NORTH CAROLINA LAW REVIEW Volume 78 | Number 5 Article 5 6-1-2000 The Drug Court Scandal Morris B. Hoffman Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/nclr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Morris B. Hoffman, The Drug Court Scandal, 78 N.C. L. Rev. 1437 (2000). Available at: http://scholarship.law.unc.edu/nclr/vol78/iss5/5 This Comments is brought to you for free and open access by Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in North Carolina Law Review by an authorized administrator of Carolina Law Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. COMMENTARY THE DRUG COURT SCANDAL MORRIS B. HOFFMAN* In this Commentary, Judge Hoffman criticizes state and local jurisdictions for rushing to implement drug courts without seriously evaluating their effectiveness or considering their policy implications. After surveying the research on drug court effectiveness and examining the policy issues that inhere in drug courts, Judge Hoffman concludes that there is little evidence that drug courts reduce recidivism and substantial evidence that they createprofound operationaland institutionalproblems. INTRODUCITON ..................................................................................... 1439 I. DRUGS AND DRUG LAWS: A BRIEF HISTORY ..................... 1441 A. History of Drugs.................................................................. 1441 B. History of Drug Laws ......................................................... 1454 II. THE RUSH TO DEVELOP DRUG COURTS ............................... 1460 III. UNANSWERED SCIENTIFIC AND MEDICAL QUESTIONS: IS THERE A DRUG EPIDEMIC, AND IS DRUG ADDICTION A TREATABLE DISEASE 9 ............................... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1464 A. Rates of Drug Use ............................................................... 1465 B. The Disease Model of Addiction ....................................... 1469 IV. UNEXAMINED JURISPRUDENTIAL CONCERNS: WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF DRUG COURTS? ...................... .. .. .. .. 1473 * District Judge, Second Judicial District (Denver), State of Colorado. The views expressed here are, of course, my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the District Court for the Second Judicial District or of any of my colleagues on that court. I want to thank Professors Albert W. Alschuler from the University of Chicago and William T. Pizzi from the University of Colorado for their encouragement. I also want to thank my law clerks, Edward A. DeCecco and Catherine A. Woods, and two student interns from the University of Denver School of Law, Andrew J. Willett and Steven J. Wienczkowski, for their help in gathering some of the medical information, history, social science, and other material on which I have relied in this Commentary. Finally, I want to thank my colleague William G. Meyer, who, with unbounded energy and enthusiasm, fathered the Denver Drug Court and presided over its first two and one-half years. Judge Meyer and I may disagree about our nation's rush into drug courts, but no one who knows him can doubt his motives or fail to be impressed with his zeal as a reformer and his skills as a judge. 1438 NORTH CAROLINA LAW REVIEW [Vol. 78 V. UNEXAMINED EFFECTIVENESS: Do DRUG COURTS W ORK? ................................................. ....................................... 1479 A. GeneralMethodological Issues .......................................... 1481 1. Selecting the Control .................................................... 1481 2. Selecting the Target ...................................................... 1483 3. Selecting the Impact Measure ..................................... 1484 B. Informal Impact Surveys .................................................... 1489 C. FormalImpact Studies ........................................................ 1491 1. 1991 American Bar Association Study ...................... 1491 2. 1994 Maricopa County Study ....................................... 1493 3. 1994 Dade County Study .............................................. 1494 4. 1996 Baltimore Study ................................................... 1494 5. The 1996 Congressional Directive and the 1997 Sherman Report ............................................................ 1494 6. Post-1996 Studies: The General Accounting Office and Belenko Meta-Studies ........................................... 1495 VI. UNEXAMINED OPERATIONAL CONCERNS: How Do DRUG COURTS REALLY WORK, AND WHAT IMPACTS ARE THEY HAVING ON THE REST OF THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM ? ................................................ ...................................... 1499 A. The Organizationof the Denver District Court ............... 