NADCP President Jeffrey Tauber – Reentry Court Solutions

July 25, 2014

My interest in crime and punishment began early in my career. After graduating from Boston University Law School in 1971, I spent 16 months traveling around the world, visiting over 40 nations. My travels weren’t focused on criminal justice issues, but I found myself drawn to how different cultures dealt with social deviation. In 1988, before taking the bench as a judge, I spent four months in the South Pacific; this time visiting courtrooms, judges, jails and prisons, focusing on how Polynesian and Maori cultures dealt with criminal conduct.

In the 1990’s, one of my priorities as NADCP’s founding President, was to see that the nascent drug court field did not collapse into a more punitive and destructive system than that which had existed before. At the time I was painfully aware of the shortcoming of some of our drug courts. Jurisdictions created drug courts for small numbers of offenders, with minimal or nonexistent drug dependence, and an over-reliance on non-therapeutic custodial sanctions. It was a direction that I strongly opposed and NADCP made a major effort to counter (and did so successfully in 1997 with the publication of “Defining Drug Courts: Key Components”)

These issues were unfortunately magnified at the international level. While the drug court model was adopted successfully in westernized nations based on the english legal system (specifically Canada and Australia), the idea that they could be easily adopted in traditional, third world countries was a somewhat fanciful notion. International Drug Courts provided a level of prestige for the U.S. model (especially before the Congress and state legislatures), but didn’t catch on in a significant way in non-westernized nations. Societies that didn’t have treatment programs, trained clinicians, drug-testing, or probation systems, let alone decent housing or clean water, would have a hard time replicating an American drug court model.

Though I traveled widely in the 1990’s on behalf of NADCP and Drug Courts across the globe, it was with some skepticism about expanding drug courts internationally and an emphasis on what other cultures could devise that would accomplish the goals of drug courts, without actually adopting the model itself.

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June 11, 2013

Richard A. Viguerie, a leading conservative figure, argues for Prison Reform, in an OP ED piece in the New York Times (click on image on the left for article). He argues that “Conservatives known for being tough on crime should now be equally tough on failed, too-expensive criminal programs. They should demand more cost-effective approaches that enhance public safety and the well-being of all Americans”.

While it’s wonderful that the conservative movement appears to support Prison and Sentencing Reform, the law enforcement community and its conservative allies provided key support for alternatives to prison (read: Drug Court) as early as the mid 90’s.

I had the opportunity to observe this phenomenum up close. While I found limited local law enforcement and conservative support for Drug Court in the early 1990’s, the environment began to change by 1994. When I returned to D.C., as the President of the newly formed National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP), the political climate had changed, but not necessarily for the better.

The Republican party had taken over the Congress in 1994, and it wasn’t clear that funding for drug courts written into the budget by the Clinton administration would survive. It would take support for drug courts from key republican committee chairs and members, to fund the nascent drug courts. This could be described as a critical point in the drug court movement’s development, when this new innovation could have easily faltered without adequate funding.

I saw my job, as NADCP’s President, to encourage and provide support to drug court judges, D.A.s and others who were willing to visit their Congressional members, both in D.C. and at home. It was their job to convince those Congressional leaders that drug courts worked and deserved federal funding. I contacted Drug Court judges from key states with Republican Chairs or influential congressmen, I encouraged drug court judges to visit D.C.and meet with congressional members, and I made sure that visiting judges had talking points and other information to rely on in private conversations. I had no idea how successful a strategy that was to be.

It turned out that the judges (especially) liked to work the halls of congress and were more than willing to move to the fore in supporting drug court funding and visiting with their members of Congress. Many a judge went to school or belonged to the same social circle or clubs as our state and congressional leaders. Drug Court Judges invited their congressmen and local political leaders to visit their drug court (preferably at a graduation, when they would be given the opportunity to speak at the ceremony, before the media). Many of the important Committee Chairs had drug courts and drug court judges from their jurisdictions advocating for drug court funding. And it didn’t matter much whether they were democrat or republican, liberal or conservative.

While many a new program died that political season, drug courts received there first ever federal funding from a Republican controlled Congress.

No. 7 : Accomplishing Drug Court Reform without Drug Courts

Early Conservative Support for Drug Courts