
With tighter budgets and fewer resources, local governments are turning to technology to stay connected to residents and improve their systems. According to the Digital Cities Survey published by Government Technology magazine, four major tech trends are visible across most of the participants, which range from cities with populations of 50,000 to more than a million.
1. Open data
Transparency is important for governments and thanks to technology, it’s easier to achieve than ever. Leading the pack of cities with easily accessible data records is New York City. The Big Apple started its open data system in 2012 and now has 1,300 data sets available for viewing. Chicago ranks second with over 600 data sets, while San Francisco scores the highest rating in U.S. Open Data Census for open data quality.
Open data isn’t limited to the country’s biggest cities, however, as mid-size Tacoma, Wash., offers 40 data sets and Ann Arbor, Mich,. has financial transparency data that is updated daily, according to Governing.
2. Stat programs and data analytics
These types of initiatives originated in the 1980s with the NYPD merging data with staff feedback, but have expanded to other cities. Louisville, Ky., now has Louiestat, which is used to spot weaknesses in performance and cut the city’s bill for unscheduled employee overtime.
Governing reports that data analytics are also a popular tool to gauge performance. In Denver, Phoenix and Jacksonville, Fla., local governments use them to sort through all their data sets in search of patterns that can be used for better decision-making.
3. Online citizen engagement
As social media becomes more prevalent in daily life, governments are getting on board to stay connected. Through social media sites and online surveys, local governments are using social media to engage their residents in local issues.
One such city is Avondale, Ariz. (population of 78,822), which connects a mobile app and an online forum for citizen use. Citizens can post ideas on the forum and then residents can vote yay or nay.
4. Geographic information systems
Although it’s been around for a long time, cities are updating the function of GIS to help make financial decisions that will, in turn, improve performance, public transit and public safety as well as organize social service and citizens engagement activities.
Augusta, Ga., recently won an award for its transit maps, while in Sugar Land, Texas, GIS is used for economic development and citizen engagement with 92 percent survey respondents citywide.
Based on all this, it seems that cities have embraced the tech craze.
MORE: Which 3 Cities are Fighting Poverty Through a Tech Cohort?
This Radio Host Reaches Out to Female Vets
A few years ago, Air Force veteran Teresa Lambert felt silenced about her experiences in the military, as do many female vets. But now she speaks up by hosting a radio show focused on issues facing female veterans that’s sponsored by Women Veteran Social Justice (WVSJ) and recorded on the campus of the University of North Georgia Gainesville.
Lambert has a lot to talk about on air, such as the fact that female veterans are more likely to become homeless than male veterans are, and women vets face homelessness at a rate four times greater than civilian women. Since many of them are coping with trauma from abuse, female soldiers feel uncomfortable visiting V.A. hospitals and shelters where large groups of men gather, and many of them are mothers who can’t find homeless shelters that accept kids.
Lambert’s job as the northeast Georgia ambassador for WVSJ is to help female veterans with any issues they face. Not long ago, she was struggling, too, having been a victim of domestic abuse during her time in the Air Force. She felt frustrated with the military’s response to her troubles and experienced symptoms of PTSD. “By the time I left, my anxiety level was so high that I would not let anybody touch me,” she tells the Gainesville Times. “I didn’t get any kind of help, and I was such a mess. I continued making bad choices.”
One poor decision many female veterans make is to fail to seek help that’s available to all veterans since that assistance is often geared toward men. “A man walks around and he’s wearing a veteran’s hat and that’s OK,” she says. “But if a women does it, she’s just wanting attention.”
So Lambert and the WVSJ reach out to female veterans — in person and through social media — offering them assistance, resources and camaraderie. Volunteers give fellow female veterans food, housing and help filling out paperwork and applying for benefits.
“(Female veterans) all have at some point the feeling that we can’t be the only one,” Lambert says. “We can’t be the only one going through this, whatever it may be.” And now with the help of WVSJ, more female vets are realizing that they aren’t.
MORE: For Female Veterans Experiencing Employment Woes, This Organization Offers Strong Advice
Alternative Courts Can Transform Offenders, Not Just Punish Them
After being pulled over for running a stop sign, Heather Bateman was rummaging around looking for her driver’s license when something else popped out of her purse — her crystal meth pipe.
The policeman at her car window spotted the drug paraphernalia, and Bateman soon found herself in handcuffs.
In a strange twist of events, getting arrested was actually the answer to her prayers.
For months, Bateman had been asking God for some kind of help, as her life spiraled out of control. She was using meth every day. She’d lost her nursing license. She and her 7-year-old daughter were homeless. “It was the lowest part of my life,” she says.
Later, at the courthouse, Bateman was asked if she’d like to take part in an alternative court program — a drug court. “I said, ‘Absolutely. I want to get help.’”
Instead of receiving probation or a prison sentence, Bateman underwent three years of supervised treatment in the St. Paul, Minn., drug court. Her urine was tested randomly to see if she was still using, and she was required to attend treatment and counseling groups. Batemen regularly attended court, where the judge didn’t just issue orders, but asked her what was going on in her life, in the same way a social worker might do.
It wasn’t a straight road, but Bateman found her way to sobriety, regained her nursing license, got married, bought a house and rebuilt her life. But none of this would’ve happened, she says, if she’d simply been sent to jail for drug possession.
Since the first drug court was created 25 years ago in Florida’s Miami-Dade County, the concept has proliferated. Today, there are more than 2,800 specialized courts nationwide that work with juveniles, veterans, the mentally ill, drunk drivers and prostitutes to change their lives after being arrested for minor offenses.
