Recovery Court Launches Newsletter
Judge Karen Abrams, St. Mary’s County Circuit Court
With an outstanding recovery rate into its fifth year — holding an 20 percent recidivism rate (a return to the judicial system for committing a crime) compared to a 40 percent rate nationwide — St. Mary’s County Adult Substance Abuse Recovery Court is recognized as one of the state’s strongest Problem Solving Courts.
The program is designed to assist people who are being convicted of a crime or who are violating their probation for crimes that are driven by their addictions.
To expand awareness of the court and inform the general community of the tremendous savings recovery court provides St. Mary’s County in dollar and human costs, the SARC advisory board is launching both a newsletter and a Recovery Court Alumni organization as SARC gears up for its May 19, 2014 Graduation.
Recovery Court is designed to keep qualifying addicted offenders in the community, treat their addictions and break the cycle of incarceration and recidivism through development of a successfully abstinent lifestyle.
On a purely fiscal level, incarceration costs $99-105 per day, between $36,135 and 38,325 per year per offender. Recovery Court reduces that cost to $19 per day, $7,105 per year. In human capital, it is the difference between a perennial offender and a productive community member.
“It’s not that we’re picking people who are easy to remediate, that’s not it at all,” Circuit Court Administrative Judge Karen H. Abrams says of St. Mary’s success rate, “because those people who are easy to re-mediate don’t need us. . . . It still is people who are hard core addicts and alcoholics and whose lives have become revolved around their substance abuse and they really need a lot of help.”
It rarely takes less than 18 months and can often can take a great deal longer for an intensely focused team of treatment and correctional overseers to produce a graduate, the hardest work demanded of the graduates themselves. Upon graduation, Judge Abrams says, ” … they are working, they are paying their bills, they are supporting themselves, they are supporting their children, they’ve paid off their fines, their restitution their court costs, and back child support is getting paid off. They’ve actually changed their lives.”
Along with Program Coordinator Pete Cucinotta, Judge Abrams launched St. Mary’s first adult recovery court in 2009 with a federal grant that expired in 2012. State and county funds continue the operation today of the successful Problem Solving Court.
In the video below Judge Abrams discusses the growing need for mental health treatment and for sober housing, not sufficiently covered currently and facing a steep uptick in demand.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBR6CoBC6-g&feature=youtu.be]
