On January 30, members of the South Dakota Senate debated Senate Bill 83, which would reform criminal penalties related to drug use, as local outlet KXLG reported.

The current felony charge can be triggered when you “knowingly ingest a controlled drug or substance or have a controlled drug or substance in an altered state in the body,” excluding medical use. The charge can apply on the first incident. 

If passed, the bill would reduce the ingestion charge to a misdemeanor on the first or second incidents. The defendant could be sentenced to probation, with a requirement to undergo an evaluation and “complete any recommended course of treatment.” In the case of a third charge within five years of the first, prosecutors could charge a felony.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is due to consider the bill again on February 4.

Its sponsor is state Senator Tamara Grove (R-Lower Brule). She testified that a total of 279 South Dakota residents are currently incarcerated on a drug ingestion charge, at an annual cost of $33 million to taxpayers. In criticizing the state’s “terribly expensive $1 billion prison,” she proposed relying more on treatment courts, also known as drug courts, as a lower-cost alternative.

Drug courts are another system with many ethical problems, in which prosecutors and a judge can force a defendant into a treatment program as an alternative to jail. If the person doesn’t complete the program, or doesn’t remain abstinent, they may face criminal consequences once again. The treatment mandated by these courts is often not evidence-based, and coerced treatment in itself is unethical and often harmful.

Meanwhile at least one state official is pushing against Grove’s bill on that basis that it’s unnecessary. “It is very, very rare that an individual ends up one day ingesting methamphetamine and the next day wakes up in the penitentiary,” said Tom Wollman, Lincoln County state’s attorney, during Senate testimony. “It does not happen in practice.” Wollman claimed people are normally given probation—another harmful system—for a first conviction.

“There isn’t a need to incarcerate individuals, especially for an ingestion charge where they haven’t truly done a crime.”

Wendy White, CEO of FACE It TOGETHER, supports the changes proposed by the bill, however. Her organization provides peer coaching to people affected by substance use disorder in South Dakota, without requiring abstinence.

“There isn’t a need to incarcerate individuals, especially for an ingestion charge where they haven’t truly done a crime,” she told Filter. “They need someone to help guide them along the path to wellness. Getting them the right support, finding people to believe in them and getting them connected to the right resources is a much better solution.”

White said she’s a “big believer” that drug courts, with which her organization partners, are an improvement on incarceration. “We spend a lot of energy talking about building and expanding new prisons. I think there’s much that can be done by doing some reform [to] how people are treated.”

This isn’t the first attempt to change this particular law. In 2023, according to South Dakota Searchlight, a similar Senate bill was defeated by one vote. The lawmaker behind that effort, Sen. Mike Rohl (R-Aberdeen), argued that it could divert more people away from prison into treatment. He noted that 15 percent of women imprisoned in the state were there for simple ingestion charges—and that over half of people incarcerated under this statute were Native American, despite under 10 percent of the state’s population being Indigenous.

The debate in South Dakota highlights that even in this deep-red state, where Donald Trump won almost two-thirds of the vote in 2024, the drug war is being questioned—if only very incrementally. Like most places, South Dakota saw a surge in overdose deaths in recent years, though totals reflect a sparsely populated state of well under a million residents. In 2015, an estimated 65 people died of overdose according to the CDC; that figure rose to 106 deaths by 2021, falling to 86 in 2023. 

“There’s been a lot of energy put towards reducing overdose deaths, which is critical,” White said. “There’s been a lot of effort made towards making naloxone available and education around it. Another area that is not as prevalent is having [fentanyl] testing strips available.”

People who want support also face a number of obstacles. South Dakota is one of the few states where the Medicaid program does not cover peer coaching, as White explained, and people on lower incomes are left to pay out-of-pocket. 

“We have some great treatment facilities,” she said. “But what’s [also] challenging is we’re a rural state—whether something is available in your hometown or you have to drive two hours, that’s a reality we face.”

Photograph via South Dakota Highway Patrol  

The post South Dakota Considers Defelonizing Drug Ingestion appeared first on Filter.

