News
Judges and Judiciary
Oct. 25, 1994
PD Judge says Juvenile Drug Court is on horizon for L.A.
Plans are underway to create a Juvenile Drug Court in Los Angeles, only five months after the county's adult Drug Court became the third such program in the state.
Superior Court Judge Marcus O. Tucker, who presides over Juvenile Court, said Friday that no decision has been made on whether to proceed. But a committee has been formed to investigate the possibility and bring together the necessary participants.
"We hope to provide treatment before juveniles become hard-core addicts," said Public Defender Michael Judge, who has assigned two deputies to help design the plan.
Although the burgeoning Drug Court movement has spawned about 30 programs in the nation, none has been established for juveniles. Los Angeles is second only to Pensacola, Fla., in fostering such a plan.
The ideas surfacing at the three-day conference, Thursday through Saturday, were a rallying call for the establishment of drug courts across the state. So far, only courts in Oakland, Los Angeles, Bakersfield and El Monte have started programs, which are designed to divert drug offenders from courts and jail cells to intensive treatment programs.
Municipal Court Judge Stephen A. Marcus, who sits in Los Angeles' Drug Court, said youths who make the commitment are more malleable than adults, more subject to the influence of the court and counselors. Furthermore, the program can be tailored for juveniles to include completion of high school educational requirements, which Marcus said he demands of the 18- and 19-year-olds in his court.
Although each court's programs vary greatly, common denominators include voluntary participation by defendants, cooperation by prosecutors' and public defenders' offices, close scrutiny by judges, urine testing, counseling and 12-step meetings. In most areas, criminal charges are suspended if the program is completed successfully.
A sticking point in some jurisdictions has been disagreement between prosecutors' and public defenders' offices as to whether defendants should be required to plead guilty as a condition of the program. San Francisco's Drug Court has been stalled by the issue and Orange County is on the brink of a compromise.
"There is a very short window of opportunity to get defendants to buy into an extraordinarily intensive program," Judge said. "In order for that to be a success, we must abandon our adversarial roles. The concern that the cases are going to fall apart is overblown, because the level of supervision is far more substantial than the normal track."
As teams of judges, prosecutors, deputy public defenders and law enforcement personnel from Southern California judicial districts met Friday, the president of the California Judges Association called the growing interest timely, considering the "three-strikes" law signed by Gov. Pete Wilson in March.
"There are thousands of people in the state walking around with two strikes who are drug addicts," Municipal Court Judge Rudy Diaz, the CJA president, said in an interview. "Any day they're going to be arrested and looking at life sentences, and we have thousands of those candidates right now."
But it is still to be seen whether the "three-strikes" law will permit the diversion of narcotics cases, Diaz said. The law mandates sentences of 25 years to life in prison on a third felony conviction if the first two were serious crimes.
The conference, which drew representatives from all but Imperial County, shows the emerging interest in finding ways to ease crowded courts and jails to make room for the expected flood of "three strikes" trials, Diaz said.
But some courts are having difficulty finding the money to support such a program.
Los Angeles' Drug Court, which started its program in May, targets 200 drug users from the central and south central areas of the city, using $225,000 in county funds in a rehabilitation program that includes acupuncture.
Judge Frank Hoover of Bakersfield Municipal Court said his program has stayed afloat without funding, using fees charged participants. Other courts, such as the Rio Hondo Judicial District, have used drug forfeiture money to get started.
"We're starting (a Drug Court) in January even if we don't have money," Orange County Superior Court Judge David McEachen said in an interview. "This is going to be the best help for 'three strikes.' The non-violent drug user will not be committing crimes and will not become 'three-strike' people. The predators that must be locked up will be, and the low-level drug offenders will get treatment out of custody. The timing couldn't be better."
A similar conference for Northern California counties is scheduled in Oakland on Nov. 3 to 5, and a nationwide convention is planned for January.
"We have to abandon the old ways we found to be abject failures and extremely costly," Judge told the gathering. "When you get involved in the drug court kind of approach, you see you can do some permanent good, beyond just closing a case."
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