For a true believer in the war on drugs, Goldstein’s court might seem like a standing memorial to Hunter-Thompson-a nightmare of junkie-coddling gone wild. But Goldstein, 64, is an ex-cop presiding over a last-ditch program designed in part by former state attorney Janet Reno in the crime-ridden heart of a law-and-order state. Goldstein’s Drug Court, as it’s known,is being studied and imitated around the country, and it’s emblematic of a growing realization in the criminal-justice system:-that the lock-’em-up strategy of the 1980s has failed and that the goal of drug enforcement should be to get people off drugs, not fill up prisons.
The war on drugs has succeeded wildly in packing prisons, but that’s about all. The number of adults in state and federal prisons on drug charges more than tripled between 1986 and 1991; nearly one in every three new state prisoners is a drug offender, up from one in 25 in 1960 (chart). Despite massive, costly expansion programs, prisons are more crowded than ever, proving a new corrections maxim: if you build them, even more inmates will come. Much of the population explosion is due to mandatory minimum sentences imposed by Congress in 1987 for even the smallest federal drug violations; many states have imposed mandatory minimums as well. But the stiff sentences and huge incarceration rates have had little impact on recidivism or on the availability of drugs on the street. " If there is a customer for cocaine, someone will sell it to him," says Mark A.R. Kleiman, a former Justice Department drug-policy analyst now at Harvard’s Kennedy School.
LSD buy:Meanwhile, the lock-’em-up strategy has had severe unintended consequences. Some states, under court orders to ease prison overcrowding, are routinely releasing violent criminals early to make room for drug offenders. “There is no statutory requirement that murderers and rapists be kept in the clink, but there is a requirement that druggies be kept in,” says Northwestern University law professor Daniel Polsby. Often as not, many judges say, it’s the mules and gofers who are getting long sentences, while high-level traffickers are able to cut deals by betraying other associates. The Washington, D.C.based Families Against Mandatory Minimums cites the case of an 18-year-old Alabama high-school senior sentenced to 10 years for federal drug conspiracy because she told an undercover agent where to meet her boyfriend to buy LSD. The boyfriend, who pleaded guilty and cooperated with prosecutors, got only five years.
Some judges are openly rebelling against the system. Fed up with mandatory sentences, about 50 senior federal judges have refused to hear any more drug cases. Others have disobeyed sentencing rules and a few have resigned in protest. “You get a kid who makes a mistake. If he’s involved with enough drugs then it’s a 10-year minimum mandatory sentence and he has to do 8 1/2 years. To me, that’s ludicrous,” says J. Lawrence Irving, who quit the federal bench in San Diego in 1990. Attorney General Reno evidently agrees. Last month she ordered a Justice Department review to determine if some drug offenders are being forced to serve excessively long terms.
‘No reason’:The prison crunch has renewed talk in some quarters about legalizing drugs. “I’m a conservative judge in a conservative county. I’m not Timothy Leary. I’ve never used this garbage in my life and never will,” says Orange County, Calif, Superior Court Judge James P. Gray, who advocates legalization. “But I sit in my courtroom churning these people through the system for no good reason.” Gray, along with Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, former secretary of state George Shultz and others recently signed a resolution urging President Clinton to convene a national commission that would declare drug use a medical-not law-enforcement-problem.
But legalizing drug use is neither politically popular nor realistic. Instead, growing numbers of legal experts, including Reno, are embracing alternative treatment programs as the most sensible, and cost-effective, way to attack drug problems and reduce gridlock in the jails. One innovative program at the county jail in Hagerstown, Md., offers substance abusers a chance to get clean and learn some practical skills while serving roughly half their usual sentences. “Clients,” as they are called, get to live in clean, bright dormitory-style units while they undergo counseling and attend lectures on topics like balancing a checkbook, before being released into an after-care program. The recidivism rate for inmates who’ve gone through treatment is 22 percent-roughly one third the county average. “This program teaches you that you can change,” says Mike Saponara, who spent six years as a hard-core junkie–even burgling his father-in-law’s house to support his $250-a-day morphine habit. “When I came here, I was a drug addict and a burglar. Now I’m a recovering addict with hope.”
Go home:Judge Goldstein hands out a similar message, perhaps 50 times a day, in Dade’s Drug Court. There, drug offenders with no history of violence are allowed to return home, with no jail time, provided they agree to a yearlong treatment program and reappear before Goldstein every month or so. Those who keep testing positive for drugs may be sent to jail or residential programs for a few weeks to detoxify. Those who complete the program successfully have the case expunged from their records. “Every one of them goes into treatment expecting to fail,” says Hugh Rodham, the public defender’s chief Drug Court lawyer (and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother). “When they come back in with three urine tests showing dirty, they expect to be thrown out of the program. But they come in front of a judge who says, ‘Come on, fella.’ They get encouragement.”
Indeed, Goldstein hands out a seemingly inexhaustible measure of Tough Love from his bench:
“You dropped 15 urines-all dirty,” Goldstein tells a well-groomed man in a black suit. “I’m going to take you in and clean you up, put you in a residential program.”
“I’m going to lose my job,” the man protests.
“It’s a choice between your life or your job,” Goldstein says as a guard takes the man’s watch and wallet. “It’s going to be all right, Albert. Don’t worry about it. All you gotta worry about today is you.”
