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Recovery in the News
Program gives second chance to offenders
Erica L. Green
Gazette.net
April 9, 2009
Austin Goodin stood before Frederick County Circuit Court Judge Julie Stevenson Solt on a recent Thursday, as she read a verdict, indicative of the hardships he had endured in the previous four months.
He stood with his hands behind his back, his head cocked to the side, shifting from one foot to the other waiting for Solt to finish her decree. At its end, Solt descended from behind her bench and presented him with two options: A hug or a handshake.
Goodin accepted a hug from the judge, as she congratulated him on his promotion to the next stage of recovery in the Frederick County Drug Treatment Court program. He now has more freedom in his 15-month- journey to a clean life and clean record.
"Usually when we go before a judge, they're just handing us our time," said Goodin, 32, of his decision to hug Solt at the hearing. "She's trying to help us save our lives."
Goodin was among more than 20 former drug addicts at Frederick County Circuit Court on the morning of March 26, as part of a weekly mandated check-in with Solt and staff of the Frederick County State's Attorney's Office.
The Frederick County Drug Treatment Court program began in May 2005. It offers an alternative sentencing of sorts, allowing drug users to confront their guilty pleas rather than serve time in jail.
Addicts, in prison or on their way to prison, are able to apply for the program and undergo an intensive 15-plus months of drug treatment, physical and mental rehabilitation, and continuing life support. The end result is to suspend all drug-related-charges against them.
Deputy State's Attorney Nanci Hamm said initially the program's similarity to an outpatient rehabilitation program was unconvincing.
"I had this image of drug court being everybody standing around, holding hands and making excuses," Hamm said. "The more I learned, the more I realized that it was all about accountability. It's not excusing behavior. It's a program when nothing else has worked."
Hamm said what convinced her was that the first step in applying for the program is to plead guilty to felony drug charges. The program is voluntary and responsibility-driven, with participants attending mandatory meetings, court dates and drug testing.
Only 20 people of the 80 who have enrolled in the program since it began have been terminated from it — most were in the first year of implementation, said Paul Wolford, drug court coordinator. The program has graduated 19; another a large-scale graduation is planned for May.
"What happens far too often is they enter into treatment and it goes really well," Wolford said, "but once they've done that, their other life issues weren't addressed well enough for them to get them to have the leverage."
Charles Williams, a 15-year-resident of Frederick, knows this all too well. He found himself facing life in prison if all of his drug-related charges came to fruition. Now, he's about two months from graduating from the drug court program after more than a year of intensive detoxification from crack cocaine and of repressed childhood traumas of incest, neglect and death.
After multiple relapses, Williams said he realized that what he couldn't fulfill in his life, he put into his veins.
"I started making good money and thinking that life was OK, and then life started doing me terrible and I went back to alcohol and crack," Williams said. "We just don't wake up one day and say, ‘We're going to go break the law.' There are always underlying issues."
As Williams recalled sniffing floor cracks of abandoned houses for any white powdery substance he could find, he said that he now realizes his 20-plus years of drug abuse was to self-medicate.
"Thank God, the judge realized that I just had a drug addiction," Williams said. "I think she could see that something was in me that I couldn't see it at the time."
Those who have completed the program swear that when you see it, there's no going back.
Korey Shorb, 31, of Walkersville remembers ripping off a coin machine from a laundry facility in Baltimore City and smoking $1,500 worth of heroine he bought with the profits on the same day.
He carried out robberies, stole from his mother and ate six Christmas meals in jail. Shorb said that when he heard about the drug court program, he didn't have much of a choice but to join it.
"At the time, I didn't care what it was — I would sign the paper to get out of jail because I had that 12 years hanging over my head," he said. "I came up in a small town, grew up on a farm and watched videos that glorified that stuff. A country boy like me could not stand prison."
Shorb, who grew up in Emmitsburg but made the streets of Baltimore City his stomping grounds, graduated from drug court in February 2008. He was thrown out of the program once for drinking alcohol, but was let back in after serving a short stint in prison.
"Drug court definitely gives you enough room to hang yourself, but also to pull yourself out," Shorb said.
Now, Shorb pays his own bills, has a steady job and owns a car for the first time in his life. He even counsels teens and other addicts.
"Drug court really changed my life," Shorb said. "Sometimes I'm just speechless; I just sit and shake my head."