In 1983 Kennedy pled guilty to felony drug possession and was sentenced to two years’ probation, as an alternative to the two-year prison sentence he’d have gotten instead. Two days after he was arrested he began a five-month stint in a residential treatment program, then six months of post-release treatment. His two-year probation sentence was ultimately reduced to one year.

“In his twenties he was arrested for possession of heroin, he was a heroin addict. He actually has hep C from using needles, I’ve talked to him about that,” New York Times journalist Susanne Craig told MSNBC on December 3, in reference to a recent article she coauthored that explores Kennedy’s history of substance use. “But then what you see is he became an addict, and he went through rehab, and he came out of that and he says he hasn’t used drugs since then.”

Well, Kennedy appears to have declined to talk to her for the profile and also appears to not have hep C. He reportedly did contract it in the ’80s, and was cured with Interferon. Craig previously reported that according to court documents Kennedy “said he had been treated [for hep C] and had no lingering effects.”

But what’s really concerning is the failure to clarify the circumstances under which Kennedy arrived at rehab. The NYT profile states that “he checked himself in” after an “episode.” Later on it references “probation and community service,” but you’d never know that drug treatment was apparently a condition of his probation.

The framing glosses over the central problem with these programs: Most people don’t want to be there.

It’s of course possible that Kennedy wanted to complete that treatment program and would have even if the “episode” had never happened. But the framing glosses over the central problem with these incarceration-alternative programs: Most people don’t want to be there.

Kennedy has been quiet on medications for opioid use disorder, which isn’t necessarily surprising. He’s been very vocal about his participation in 12-step meetings—nine of them per week—as well as his dislike of the pharmaceutical industry and various medications like antidepressants. But since June, with the premiere of the documentary Recovering America, Kennedy has been telling anyone who will listen about the potential of “healing farms” as incarceration alternatives.

In July, he told the Latino Capitalist podcast that prisons are “the biggest industry now in rural areas” and that he intended to change that with these farms. “I’m going to make it so people can go, if you’re convicted of a drug offense, or if you have a drug problem, you can go to one of these places for free.”

One could say the same thing about prison or jail, yes?

“Prisons are not recovering people, they’re not designed to. They’re warehouses for people,” Kennedy said in October. “This is an alternative to prison.”

Kennedy spoke enthusiastically about programs that offered people facing drug charges “a deal that they can’t refuse.”

In Recovering America he spoke enthusiastically about programs that offered people facing drug charges “a deal that they can’t refuse”—treatment or jail.

“Today the biggest industry in America’s depressed rural areas are prisons,” he said. “I’m going to bring a new industry to these forgotten corners of America where addicts can help each other to recover from their addictions. We’re going to build hundreds of healing farms where American kids can reconnect to America’s soil, where they can learn the discipline of hard work.”

Hm. So we’re pouring millions into the construction of new labor camps—excuse me, “farms”—that we’re going to fill with the nation’s economically disenfranchised youth. Who are not allowed to go home, just to the farm or prison or jail. But this is not incarceration, this is different. How long exactly will it take to teach them the discipline of hard work?

“We’ll put no time limit on recovery,” Kennedy continued, “as everyone’s journey is different.”

Ah.

Mandatory treatment has not been shown to be effective, and has in many cases been harmful. But the same is true of coerced treatment, where the participant technically had a choice not to participate and that choice was getting locked up instead.

If Kennedy is confirmed by the Senate in January 2025, once president-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated, the agencies he will oversee include the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. We have some idea of how he intends to allocate Medicaid funding. It involves building abstinence-based programs that are alternatives to prison or jail, while glossing over the fact that most people won’t want to be there.

Image via City of Upper Arlington

The post Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the “Choice” of Court-Ordered Drug Treatment appeared first on Filter.

When the judge slammed down his gavel down, I hung my head low and resolved not to cry. I was going back to prison for the third time. 

In Florida, dealing in stolen property is a second-degree felony that carries a maximum sentence of 15 years. I first entered the prison system in 2006, serving a three-year sentence, and then in 2011 went back for another year. In 2014, for selling stolen goods at a pawn shop, I would be sentenced to eight years. 

