Problem Solving Courts
In its efforts to stem the supply of drugs destined for the U.S. marketplace, the U.S. Government has spent billions of dollars, focusing on drug production in the Andes region of South America. The most celebrated and costly program is Plan Colombia, which has cost U.S. taxpayers more than five billion dollars.
It is no secret though that these initiatives have not worked very well across the Andes. Working to solve this problem, Proyecto ACCESO has focused its efforts on the stemming demand.
Drug treatment courts, the alternative sentencing regime for lower level drug possession crimes that focuses on rehabilitation rather than incarceration, has been a successful U.S. judicial innovation focusing on the demand side of the War on Drugs.
Proyecto ACCESO has introduced these problem-solving courts into South American legal cultures since 2004.
New Counternarcotic Efforts
According to the Brookings Institution, the failed efforts of counternarcotic programs in Latin America have lead many countries in the region to follow the pace of European reformers in emphasizing on more humane drug polices focused on public health. The United Nations Special Session on the World Drug Problem will meet in April 2016, which will give the international community an opportunity to discuss how the world’s drug regime has changed.
The Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission
On May 9, 2014, a bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that aims at creating The Western Hemisphere Drug Policy Commission (WHDPC), which would conduct studies on drug polices for Latin America and the Caribbean to determine which polices work and which do not. The WHDPC seems to be a response to American failed and expensive efforts in counternarcotic projects in the region. For example, Plan Colombia, an agreement where the U.S. has given billions of dollars to the Colombian government to be used for antinarcotic efforts, is considered a failure because Colombia continues to be a key producer of cocaine in Latin America.
OAS Report
In May 2013, the Secretary General of the Organization of American Sates (OAS), Jose Miguel Insulza, reiterated that the countries in the Americas are untied in their concern over effects of the drug phenomena. The relationship between drug, violence, and security are the main concerns for citizens, stated Mr. Insulza. The Americas is the only region in the world where all of the stages of drugs in present in a dominant way; cultivation, production, distribution, and sale. Approximately 45 percent of all worldwide cocaine users, about half of heroin users, and about a quarter of marijuana users are found in the Americas. As a potential solution against profoud drug problems in the area, the OAS Secretary General suggested that each country should determine how to best deal with drug problems individually, public health approaches should be used to deal with the phenomena, efforts should be made to solve the problem in a multifaceted and flexible manner, and the countries in the region must be untied in their diversity.
Press Release, Organization of American States (May 17, 2013) (last visited May 17, 2015) available at http://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-194/13
ACCESO Drug Courts initiatives
Leading an ACCESO Capacitación workshop on drug treatment courts in 2004, Hon. Laura Safer Espinoza helped launch Chile’s first pilot treatment court in Valparaiso. She gave the keynote address at that country’s first national conference on treatment alternatives to incarceration in 2006, which was sponsored by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Fundación Paz Ciudadana and the Carabineros, Chile’s national police force.
Judge Safer Espinoza has also lectured on the treatment court alternative in Brazil, as a U.S. State Department consultant in 2005, and introduced the idea at a conference concerning drug policy in Bolivia in 2006 co-sponsored by the Bolivian Ministry of Justice and Proyecto ACCESO.
Judge Safer Espinoza explains:
“I have been the presiding judge of Bronx Treatment Court since its inception in 1999. After nine years of adjudicating criminal proceedings, I fully realized that ‘business as usual’ had few answers to the problems affecting most people in the criminal justice system - issues of addiction, mental health and lack of educational or employment opportunities. In treatment court we would leave the adversarial process aside, and unite in the effort to put peoples’ lives on track.
Clients in treatment court are given the opportunity to attend drug and mental health treatment, as well as to enroll in school, job training and/or full time employment. If they comply with our requirements, cases are either dismissed or reduced to lesser charges for which incarceration is not mandatory.
Our clinical staff assesses the treatment needs of clients, places them in appropriate programs and helps to monitor their progress. During their time in treatment, clients are carefully followed through regular court updates, where they come before the judge.
A system of graduated sanctions and rewards is utilized during those sessions - ranging from ‘promotions’, certificates and public praise, applause and handshakes from the judge for program compliance; to increase of treatment intensity, length and modality; observing in court; writing essays; and periods of incarceration for failure to abide by the prescribed treatment protocols.
This system is driven by the belief that relapse is part of recovery. After numerous opportunities, however, if a client fails, or is re-arrested and charged with another crime, they are sentenced to prison.
Our court has successfully ‘graduated’ over 1,000 clients and recidivism has been drastically reduced. In addition to tremendous savings of taxpayer dollars as a result of clients who are employed as opposed to incarcerated, there are other dramatic achievements.
Family reunification, mental health issues that are properly addressed instead of self-medicated, increase in self-esteem and the birth of hundreds of healthy babies are a few examples. Problem solving can be exhausting - and no one protocol fits all, but it is also incredibly rewarding.”
Scenes of the war on drugs
Center for Creative Problem Solving - Scenes of... por ProyectoACCESO
