| UPSTATE
INNOVATION In This Issue:
Finally Sober, She Rebuilds Her Life: The Story of a Mother in Tompkins County Family Treatment Court Jane,
a 24-year-old single mother who attended college and worked part time,
was charged with driving while intoxicated. Because her son was in the
backseat, she was also charged with endangering the welfare of a child.
She pleaded guilty to the DWI charge and agreed to enter the Family
Treatment Court in Tompkins County Family Court. Jane successfully completed a 30-day inpatient program for alcoholics while her aunt cared for her son. To celebrate her month of sobriety, she drank the night she returned home. “I still thought I had everything under control. I made all my appointments and I was drinking less so I thought that was good,” she said. Then technology changed her habits. Her phone was equipped with a Sobrietor, a voice-activated device that, like a Breathalyzer, measures blood-alcohol content. The results of the test were communicated immediately via phone lines to her treatment program. When Jane failed to stay sober, Judge John Rowley ordered Jane into another residential program and granted Jane’s aunt legal custody of her son for a year. At the conclusion of the treatment program, she lived in a half-way house for six months. “The frequent monitoring made a big difference in keeping me sober. If I didn’t have the drug court team in my life, I wouldn’t be clean today. I didn’t get the runaround and people were helpful and honest.” Now that Jane has been sober for a year since leaving the halfway house, she has regained custody of her son. Jane said that her desire to regain custody of her now 7-year-old son was her primary motivator for staying sober. “We’re so much closer now. We play games and just enjoy being together,” she said. She works two part-time jobs and is a junior at Cornell University. She said she’s most proud of the fact that other people in her treatment program cite her as an example and have decided to go back to school, too. Jane’s case is a good example of how family treatment courts improve service delivery by exchanging timely information about parents and their children with the social service agencies responsible for investigating the placement of children. Improved communication also enhances the judge's ability to make informed decisions about custody and foster care issues, enabling children to move forward and gain stability in their lives as quickly as possible. New York’s First Drug Court Marks 10 Years The New York Association of Drug Treatment Court Professionals celebrated the 10th anniversary of New York’s first drug court, the Rochester Treatment Court, at the association’s annual conference in March. The conference, which was hailed as the largest of its kind in the country, drew nearly 700 drug court practitioners to the Clarion Riverside Hotel in Rochester. The conference opened with comments from the founding partners of the Rochester Treatment Court, including Judge John R. Schwartz, Rochester Mayor William A. Johnson, Chief of Police Robert Duffy, District Attorney Michael C. Green and Public Defender Edward J. Nowak. The Rochester court opened in January 1995 on a shoe-string budget. The court received support from local groups, including the Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation and the United Way, which paid for a drug court coordinator. In addition, local treatment providers agreed to post, on a rotating basis, case managers in the court, and the American Bar Association provided technical assistance. The court garnered the enthusiastic support of Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, who subsequently implemented an ambitious statewide expansion program. The court is currently presided over by Judge Roy King, the supervising City Court judge. When the Rochester Treatment Court opened, a statewide drug court conference attracting 700 participants would have been unthinkable. But today, with 145 adult, family, and juvenile drug treatment courts in New York, and 49 more in planning, such a conference is a necessity. The drug court conference attracted many notable leaders in the field, including: Henry F. Zwack, general counsel of the Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse; West Huddleston, director of the National Drug Court Institute; Addison D. Davis IV, assistant deputy director from the Office of National Drug Control Policy; A. Elizabeth Griffith, associate deputy director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance; Karen Freeman Wilson, president of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals; and A. Vincent Buzard, president of the New York State Bar Association. Judge Schwartz said his years as a drug court judge changed his outlook: “As a result of my work in drug courts, I enjoy being a judge so much more because I see good results coming from what I do. In the old days, I simply presided over the revolving-door of the criminal justice system.” Training Workshop for Mental Health Court Teams Held at Judicial Institute The New York State Office of Court Administration, Court Operations and Planning, and the Center for Court Innovation co-sponsored the first Training Workshop for Mental Health Court Planning Teams on April 5 at the State Judicial Institute. The training was part of an ongoing statewide initiative designed to expand the number of mental health courts, identify best practices, and provide existing courts with technical and operational assistance. Deputy Chief Administrative Judge Judy Harris Kluger welcomed planning teams from Plattsburgh, Queens County, Suffolk County, and Westchester County; all four jurisdictions are scheduled to open mental health courts this year. The 60 attendees included judges, clerks, case coordinators, defense attorneys, prosecutors, county mental health agency staff, community-based mental health service providers, corrections officials, probation officers, and representatives from the New York State Office of Mental Health and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Goals for New York's mental health courts were outlined in a mission statement developed by Judge Kluger’s office. They include:
Judge Penelope D. Clute, of City Court in Plattsburgh, which has a population of 20,000, participated in the workshop. “I very much appreciate that Judge Kluger recognizes that mental health courts are as needed in small upstate cities as in the New York metropolitan area,” Judge Clute said. “Our local agencies are ready and eager to collaborate with the court in working together to better meet the needs of their clients.” Panel topics included the importance of communication between court personnel and clinical providers during assessment and monitoring, confidentiality, linking to community-based services through both formal and informal partnerships, judicial monitoring and compliance, bridging gaps between the mental health and criminal justice system, and critical steps in setting up a mental health court. Each of New York’s existing mental health courts was represented on the faculty. Panelists included Lucille Jackson, project/clinical director of the Brooklyn Mental Health Court; Judge Patricia Marks of the Mental Health Court in Monroe County; Nestor Ferreiro, chief of the Narcotics Bureau of the Bronx District Attorney’s Office; Judge Matthew D’Emic of the Brooklyn Mental Health Court; Rich Miraglia, state Office of Mental Health; Dr. Merrill Rotter, director of Forensic Services at Bronx Psychiatric Center and medical director of the Bronx Mental Health Court; Lisa Schreibersdorf, founder and executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services; Anne J. Swern, counsel to Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes; Judge Mark A. Violante, chief City Court judge, Niagara Falls; and Christine Marie Ziemba, the mental health court liaison for the City of Buffalo and mental health court coordinator for Horizons Health Services. Applying Problem-Solving Techniques Outside Problem-Solving Courts While problem-solving courts in New York State continue to flourish—with 188 in place and another 84 in planning—interest is also growing in the idea of incorporating problem-solving principles and practices into general court calendars. To this end, 22 judges from around the state participated in a first-of-its-kind training, “Applying Problem-Solving Techniques Outside Problem-Solving Courts,” in Syracuse on May 16. The day-long training was sponsored by the Office of Court Administration, the State Judicial Institute and the Center for Court Innovation. Topics included identifying core principles of problem-solving courts that might be relevant in other contexts. Panels, lectures and small-group discussions of hypothetical cases were used to explore how approaches used in problem-solving courts might be adaptable to general calendars. Possibilities discussed included integration of services, collaborative input for decision-making, judicial supervision of court orders, interaction between litigants and the judge, collaborative input for decision-making, community outreach and focusing on outcomes versus process. Some judges said they are already using these approaches outside problem-solving courts. The day’s highlights included a spirited panel of Upstate judges who sit in both problem-solving and general calendar courts: Judge Tim Lawliss of the 4th Judicial District, Judge John Rowley of Tompkins County Court, and Judge Robert Russell of Buffalo City Court. Judge Kevin Burke, District Court judge in Hennepin County, Minnesota, delivered a speech on procedural fairness and court reform. The curriculum was developed by an advisory committee whose members included judges, attorneys and court administrators from around the state. The National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada, and the Judicial Council of California are also designing similar programs. Video on Bullying Proves Popular An item in the winter issue of Upstate Innovation about a training video on student bullying has generated requests for copies from readers in New York and as far away as California and Louisiana. Among the people who have requested copies of The Decision and the accompany discussion guide are:
To order The Decision and discussion guide, which are designed to help young people think through the consequences of their actions, e-mail info@courtinnovation.org. Include name, title, organization, mailing address, e-mail address, preference of video or DVD format, and the purpose for which you intend to use the video. By Teens, About Teens A lot has been written about how to reduce youth crime, but rarely have teens themselves addressed the subject in a comprehensive way. That’s what makes a new report, Stop the Revolving Door: Giving Communities and Youth the Tools to Overcome Recidivism, so unusual. The report was written by 16 teenage members of the Youth Justice Board, a group of high school students 14 to 18 years old who spent eight months researching the topic of juvenile reentry. Stop the Revolving Door calls for revamping the way New York deals with young people coming home after being in state custody for juvenile delinquency. You can read or download the full report at: www.courtinnovation.org/publications.html Upcoming Trainings National
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