More than 350,000 people are currently incarcerated in the United States on drug charges, with more than 100,000 of them in pretrial confinement at local jails. But many more, like myself, enter the revolving door of the criminal-legal system entirely because of drug use but without ever incurring any drug-related charges. That means we’re not eligible for drug court.

Each time, I was told I’d be rehabilitated while incarcerated, and then waited for something that never came.

In the stifling heat of the windowless Blue Bird bus, shackled, I rode to Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) intake. I thought about what might have been different if I’d had the option of being diverted from prosecution into drug treatment. Though only drug-related charges can get you into drug court, once you have three non-drug felony convictions, the courts consider you permanently ineligible.

Florida has 51 adult drug courts, and while they haven’t been meaningfully evaluated in a decade they have been shown to lower odds of recividism for people diverted to them. Over the course of a year or more, participants pay thousands of dollars for their frequent court appearances and urinalysis testing. But it’s often preferable to prison.

What I cared about most was getting treatment. Florida drug courts can consider medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), but abstinence-based treatment is much more likely. I would have been fine with that—it was what I wanted, especially by 2014. Drug court would have meant, at minimum, case management and individual and group counseling, along with programs like Narcotics Anonymous. While mandated treatment is harmful on top of being ineffective, in my case these were resources I desperately wanted.

The entirety of my criminal-legal system involvement was for property crimes I engaged in to fund my addiction to cocaine and morphine. Each time, I’d apologized to the people I’d stolen from and asked the judge for access to drug treatment. Each time, I was told I’d be rehabilitated while incarcerated, and then waited for something that never came.

I wanted abstinence the way the criminal-legal systems so often defines it.

I did meet at least one requirement for drug court: a diagnosis of substance use disorder. I‘d been on Suboxone several times over the years when I was on the streets, but it had been a struggle to access. Hospitals would check me in for mental health examinations under the Baker Act, but deny medication and referrals. Of course, Suboxone is available in prison, just not via prescription. Contraband drugs are always readily available if you can pay for them. 

I believe everyone should have access to the harm reduction resources that meet their needs, including MOUD, but that wasn’t what I wanted for myself. I wanted abstinence the way the criminal-legal systems so often defines it.

I worked so hard at my sobriety, especially after the first two times I was released from prison. But re-entry is an extremely stressful, high-stakes process to navigate. Not only was I not given Narcan on my way out, but I’d spent my incarceration cut off from any anything even close to support for the behaviors I was trying to change, even though the court system and FDC was telling me I should change them, too. Like so many others, I numbed the pain the only way I knew how. And so the cycle continued.

FDC is the third-largest state prison system. It spends about $65 per day to house each person in its adult male prison facilities, which would mean around $285,000 to incarcerate me by the time I finished my third sentence.

That sentence was when I began my recovery, and I maintained it after release—but I did this in spite of the criminal-legal system, not because of it. Incarceration only prolonged my addiction and took me away from my family. Imagine if, instead of forcing treatment on people who don’t want it, we made it available to those who do.

In memory of Keeley Schenwar, Shawn McKenna, and all of our friends and family.

Image via Arizona Superior Court in Pima County

The post Drug Courts Don’t Just Force People Into Treatment. They Deny Us, Too. appeared first on Filter.

None of us incarcerated in Washington Corrections Center are holding our breath. Everyone who watched the news unfold late into the evening of April 23, including myself, expects the penalties to increase instead.

“[W]hat happened tonight was unacceptable,” Governor Jay Inslee stated after the legislature adjourned. “Decriminalization is not an option for me and it is not an option for the state of Washington. I expect legislators to deliver a solution.” Inslee will most likely to call a special session in the coming weeks, essentially putting the decision into overtime.

In 2021, the Blake decision struck down felony drug possession in Washington—but, rather than decriminalizing possession, instead made it a simple misdemeanor. That ruling sunsets on July 1. Without a replacement, jurisdictions across the state would be left to determine how to criminalize possession individually. This isn’t decriminalization the way anyone wants it; you could essentially be walking down the street, cross an invisible line you didn’t know was there, and find yourself subject to penalties you didn’t know were there either.

