'They need help': Judge says treatment court addresses drug abuse in Scott County

Prior Lake American

On a Monday afternoon in the Scott County District Courthouse, Scott County Judge Christian Wilton stood at a podium in courtroom No. 3.

Clad in sweeping black robes, Wilton addressed the people in front of him.

“The most important thing is that you’re here,” Wilton said. “Without you being here, we can’t get you better. You’ve got to show up, always got to tell the truth, always be respectful and you’ve got to try.”

Scott County Treatment Court convened that day, July 30, as it had each Monday for the past two years. Wilton and Scott County District Judge Caroline Lennon preside over it; Scott County District Judge Rex Stacey presided over the court until Sept. 3.

July 30 also marked the graduation of the program’s first two participants — two more participants have since graduated.

Drug use in Scott County

The Scott County Treatment Court began in October 2016 as a method to combat rising heroin and methamphetamine use in the county.

From 2011 to 2015, felony drug case court filings in the county rose from 216 to 399 total, an increase of 85 percent, according to the State Court Administrator’s Office.

“I’d say 50 percent of the work I see any more is drug related,” Scott County Attorney’s Office prosecutor Michael Budka said. “Treatment court is ... taking the high-risk, high-need people that, for the most part, won’t be successful on traditional probation, and we’re giving them a chance to succeed.”

Of 281 people in Scott County who underwent drug or alcohol abuse treatment in 2014, more than 23 percent were abusing or had abused heroin, according to the Minnesota Department of Human Services Alcohol and Drug Abuse Division.

“Scott County is unique compared to a lot of other counties — not only do we have a methamphetamine problem, but we’re honestly one of the fewer counties that also have a heroin epidemic,” Wilton said in an interview. “Generally, nobody is going to overdose on methamphetamine. It’ll end up killing them — people will lose their hair and teeth and die early. People use heroin, and that could be your first and last use.”

Dealers will often cut illegal drugs, like methamphetamine or heroin, with other products in order to make the volume of what’s being sold larger at less cost to the dealer, Wilton said.

Methamphetamine is often cut with baking soda or Methylsulfonylmethane, commonly known as MSM, Wilton said, while heroin is increasingly cut with the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Synthetic opioids such as fentanyl were involved in more than 29,400 overdose deaths in the United States in 2017, according to the institute. Heroin was involved in nearly 16,000 deaths in the same time period, and methamphetamine was involved in more than 10,700.

Wilton said he and the other judges in Scott County were seeing repeat drug use offenders without much recourse. The offenders would be sentenced to 30 days in jail, then 90, then 120 before finally getting prison time.

“Especially with the 20-somethings, we were eventually putting them in jail over and over and over and nobody was making it,” Wilton said. “If you came into my courtroom at 23 years old and you were a drug addict and you’d failed treatment a couple times, I would put you on probation to me, and I’d make you come back to court every two or three weeks and kind of run it like treatment court without knowing what a treatment court was.”

One of those 20-somethings was a Shakopee woman who Wilton said was an “impetus” to the treatment court. The woman appeared before Wilton in 2014, addicted to heroin and eight months pregnant.

Instead of sending her to prison, Wilton had the woman appear before him every two weeks after she had her baby. She relapsed twice, but the unofficial treatment court continued, and in June 2016, at 444 days sober, Wilton ended her probation.

“People don’t grow up and say, ‘What I really want to do in my life is be a heroin addict,’” Wilton said. “I look at our young people who are hooked on meth and heroin, and they need help. ... Because of all that, we decided to make a push to see if we could open up and start a treatment court.’”

Sending repeat offenders through the criminal justice system also does not address underlying issues associated with drug or alcohol abuse — for instance, those who struggle with mental illness.

About 50 percent of people who experience a mental illness also will experience a substance use disorder, according to the drug abuse institute.

“Everyone, everyone suffers from some type of mental health issue. Everyone,” said Tim Groth, a program director for The Haven, an outpatient chemical dependency treatment center in Shakopee and Waconia. “There are people that deal with this by going to therapy, perhaps taking medications, and then there’s other people that turn to drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism.”

Groth said the coping mechanism works at first and can be validated by positive experiences — for instance, if an anxious person were to drink alcohol and be less anxious in social situations as a result. At some point, the coping mechanism becomes an addiction that no longer works to address the underlying issue.

Treatment courts

Drug treatment courts in the United States began in 1989 in Florida to combat the crack cocaine epidemic, according to Pacific Standard magazine. There are now more than 3,500 drug courts across the country, according to the National Drug Court Research Center.

“The drug court effort is the most-researched criminal justice initiative in the last 30 years,” said Prior Lake Police Chief Mark Elliott, who sits on the steering committee for the treatment court. “The research that has been done time and time again shows it’s effective. In trying to improve our communities — make our communities safer — if we can find a program that helps people that are committing crimes to get clean so they stop committing crime to support their habits, that’s good for our community. It’s good for those individuals.”

Treatment courts aim to end substance abuse for participants with frequent court hearings, probation, curfew checks, drug testings, chemical dependency and mental health treatment, skills programming, incentives, sanctions and more.

“A lot of people have this idea like, ‘Oh, this is a get out of jail free card for people,’” said Shakopee Police Sgt. Jamie Pearson and law enforcement liaison for the treatment court. “It’s absolutely not that. It’s the opposite of that. ... It’s a lot of work. They’re watched very closely. They have cops knocking on their door at 3 a.m., waking them up, waking their family up, and they agreed to it.”

Treatment court graduate Laura, whose name has been changed at the request of her family to protect her identity, said the skills programming was a large part of her success in the program.

“I didn’t have all the skills I missed out on learning because I was using and I didn’t care about my life,” Laura said. “That’s what treatment court helped me with. If you stay sober, it means nothing if you don’t have life skills and you don’t know how to be productive as a human being. I fell behind, and treatment court really caught me back up.”

In June 2016, the Scott County Board voted to fund the treatment court with $900,000 for three years, or $300,000 each year through 2019. The treatment court also received a three-year, $350,000 federal grant in October 2016 from the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to implement the program and offset the cost for the county.

The Scott County treatment court program now has 25 participants. People who committed violent crimes, such as those involving a firearm or force against another person resulting in death or injury, are not eligible to participate in the court. Those with felony DWIs are also not eligible.

Those wanting to participate — and participation in the court is a choice made on the part of the person who committed the crime — must enter a guilty plea or admit to a probation violation.

Only 25 percent of people who graduate from treatment courts will be arrested again in the two years after completing the program, according to the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

Participants complete five phases in order to be considered for graduation in Scott County. Each phase has goals for completion such as being sober for a certain amount of time, regularly completing drug testing, finding a job and going through counseling.

The “all angles” approach makes treatment court operate differently than the regular programming of hearing, trial and sentencing in the Scott County District Court.

The participants chat with each other before court starts. Once it begins, the judges address each participant by name and discuss how the two weeks went or what personal issues the participant might be struggling with. Those who relapse or miss drug tests receive sanctions, while those who reach a sobriety milestone receive commendation.

Two months sober. Twenty months sober. Eligible to move to the next phase. House arrest for a missed test. Six months sober. Weekend in jail for new charges. Three months sober.

Then there are personal updates.

An ill father. A son who turned 4 months old. A raise at work. A new job. Vignettes of regular life as people wrest themselves free from addiction.