Drug courts are valuable not only to the participants,
but to the community as well. A Drug Court Program
reduces the money that each county spends to house
nonviolent inmates in jail. Drug courts operate at a
fraction of a state or county prison bed. A Georgia
audit estimated that sending offenders through the
drug court saved the state of Georgia $14 million in
2009. Participants in Drug Court must pay regular
fees and restitution. According to statistics obtained
from the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, more research has been published on the effects of Drug Courts than virtually all other criminal
justice programs combined. In 2012, the U.S. Government Accountability Office submitted a report to
the Congress confirming Drug Courts reduce substance abuse and crime and save money. Nationally,
Drug Courts return to the community up to $27 for
every $1 invested. They reduce crime by up to 50%,
and the longest study to date shows reductions lasted
14 years. Moreover, studies show that the more serious an individual’s drug addiction and the longer his
or her criminal record, the better Drug Courts work.
This approach not only diverts individuals from a life
of drug abuse and crime, but has been proven to reduce use of jail or prison beds and family conflicts
associated with domestic violence and child abuse.
The inmates who are appropriate candidates for drug
court are no longer simply housed with no effective
addiction treatment at the county’s expense but are
released and admitted into the program to enable
them to start working, paying taxes and child support,
and to start striving toward sobriety. A 2010 Georgia
audit found that 29 percent of state prison inmates
with substance-abuse problems committed another
crime within two years of release, compared to only 7
percent of drug court graduates.
In years past, many people perceived a drug problem
as only impacting the criminally-minded. However,
we see participants from all backgrounds enrolled in
drug courts. Substance use disorders impact every
individual in America, either indirectly or directly.
Prescription drug use is one of the more common
substance use disorders we see, and though it does
not have the stigma of illegal street drugs, the impact
can be just as—or more---severe on the participant’s
mental/physical health.
Ten years from now, Judge Weaver states that she
would like to see more support from every judicial
circuit’s local community. The resources needed to
fully support participants are vast, ranging from food
banks to GED programs to residential placements to
needs for the participants’ children. Many of these
programs are instituted at the local level, not at the
state level, and involvement with l