“In lieu of legal system involvement” doesn’t mean what it sounds like.

The most recent version of the wide-ranging SB 5536 would make possession a gross misdemeanor—or, as the joke goes, a “light felony.” Simple misdemeanors include charges like shoplifting, and are punishable by up to 90 days in jail. Gross misdemeanors include charges like fourth-degree assault, and can get you up to one year.

While the bill proposes increasing the punishment for possession, it also proposes increasing the options for avoiding that punishment. To reduce gross misdemeanor convictions, “law enforcement is encouraged to offer a referral to assessment and services available [arrest alternative programs] in lieu of legal system involvement.”

Sounds good, right? Here’s what “in lieu of legal system involvement” looks like:

An officer decides to arrest you for drug possession. You opt for pre-trial diversion. If granted, you’re taken for an assessment, which has to be conducted by one of three entities: recovery navigators; an arrest and jail alternative program (AJA); or a law enforcement assisted diversion program (LEAD).

Recovery navigators would in theory be people with lived experience at newly established programs intended for low-income people who use drugs. Your home jurisdiction might not even have one of these programs. If it does, the program might already be overwhelmed with a caseload that exceeds its allotted resources and funding. The remaining two routes are AJA, a grant-funded program that diverts people to one one of a small handful of recipients like Catholic Communities of Western Washington and local law enforcement departments; or LEAD, a national pilot program that as the name suggests is operated by law enforcement.

There are a lot of treatment programs in Washington; but the free ones are already full.

In earlier versions of the bill, people had the right to receive their assessment within seven days, as well as receive transportation to a treatment program within two hours of where they live. Those provisions are gone now. So the people who can afford lawyers will be able to go get a timely assessment, and are much more likely to end up with private treatment providers who treat them well. There are a lot of authorized treatment programs in Washington state; but the free ones are already full.

You can pass your pre-trial diversion program either by “successfully completing” treatment or by “having 12 months of substantial compliance”—whichever comes first. Or, if no treatment is recommended, you can fulfill the program with 120 hours of community service.

Everyone’s entered into a statewide database tracking the outcomes of pre-trial diversion routes. Updates are regularly submitted to the court. If you’re suspected of “noncompliance” at any time, then prosecutors motion for termination, you’re given a notice, and a court hearing determines whether you’re in violation of the program. Only the people in power would describe all this as something that doesn’t involve the criminal legal system. 

I’ve been waiting for the outcome of this legislation for months. Despite the apprehension many of us share about this bill, I’ve held to the knowledge that if it passed, it also contained the following directive:

“Establishing a Safe-Supply Work Group. HCA must establish and staff a Statewide Safe Supply Work Group with members appointed by the Governor to make recommendations related to providing a regulated, tested supply of controlled substances to individuals at risk of drug overdoses.”

We don’t have internet access in here, and that version of the bill of from February. Turns out, the safe supply part was cut in early March. What remains in the current version are the harms.

From personal experience, I believe there would be officers who’d do their best to use pre-trial diversion equitably. I also believe this version of the bill would allow politicians to pat themselves on the back while in real life, they’ve deepened the criminalization and surveillance of people living in poverty.

Those people will receive the slowest and least fair assessments, spend months under the thumb of overburdened, carceral-looking programs, have any behavior that belies the toll this takes on them reported as “noncompliant,” and still end up with the conviction in the end. Cops will have new ways to do what they already want to do: scoop up people from parks or tents or on the street and leave them somewhere else. And from the moment that happens to you, every so-called choice involves the legal system. 

Photograph via Seattle Office for Civil Rights

The post WA Drug Penalties Uncertain as Legislature Adjourns in Stalemate appeared first on Filter.

DOSA is a program of alternative sentencing handed down by drug courts for people with substance use disorder who are convicted of nonviolent felonies. Eligible prisoners can have their sentences reduced substantially by completing an assigned drug treatment curriculum. In Vessey’s case, DOSA sentencing meant he’d only have to serve 29 months in prison. Then, instead of serving the remaining 29 months in prison, he could be released into community custody, or what WDOC used to call probation. 