1499 B. The Rush to Formation....................................................... 1500 C. The Popcorn Effect ............................................................. 1501 D. Trying to Deal with the PopcornEffect ............................ 1508 E. Exploding PrisonPopulations ........................................... 1510 F. Cookie Cutter Sentences ..................................................... 1512 G. Quality Concerns................................................................. 1515 H. ChangingJudges .................................................................. 1517 I. PermanentDrug Court Bureaucracy................................ 1518 J. INS ........................................................................................ 1519 VII. UNEXAMINED INSTITUTIONAL CONCERNS: SHOULD JUDGES BE MAKING THESE FUNDAMENTAL POLICY DECISIONS, AND SHOULD THEIR TALENTS BE WASTED IMPLEMENTING THEM? .................................. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1523 A. Separation of Powers.......................................................... 1523 1. Impinging on the Legislative Function ....................... 1525 2. Impinging on the Executive Function ........................ 1526 B. FederalIntrusion ................................................................. 1528 C. Intra-BranchProblems ....................................................... 1529 1. Glorified Probation Officers ........................................ 1529 2. Institutionalizing a Single Judge's Sentencing Philosophy ...................................................................... 1531 2000] THE DRUG COURT SCANDAL 1439 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................... 1533 INTRODUCTION Drug courts are sweeping the country, a contagion fueled by federal grants and sparked by well-intentioned state and local trial judges frustrated by the lost war on drugs. These specialized courts are changing the criminal justice landscape in fundamental ways. They are affecting the arrest policies of officers on the street, the charging policies of prosecutors, and the very nature of the judicial function. They are changing the way judges deal with prosecutors, defense lawyers, defendants, and each other. They are increasing the already unhealthy interdependency of the judicial branch and the burgeoning cottage industry of private treatment providers. They are significantly altering the allocation of limited judicial resources. They are filling our state prisons with drug users, despite promising to do just the opposite. They are inviting comprehensive federal involvement, thereby risking comprehensive federal meddling, in the day-to-day operations of state and local courts. And they are doing all of this with nary an intellectual shot being fired.' 1. Despite the fact that hundreds of drug courts have spread to jurisdictions all over the United States and hundreds more are scheduled to spread, see infra text accompanying note 114, they have been the object of almost no serious legal scholarship. Bar journals, judicial journals, and, to a lesser extent, law reviews are filled with short articles about drug courts, usually about recently adopted drug courts and often written by the judges who founded the courts. See, e.g., Susan Gochros, Hawaii Drug Court, Ho '01a Hou (Renewed Life), HAW. BJ., Mar. 1998, at 32 passim; Judge Stephen L. Henriod, Drug Court in the Third District,UTAH B.J., Aug. 1997, at 35 passim; Hon. William D. Hunter, Drug Treatment Courts: An Innovative Approach to the Drug Problem in Louisiana, 44 LA. BJ. 418passim (1997); Judith S. Kaye, Special Report: The State of the Judiciary,N.Y. ST. BJ., May/June 1998, at 50 passim; Claire McCaskill, Combat Drug Court: An Innovative Approach to Dealing with Drug Abusing First Time Offenders, 66 UMKC L. REv. 493 passim (1998); Hon. Sheila M. Murphy, Drug Courts: An Effective, Efficient Weapon in the War on Drugs, 85 ILL. B.J. 474 passim (1997). Most of these articles are long on anecdote and self-congratulation, but painfully short on analysis. The one exception I came across was a refreshingly restrained and thoughtful piece written by William Keesley, who is a South Carolina Circuit Court judge. See Hon. William P. Keesley, Drug Courts, S.C. LAW., July/Aug. 1998, at 32. The few scholarly treatments addressing drug courts are aimed at broader issues of "restorative justice" or "therapeutic jurisprudence," and their discussions of drug courts tend to be quite clipped. E.g., Hon. Peggy Fulton Hora et al., Therapeutic Jurisprudence and the Drug Treatment Court Movement: Revolutionizing the CriminalJustice System's Response to Drug Abuse and Crime in America, 74 NOTRE DAMn L. REV. 439 passim (1999); David B. Wexler, Reflections on the Scope of Therapeutic Jurisprudence, 1