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Guest Editorial: Judicial Coordination with the Treatment Community

—The Honorable Thomas J. Moyer, Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Ohio, and the Honorable Jack Holt, Jr., Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Arkansas, co-chairmen, Committee on Drug Issues Affecting State Courts of the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators

We are pleased to have this opportunity to address substance abuse treatment providers on behalf of the State judiciary. Like you, we in the judiciary have come to recognize the need to develop a strong working relationship between our two communities if our society is going to seriously address the problem of substance abuse. We have the honor to serve as co-chairmen of a joint Committee established in recognition of this need by the two organizations representing the leadership of the judiciary in the States—the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators.

Resolutions to promote coordination

In the summer of 1990, the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Administrators adopted identical resolutions. These resolutions called for State court leaders to take the lead in promoting this coordination between and among justice agencies, education, treatment, and health agencies by sponsoring and planning a national Conference on Substance Abuse and the Courts.

The resolution identified two reasons for such a conference.

• Improved coordination among agencies involved in the administration of justice is essential to the Nation's drug strategy.
• Improved linkage between the justice community and the education, treatment, and health communities is vital to the war on drugs. (36th Annual Meeting, August 16, 1990)

The conference was held in November of 1991 in Washington, D.C. It was attended by interagency and interdisciplinary teams from 33 States. The teams were appointed by the chief justices of the States. The team members represented the courts, substance abuse treatment, education, and criminal justice agencies. During this conference, plans were developed which supported State initiatives.

Substance abuse pervades the State court caseload. In most jurisdictions, drugs have driven the growing number of criminal cases. In many courts, a majority of offenders have a history of abuse of alcohol or other drugs. And the effects are not limited to the criminal court. Juvenile courts have felt the impact as well. The growing number of child abuse, child abandonment, and spousal abuse cases can be traced directly back to the same source. Even the civil calendar has been affected. For example, substance abuse is the root of an increasing number of workers compensation cases.

Need for a new approach

We need a new approach to this issue—one that strikes a more effective balance between meting out punishment and ensuring public safety on the one hand, with addressing the health, psychology, and social issues of drug dependency on the other. Our national policy to date has emphasized the former while ignoring the latter. The result has been to overload the State criminal courts and fill our correctional facilities beyond their capacity. We need an approach that expands the options available to the courts and that makes substance abuse treatment available to offenders at all stages of the adjudication process, from pretrial through a diversion program, and during post adjudication as part of an intermediate sanctions program or accompanying incarceration.

Creating these options cannot be done by the judiciary alone or unilaterally. We must coordinate our processes and procedures with those of treatment providers. We recognize that developing this coordination will not be an easy task. It will require that we each step out of our traditional roles to recognize the needs and perspective of the other.

Judges will have to look beyond the individual's behavior that brought him or her to court to include the substance abuse problem in fashioning a civil or criminal remedy. Treatment officials will be required to recognize the priorities of the criminal justice system. And the entire system needs to recognize that substance-abusing populations have a particular need for primary health care, because their high-risk behavior makes them vulnerable to a number of diseases.

The administrative issues are also complex as we attempt to marry the caseflow management techniques of the courts with those of the treatment community. Questions of coordinating treatment priorities with required appearances in court, developing compatible record keeping and exchanges of information, and resolving conflicting privacy and security standards are just some of the areas that come to mind that will have to be resolved. We raise these issues not as obstacles to coordination, but rather in recognition that simple expressions of good intentions are not enough. Success will require that together we translate those expressions into concrete results.

It is our belief that courts are ready to assume the necessary leadership role to develop cooperative arrangements with substance abuse treatment and public health agencies. But judges cannot do it unilaterally. The coordination must begin with a search for the best process and procedures for linking courts and treatment providers.

There are lessons to be learned from the juvenile and family courts which have traditionally maintained a close working relationship with social service agencies and the education system. For example, several State judges in California, Florida, and Oregon have experimented with establishing courts that include diversion and treatment programs for substance abuse offenders. And Arkansas is in the process of developing a system to coordinate the courts with the public health and the substance abuse treatment field.

But these are only starting points. There is still much to be done and much for each of us to learn. We look forward to that learning process.

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