DOSA sentencing is “designed to provide substance use disorder treatment and community supervision for individuals diagnosed with a substance disorder who have committed a drug or other statutory eligible crimes,” states WDOC’s website. “Individuals sentenced to a DOSA are required to participate in substance use disorder treatment in lieu of prison time.”

Mandatory treatment doesn’t work. Its goal is to stop people from using drugs, and the evidence overwhelmingly shows that the most effective treatment approaches are the ones people choose for themselves. But Vessey’s sentence is the maximum for second-degree burglary, and it had come as a shock. When he got DOSA, he was ready to participate in treatment, whatever that turned out to be.

Twenty-three months passed; still nothing changed.

It didn’t turn out to be anything. Once in prison, he was told that the curriculum didn’t actually begin until the final six months of someone’s sentence, regardless of how much time they’d been given. Twenty-three months passed, and still nothing changed. After 29 months, he was released.

Despite not receiving whatever treatment WDOC considered important enough to reduce his sentence by half, once Vessey was free, he kept his day-to-day life stable. He was meant to be receiving treatment during this time too, but it was three months before he was even contacted for an evaluation. That turned out to be all he was contacted for, but still he went to work in the morning and went home in the evening, and continued to use meth throughout. This lasted about a year.

Drug-testing is a routine part of all supervised release. A couple of Vessey’s urinalysis (UA) tests had come back positive for meth without his community custody officer seeming to care, until one day they did. His DOSA was revoked, and he was taken back to prison to serve the second half of his sentence—sort of.

By now it was 2021, a time when WDOC was releasing some eligible people—not all—early to mitigate COVID transmission. Instead of a regular prison, Vessey was sent straight to work release. This form of partial confinement is normally reserved for prisoners in the final six or 12 months of their sentence. But it seemed that as long as he stayed out of trouble, his 29 months would be cut down to more like four. As he understood it, it was just a brief show they had to put on to punish him for the UA.

Sitting there alone, waiting for what in his mind was a fate that had already been sealed, Vessey panicked.

Vessey began working two jobs. Because he was under constant surveillance, he wasn’t using at all for the first few weeks. Then one day, since he’d been doing so well, he was granted an eight-hour social pass. He left for the day and promptly got high. When he reported back that night, he was immediately drug-tested, then told to wait in his room while WDOC was summoned.

In the context of the COVID releases, there’s a decent chance he’d have still remained at work release. But sitting there alone, waiting for what in his mind was a fate that had already been sealed, he panicked. By the time WDOC officers arrived, Vessey had climbed out the window.

“I would have stayed, and kept both jobs, and worked hard like I was doing,” he told Filter. “But I had a dirty UA. So I just ran.”

After a month as a fugitive, Vessey was picked up and sentenced to an additional two years on top of the five he was already serving. But the same COVID precautions were still in place. Vessey recalls being told that if he stayed out of trouble for a couple of months, until he got a bit closer to his release date, he’d be sent to graduated re-entry (GRE)—home confinement, once he had a home in which to be confined.

He submitted the address of his family home. It was denied, apparently because the home contained a gun safe, even though according to Vessey his family had emptied it in preparation for his arrival. WDOC told Filter that an empty gun safe would not be disqualifying.

Vessey didn’t have a backup address. After a few more weeks in prison, he submitted the address of woman who’d contacted him over JPay because she was looking for prisoners to write to. They’d only been exchanging emails for a few weeks, and had never met. But she said she had a house, and he should come live there. 

“There was no preparation for the GRE,” Vessey said. “When [the] address was approved I was out in days.” He did the terms-and-conditions paperwork in the back of the cop car on the way over.

“They required me to be abstinent … but then the only address they would let me go to was a drug den.”

According to Vessey, when WDOC was dropping him off there were used syringes in plain view on all surfaces of the home. The officers drove away. 

“Syringes in plain view is not always a sign of illicit drug use, as there could be medical needs that are in play,” WDOC stated in response. “However, if syringes were in plain view, it would at least prompt an inquiry by the investigating officer as to the reason.”