These so-called “problem-solving” courts are born from a recognition that traditional methods of criminal punishment are ineffective. Judges who are frustrated with the existing system and tired of seeing the same defendants appear before them again and again often lead alternative courts, which are designed to address the root causes of the arrest-imprisonment-and-re-arrest cycle.
Alternative courts are growing because they work. Studies have shown that drug courts can reduce recidivism rates by an average of 8 to 13 percent. Additionally, drug court graduates have fewer relapses than offenders who are simply given probation or prison time, according to a 2012 national study financed by the National Institute of Justice.
Most important, the turn toward problem-solving courts may be part of a larger change in the American criminal justice system: leaning toward treatment rather than retribution.
FINDING A BETTER WAY
“The traditional response of sending people to prison or placing them on probation was clearly proving ineffective, if the goal is causing people to change their behavior,” says Associate Circuit Judge Alan Blankenship, reflecting on the beginnings of the drug court he presides over in Stone County, Mo. Blankenship helped start the court 10 years ago, during a methamphetamine epidemic there.
“We realized that imprisoning people is extraordinarily expensive and the environment is not conducive to recovery,” he explains. Prison sentences for drug-addicted defendants “caused more harm and worsened public safety,” he says. “People got worse instead of better.”
Drug courts often employ a multiphase approach to treatment. Initially, defendants are closely monitored, required to undergo frequent drug testing and may have to attend an intensive treatment program, counseling or group therapy. Offenders are assigned a team that might include a probation officer, a social worker and a drug counselor. The group addresses not only treatment needs, but also issues like housing, employment and family reunification.
“The team is going to work with you every step of the way so that you’re not just clean, but stable,” says Chris Deutsch, director of communications for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.
As defendants accumulate sober time and meet their obligations, drug tests become less frequent and court monitoring loosens. When offenders have shown themselves to be stable and clean, they graduate from the program.
Throughout the process, offenders are required to come to court regularly for conversations with the judge — interactions that look very different from traditional courtroom exchanges. Alternative court judges ask offenders personal questions about family, work and stresses in their life. And they offer praise and encouragement, even applause.
Judge Blankenship says he often says things you might not often hear in a courtroom: “You’re doing great. I appreciate what you’re doing. I’m proud of you.”
“They have this dialogue back and forth and it’s an amazing departure from the way criminal justice interactions normally go,” says Deutsch.
Just a slight shift in approach can have a dramatic impact. Blankenship recalls one defendant who told him, “ ‘I’ve been in many courts in many parts of the country and you are the first judge to look me in the eye and call me by my name. You don’t know how powerful that is.’ ”
However, if offenders are not meeting their obligations, if they are missing meetings or testing positive for drug use, they can be subject to sanctions like community service, extra group counseling sessions or even a few days in jail.
EFFECTIVE & EFFICIENT
When people complete the program, which can take anywhere from a year to several years, they don’t often end up back in court, Blankenship says. The latest data from Stone County indicates that, five years after finishing the program, 13 percent of drug court offenders were re-arrested and only 6 percent were convicted and sent to prison. That’s a significant decrease, when compared with statewide data showing that 60 percent of people with addiction who were sent to prison return there in five years. “No other criminal justice response we’re aware of even comes close to achieving these kind of results with this really high-risk population of offenders,” Blankenship says.
As drug courts have taken root, other alternative court models have appeared.
Savannah, Ga., for example, now has a felony drug court, a mental health court, a veterans’ court, a DUI court and two juvenile courts. Each offers a different twist on the basic drug court model — intensive supervision and treatment tailored to the needs of different populations.
Jean Cottier, coordinator of the Savannah-Chatham County Drug Court, offers impressive statistics about the city’s mental health court. Forty of its graduates, who together had racked up 564 arrests and 1,074 criminal charges prior to participating in the alternative court, only had four arrests and five criminal charges in the two years after completing the program.
Alternative courts also save money, Cottier says. Participants in the felony drug court cost taxpayers only about $19 per day, but “it costs $58 a day to house a prisoner in our local jail,” she explains.
Alternative courts also reduce city spending because they target those who use courts and other public systems the most. People who end up in mental health court, in particular, “are high consumers of services in the community,” Cottier says. A successful mental-illness court can cut ER visits drastically, for instance, saving taxpayer money.
A SEA CHANGE
It’s easy to caricature drug courts, which often offer cakes and hug-filled graduation ceremonies for offenders who complete programs, as part of a soft-on-crime strategy that coddles criminals. Deutsch’s response to that criticism: Drug courts work. Traditional retributive justice doesn’t.
“The people in our community, even some of the most conservative, realize that it’s better to treat people and enable them to transform their lives and become contributing members of our community,” says Judge Blankenship.
While drug courts are becoming more common, they’re still not necessarily reducing the overall prison population. “In many drug courts, criteria for admission can be pretty restrictive,” says Marc Mauer, head of the Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy group. “Many of the people going to prison never had an opportunity to go to drug court.”
One of the best critiques of drug courts, then, might be that there just aren’t enough of them, and they aren’t helping enough people. But their rise may be a signal that the American criminal justice system is beginning to move away from an exclusive focus on punishment.
Drug courts “are a response, a reaction to more than a generation of policy making in this country where we’ve essentially tiled the axis of the justice system in the direction of punitive policy making,” says Greg Berman, director of the Center for Court Innovation, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization.
Twenty-five years ago, Berman says, the criminal justice conversation was about “how to make punishment swift and certain.” Now, within policy circles, “people say, yes, we can change the behavior of offenders.”
[ph]