Drug Court Plans Put on Hold as Key Issues Unresolved : Treatment: Planners haggle over how program to help addicts break the cycle of arrests and jail should be run. Furor may prevent project from getting off the ground.

Plans to open a specialized drug court in Ventura County, where addicts would be pushed into treatment instead of hauled off to jail, have been put on hold and may never get off the ground if the parties cannot agree on how it should be run.

A committee of county officials has toiled over the proposal for two years, envisioning the court as a way to help addicts break the cycle of repeated drug arrests and jail sentences. Committee members had expected the court to begin hearing cases this month, but now they have backed away from any promise that it will start at all.

“We ran into a problem that has raised a number of issues for us and we have not yet been able to resolve those issues in a way everyone’s comfortable with,” Municipal Judge Barry B. Klopfer said.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Ronald C. Janes, whose office raised the issues that are causing the current furor, was likewise circumspect.

“I would hope that these are obstacles that can be overcome, but I don’t want to predict anything,” Janes said.

Drug court, an idea that is catching on across the United States, is designed to provide immediate aggressive treatment to drug offenders so that they can overcome their addiction and not commit drug-related crimes, such as burglary.

While a convicted drug user now serves a mandatory jail sentence, in drug court, a person charged with being under the influence of an illegal drug is sent immediately to a treatment program chosen by a trained evaluator.

The drug offender signs a contract that offers rewards and punishments based on compliance with the rules of the program, and both successes and problems are brought swiftly to the judge’s attention, to be dealt with in open court.

As part of the treatment, the addict gets career and job counseling, meets regularly with a probation officer, and is frequently tested for drug use, said Deputy Public Defender Christina Briles, who represents her office on the planning committee.

Dismissal of the criminal conviction is promised if the program is successfully completed.

The concept is a departure from the traditional way of handling drug offenders and requires changed roles--and thinking--for all parties involved in a case.

For prosecutors, it means abandoning a longstanding emphasis on punishment in favor of viewing substance abuse as a disease that should be treated. For defense attorneys, the plan calls for their clients to accept greater responsibility for their actions and recovery.

In Ventura County, prosecutors file about 2,500 misdemeanor cases a year involving people accused of being under the influence of a controlled substance. First-time offenders would continue to go into a much more lenient program called diversion, where they would undergo counseling and the criminal charge would be dismissed.

Repeat offenders charged with misdemeanors would be eligible for drug court.

Ventura County, in attempting to design its drug court, studied what is being done in other jurisdictions but essentially is building its model from scratch. Because of that, each participant in the process--judge, prosecutor, public defender, probation officer, treatment provider, sheriff--lobbies for what he or she believes should be included in the program.

And that lobbying never stops, Klopfer said.

“Everything relates to something else,” he said. “Just about the time you think you’re down to a one-issue problem, your resolution of that issue causes three more to be raised.”

The present sticking point is the insistence by Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury that participants be kicked out of drug court if they test positive for drugs three times during the course of the one-year program.

Those people, who would have already pleaded guilty to the drug charge but not sentenced, would then have to serve 90 days in jail.

Bradbury also wants participants to be drug-free for the last three months of the program. Anyone who “tests dirty” within that time could be forced by the prosecutor to stay in the program up to three extra months.

Janes, who represents Bradbury on the committee, said his office’s latest proposal is an attempt to ensure strict accountability in the program. Although relapse is accepted as part of the rehabilitation process, there should be a limit on how often that can occur, he said.

“I think there should be a significant amount of time with no dirty test before we can dismiss the charge,” Janes said. “It seems irresponsible to me to release somebody until we have a fairly high confidence level that what we’ve attempted to accomplish has been accomplished.”

But Public Defender Kenneth I. Clayman said the district attorney’s proposal takes too much power from the judge and gives it to the prosecutor.

“We’re getting so far away from what the experts say is needed for a drug court, it’s very discouraging,” Clayman said. “The idea is to take a really tough judge, and he ought to be trusted to look at these cases and take the action he feels appropriate, without restrictions.”

Prosecutors and defense attorneys in other counties with drug courts expressed surprise at Bradbury’s proposal. None of their programs has automatic termination for a specific number of positive drug tests, and the judge, not the prosecutor, decides how long a person must be clean before treatment is completed.

“There are so many factors in recovery besides the test,” said Kathy Cantella, a Los Angeles County deputy public defender. “That sounds a little arbitrary to me.”

Cantella said she has seen several “miracles” since Los Angeles County began its drug court in May. Many participants have cleaned up their lives and stayed sober, she said, “but even the best among my clientele struggle to get to that point.”

In Alameda County, there also is no rule saying that a person must leave the program for testing positive for drugs, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jill Klinge said. But she said she understands why Ventura County might take a different approach.

“Your public down there is a little more conservative than our public up here,” Klinge said.

Alameda County Municipal Judge Jeff Tauber, who set up the state’s first drug court in 1990, said Bradbury’s proposal “sounds reasonable.”

“I think that you ought to be clean when you get out of these programs,” he said. “That’s the point of these programs.”

Members of the Ventura County committee, who say they remain committed to trying to resolve their problems, point to the cost-saving potential of the drug court.

Addicts typically have numerous offenses, and go through a repeated cycle of arrests and incarcerations. A recent state study said every dollar spent on treatment for drug and alcohol abuse saves $7, mostly through the reduction in crime and health-care costs.

“Twenty years in the business has taught me that incarceration works (for addicts) . . . from the sorry standpoint that during that time, they’re off the street and they’re not committing other crimes,” Janes said. “We look at this program as a chance to extend that window of time to hopefully forever.”

The uproar over Bradbury’s proposal is not the first time that there has been a major disagreement that threatened the future of the court. Last year, Clayman and his deputies expressed outrage that defendants would be required to plead guilty before they could enter the drug court program.

Clayman finally agreed to the guilty plea, saying he believed that he had no choice. Having a drug court with some restrictions would be better than no drug court at all because it is best for his clients, he said.

But with the latest Bradbury proposal, Clayman said he is having doubts that the program will work.

“The more of these restrictions that are raised limiting the ability to render individual treatment to the persons involved, the more difficult it is to have a drug court,” he said.

Briles, Clayman’s deputy, was somewhat more optimistic.

“I’ve been working on this for two years and I don’t want to do or say anything that will jeopardize the program, . . . but we’re having a rough time right now,” she said.

And Klopfer said he believes that the project will not be abandoned, if for no other reason than that so many people have worked hard to try to make it happen.

“Something, I believe, is going to come out of this,” he said. “Exactly what form it’s going to take, I don’t know.”