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As practitioners and advocates in the drug court movement, we all know that drug courts work. Every day those of us in the field develop empirical and anecdotal evidence to prove that criminal justice and drug reform policy dollars are best spent on drug treatment and other problem-solving courts. The observations made by Lonny Shavelson, in Hooked: Five Addicts Challenge our Misguided Drug Rehab System add credence to these facts. Shavelson
began writing
a
magazine article to determine the effectiveness
of
the “Treatment
on
Demand” system
in San Francisco,
California. He was so
intrigued by
his preliminary
findings
for
the
article that he embarked on a two-year
journey
tracking the process of five addicts through different California voluntary
and court-mandated treatment programs. In this chronicle of five addicts
trying to get clean, Shavelson follows them behind the closed doors of
rehabilitation centers, doctors’ offices, and judges’ chambers, and, often
back to the street. He highlights the inadequacy of some programs to
address issues that often accompany drug addiction such as mental illness,
homelessness, child abuse and poverty. Shavelson’s findings lead him to
argue for an integrated approach to drug treatment that addresses the root
causes of drug abuse. It
is clear from Shavelson’s writing that the drug court model, observed by him
in the San Francisco Drug Court under Judge Newton Lam, best meets the needs
of the addicts who so desperately need help. He finds that “drug courts
provide not only coerced treatment but coordinated treatment, bringing the
myriad aspects of rehab together under the watchful eye of a single agency. The
author devotes a significant section of his book to drug courts and ultimately
concludes, “the rehab methods employed by our drug courts provide an ideal
model for successful drug rehabilitation.”
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