Christie pushing treatment for addicts

As he runs for president, Gov. Christie is trumpeting rehabilitation for addicts and condemning the war on drugs as a "decades-long disaster."

It's not an approach typically associated with the Republican Party, but Christie balances it by maintaining that dangerous offenders must be locked up.

His call last week to replicate New Jersey policy nationally and make treatment programs mandatory for drug-addicted, nonviolent offenders offered voters a compassionate side of the governor's famously brash personality.

Noting that every life is a "gift from God," Christie on Thursday in Camden outlined what he called a criminal justice reform agenda for his presidential campaign.

Advocates and some participants say drug courts, which send nonviolent offenders to treatment instead of prison, can change lives. However, limited data make it difficult to fully evaluate the efficacy of a mandatory requirement.

Proponents credit success to coupling support with stringent requirements, from repeated meetings to random testing. Participants are brought quickly before judges for violations.

"It's almost like having a strict parent," said Stephen Hunter of the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender.

Skeptics of New Jersey's mandatory program, which began in July 2013 and continues to be phased in, questioned the effectiveness of forcing unwilling offenders into treatment, and whether the policy would crowd out options for thousands who want treatment.

So far, 161 people have been admitted to treatment through mandatory drug courts. Overall, the drug-court program has 5,862 active participants, according to court administrators.

The mandatory participants have a higher retention rate than the voluntary participants: 89.2 percent over 12 months, compared with 79.8 percent for the voluntary group, according to Donna Plaza, the statewide drug-court manager.

"We can't explain why our percentage is that much higher," she said. Ninety-eight percent of participants who don't complete their treatment go to prison, Plaza said.

Some people volunteer simply because they know a judge will order them to enter drug court anyway, given the mandatory requirement. That makes it difficult to evaluate the full impact of the 2013 change.

Christie has repeatedly called for reducing the stigma of drug addiction, holding events to raise awareness around New Jersey and on the presidential campaign trail. He backed a bail reform overhaul last year intended in part to keep nonviolent offenders out of jail while awaiting trial and has supported equipping first responders with Narcan, a drug that reverses the effects of a heroin overdose.

As the drug-court program has expanded, providers say many people who aren't part of the criminal justice system still are struggling to get help.

"The big problem is the money isn't coming forward that we need to increase access to treatment," said Alan Oberman, executive director and CEO of John Brooks Recovery Center in Atlantic City.

In some cases, drug-court clients get faster access to treatment. At Integrity House, a treatment center with residential programs in Newark and Secaucus, clients referred through drug court wait about two weeks for a bed, while others may wait six to eight weeks, said Robert Budsock, president and CEO.

The mean wait for treatment for drug-court clients is 3.9 days; for those not in drug court, it's 4.7 days, a state spokeswoman said.

Integrity House has expanded its capacity for drug-court clients from about 150 beds to 250 in recent years, thanks to added state funding, Budsock said. But "there's been zero expansion" for treating others, he said.

Treatment wasn't available to 37 percent of the more than 84,000 people who wanted it in 2010, the year for which the most recent data are available, according to the state Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services. A spokeswoman for the division said the gap was the same in 2014.

State-funded treatment facilities were at capacity last year, according to division data.

Christie has touted the program's cost savings.

In fiscal year 2014, the drug-court program cost the state $54 million, including treatment and operations costs, Plaza said. But the state saves $16,000 in prison costs per participant, she said. The state overall saves an estimated $34 million annually.

"This does not reflect the money saved when families stay together, participants get jobs, pay fines, support their children, and when babies are born drug-free," Plaza said.

Within three years of graduation from drug court, 17.5 percent of graduates are rearrested for new indictable crimes; 6.7 percent are reconvicted; and 2.7 percent receive new prison sentences.

The state doesn't track how this compares with outcomes for individuals who have committed similar crimes but who have not participated in drug court.

To evaluate the effectiveness of New Jersey's drug-court program, "you have to compare people going through drug court to an equivalent population that doesn't," said Douglas Marlowe, chief of science, policy, and law for the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

While there are about 3,000 drug courts in the country, Marlowe said New Jersey is still "fairly unusual" in making drug court mandatory.

States should consider a continuum of diversion programs, including for drug offenders who don't have addictions; that would avoid the prospect of people claiming an addiction to get into drug court, Marlowe said.

Plaza said New Jersey's drug-court program admits only people who have substance-abuse problems, and there's no evidence offenders without addictions are getting in.

If New Jersey "is matching people suitably to intervention, that's good," Marlowe said.

The program takes an average of three to five years. But for some, recovery takes even longer.

Admier Franklin, 38, graduated in June from drug court in Camden County, after five years in the program.

It was his second time in drug court. The first time he was admitted - around 2000 - Franklin saw the program as "a staying-out-of-prison thing," he said.

A decade later, he found himself starting the program again, this time with more success, he said. Now he has a job at a wholesale meat shop; he's recently married and hopes to have children.

Regarding his difficulty in battling addiction, Franklin said that had he not been arrested, "I don't think I would have stopped."