The way Vessey tells it, the woman who answered the door had a thin trickle of blood running down her neck from having just shot up.

“They required me to be abstinent … but then the only address they would let me go to was a drug den,” Vessey said. “And then they didn’t even help me stay clean.” 

Vessey knew he couldn’t stay at that address if he wanted any chance at staying sober. After repeatedly complaining to GRE officials, he was assigned a bed in a sober living facility, which turned out to contain more drugs than the “drug den.”

GRE also required Vessey to participate in treatment. This consisted of one Zoom counseling session per week. None of it was drug-specific, just the same boilerplate 12-step rhetoric for everyone regardless of why they were there. Vessey didn’t find this particularly useful, but he participated nonetheless.

He also became intimately involved with his counselor, who told him he didn’t have to keep signing onto the Zoom; she’d just pass him. Some months later they broke up. Though the meth-positive UA he received around this time was not his second, it was the second to send him back to prison. Officers don’t care about UA until they do.

In February 2021, State v. Blake struck down felony drug possession in Washington, reclassifying it as a misdemeanor. Hundreds of people incarcerated in state prisons for felony possession became eligible for a commutation order, and though not all of them received it promptly, some did. Still more were freed from county jails and from community supervision. Vessey is not eligible for commutation—there’s nothing drug-related on his record.

In the eight years since Vessey began his five-year sentence, the only criminal charge he’s incurred is escape in the first degree. The reason he keeps getting sent back to prison is UA. He’ll be the first to tell you that climbing out the window wasn’t his most rational decision, but UA was the reason for that, too. 

People who believe drug use should be criminalized will of course say that Vessey is sitting in prison today because he chose to use drugs, not because WDOC chose to test him. But WDOC has also placed him in drug-treatment programs where he received no drug treatment, denied his request to live with his non drug-using family and approved his request to live with drug-using strangers. 

The stated goal of DOSA, and of drug courts in general, is “to reduce or eliminate confinement time.” Per WDOC data, nearly half of all people who receive this sentence ultimately have it revoked. Like Vessey, many people are sentenced to drug treatment despite not being convicted of any drug-related charges, only to end up with longer sentences than they initially received.

Vessey has about four months left on his sentence. Once released, he’ll no longer be under community supervision. No more UA; free to use meth if he chooses. He feels uneasy, not about the effect meth will have on him if he uses it, but about the effect the criminal legal system will have on him if uses it.

The harm Vessey wants desperately to reduce isn’t really from meth; it’s from the criminalization of meth and the activities that go into acquiring it. When he’s not being drug-tested, he does just fine.

As he described what he meant by wanting to stabilize, it put me in mind of medications for opioid use disorder, like Suboxone. I asked him if he knew about those.

“I do! I wish I could get something like that for meth,” he said. “I see those other guys get their stuff together all the time.”

Read Part 2 of this story here

Top photograph via Council of Accountability Court Judges of Georgia. Inset image via Washington State Department of Corrections.

The post How Drug Courts Keep You in Prison, Even Without Drug-Related Charges appeared first on Filter.

By summer, she’d left her hometown of Hanford, California, and isolated herself 45 minutes away in Fresno. With the Central Valley sun baking her tent as her next court date loomed, her former life seemed further and further away. Her parents had turned their backs on her. Her children were up for adoption. She’d taken a loan out on her 401K.

“I was just super lost,” Hahn, 38, told Filter. “And I was in hot water. I had a warrant out for my arrest, I had no money, no phone, missing my CPS visits. The only thing I had was my Satanism.”

Two days before her September court date, she went back to Hanford and entered a new recovery program.

The Satanic Temple (no relation to the Church of Satan) is a nontheistic organization that rejects superstition as a prerequisite for religion. It describes its Satanism as one of compassion, bodily autonomy and anti-authoritarianism. TST members don’t worship a literal supernatural Devil, but view Satan as a symbol of resistance—the “Eternal Rebel” fighting unjust power.

