and/or certified drug and alcohol coun- selor. The participants were given weekly homework assignments in which they were obliged to discuss their abuse of drugs and/ or alcohol and the reasons for that behav- ior. At the same time, they were subject to weekly urinalysis tests during their regularly scheduled appointments. If a test showed that a defendant had been using drugs and/or alcohol, he or she had to continue counseling until the test results were con- sistently negative indicating that the person had “sampled sobriety.” On October 22, 2012, representatives of Spectrum called a news conference to present the evaluation report for the rap- id referral program. The Report documents the recidivism rate for the first 171 defen- dants who had completed court-ordered pre-trial treatment at Spectrum. Recidivism was defined as an arrest and conviction for any crime which was committed after the completion of pre-trial treatment. The re- cidivism rate for defendants who had com- pleted treatment was 18.7%, while the re- cidivism rate for the 394 untreated defen- dants in the Control Group was 84.3%. The Report has been described by Judge Amy Davenport, the Administrative Judge for the Vermont courts, as “eye-popping.” The evaluation report was prepared by Peter Wicklund and Tim Halvorsen of the Vermont Center for Justice Research. In or- der to make a valid evaluation of the effec- tiveness of Spectrum’s counseling services, the Center investigators decided to com- pare the recidivism rate for Spectrum-treat- ed defendants with the recidivism rate for a valid test control group. Approximately 14,000 people were arraigned in the Chit- tenden County Superior Court, Criminal Di- vision, in the period from January 1, 2006 to January 1, 2012. The Center workers sorted out this large group using the characteris- tics of the treated defendants to create a control group of 394 defendants. The char- acteristics of the control group were closely matched to the characteristics of the study group. The Report contains tables that show how effective pre-trial treatment was in reducing recidivism.5 The Report demonstrates that untreat- ed defendants commit crimes at a much higher rate than offenders who have com- pleted drug treatment. It should be kept in mind that the program probably has not only saved money for the judiciary, law en- forcement, the state’s attorney’s office, and the Department of Corrections, but it has also saved money that the state would have spent on foster care for the children of ad- dicted parents who could not care for them. Certainly, the rapid referral program does involve some additional expenses. If a de- fendant refuses to show up for assessment and/or treatment, the state’s attorney’s of- fice may move for a condition violation
www.vtbar.org
hearing to force compliance with the court order. The biggest expense of the program is the cost of providing treatment. If a de- fendant has commercial or private medical insurance, most of the costs are paid by the insurance policy. If a defendant has Med- icaid coverage, then the treatment cost is absorbed by Medicaid as part of a feder- al substance abuse block grant provided to the states. If a defendant is uninsured and does not have Medicaid coverage, there is a Medicaid fund in the block grant that pays for treating the uninsured. It would be a shame if these Medicaid funding sourc- es were reduced or eliminated from the federal budget. It is also possible that the state might decide to use these block grant funds to pay for other initiatives as we go through health care reform. Ideally, law enforcement should expedite the consideration of the treatment option by bringing defendants to court for arraign- ment as soon as possible. In a typical case, a defendant is cited to appear for arraign- ment four to six weeks after arrest. There is a procedure called flash-citing that allows a defendant to be brought to court within days of his/her arrest. Addicts and counsel- ors say that it is beneficial to start treatment as early as possible in a person’s addiction. (Perhaps a future evaluation study will test the validity of this proposition.) Substance abuse causes terrible damage to addicts, their families, and the commu- nity as a whole. We will never know the ex- act number of criminal acts that were not committed because of pre-trial treatment, but we now know, for sure, that a substan- tial number of crimes have been prevent- ed in Chittenden County by the rapid refer- ral program. As a result, many of our fellow citizens and businesses have not been vic- timized. It will be more expensive to pro- vide assessment and treatment services for defendants who live in rural areas out- side of Chittenden County, but these ser- vices should be available there as well. All the communities in Vermont need this help. Treatment works to prevent crime. ____________________ Hon. Ben W. Joseph is a retired Vermont superior court judge.
____________________ 1
Hon. Ben W. Joseph, Drug Treatment as a Condition of Release, VT. BAR J., winter 2011, at p. 34, available at
http://www.pretrial.org/News- AndArticles/PretrialPressDocuments/DrugTreat-
3
A reader of the Report will notice that the re- cidivism tables for the Spectrum-treated defen- dants show that some of the defendants in the study group were over twenty-three when they committed new offenses. The overwhelming ma- jority of those defendants were under twenty-
ment.pdf. 4
three when they were first referred for treatment. 5
See Table 1 in the Final Report. THE VERMONT BAR JOURNAL • WINTER 2013 17
reports/
spectrum2report.html. 2
http://www.vcjr.org/reports/reportscrimjust/ 13 V.S.A. § 7554(a)(1)(C).
Treatment Prevents Crime - The Rapid Referral Program
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