Sober Faction is TST’s peer support program for addiction recovery, hosting the type of group meetings broadly associated with Alcoholics Anonymous. It first met in June 2020, and was popular enough to become an official TST campaign by April 2021. 

Sober Faction’s main focus is substance addiction, but supports a number of members in or seeking recovery from process addictions (gambling; eating disorders; video games; sex; porn). Its practices integrate components of cognitive behavioral therapy and motivational interviewing with seven physical rituals.

“A lot of people come in here and hear the word ‘ritual’ and think it’s some spooky woo-woo stuff, so, that’s not our approach,” TST Reverend Jon Eldritch told Filter. “For us, ritual is not a belief in the supernatural; it’s practices that we’ve found really give us a sense of empowerment. As opposed to just, ‘Alright, I’m done with Step 1, let’s start Step 2.’”

“We have a largely queer membership, and a lot of that has to do with them not feeling safe or comfortable in other rooms.”

Sober Faction respects that many people benefit from and enjoy AA, Narcotics Anonymous (NA) and similar peer recovery groups. But it was undeniably created as a response to the side of 12-Step that is frequently cult-like, anti-science and dangerously moralizing.

“There is nothing within AA that incorporates the actual science behind addiction and recovery and withdrawal,” TST Priest Joe Dee told Filter. “So we made sure to create our program with scientific understanding in mind.”

Though Sober Faction might sound like an abstinence-only group, harm reduction approaches are welcome. Recurrence of use isn’t shamed. Medications for substance use disorders aren’t stigmatized. Sober Faction does not define “sobriety” or “recovery”; each member can give the terms whatever meaning they want.

In a rejection of the traditional AA sponsor/sponsee relationship, Sober Faction uses a non-hierarchical peer model that encourages participants to work with whomever they feel comfortable, regardless of experience level. Multiple partners are encouraged, to provide a sturdier base of support.

“We very much wanted to avoid the teacher-student dichotomy,” Eldritch said. “If there’s one thing Satanists don’t like, it’s arbitrary authority.”

Dee described Sober Faction meetings as consistently upbeat and full of laughter—rather than somber and critical—an approach that has helped make its meetings especially welcoming to those who have felt the least welcomed by 12-Step groups.

“It’s such a different energy. And that psychological benefit is what brings people back, just knowing you’re accepted and not having to hide your truth or who you are,” they said. “We have a [largely] queer membership, and a lot of that has to do with them not feeling safe or comfortable in other rooms. If you ask what does one of our meetings look like, it’s fun.” 

The recovery program that Hahn walked into in September was not TST. It was a residential treatment program, like the one she hadn’t finished at the beginning of the year, and it held AA meetings in-house in addition to the ones available over Zoom.

“They said it wasn’t a faith-based program,” Hahn said, “but it was.”

Despite the common AA assurance that references to God could mean the “God of your own understanding,” house residents had to say a Christian prayer before every meal and at the start of classes each day, after which the house president recited the Bible verse that would be that day’s focus. Christian Radio played in the common areas. Bible Study was on Wednesdays. (Hahn’s Satanic Bible was poorly received.)

Alienated and increasingly isolated within the program, Hahn was searching for Satanic-friendly Zoom options when she stumbled across Sober Faction. Incredulous, she attended her first meeting.

“It was the most amazing experience,” Hahn said. “I’ve gone to Christian church before, I was raised Catholic, but this was the first time in my life that I actually felt true compassion and empathy and non-judgment from people I didn’t even know. I mean, I was stoked.”

The house held Church services on Sundays, but wouldn’t allow Hahn to Zoom into TST Temple Tuesdays. Meanwhile, her refusal to participate in Christian components of the program meant that she was “constantly written up,” and as a result denied privileges like access to her cell phone or the house computers. During group outings or recreation time, she had to stay in her room.

“If I wasn’t in the classroom or at the table for meals, I was in my room,” Hahn said. “As if I was in jail or something.”

The conflict around her religious rights came to a head one night in mid-October. Following particularly bad fight, the program director yelled at her to “‘pack your shit get the fuck out of my program, you’ve caused enough problems,’” Hahn recounted.

Though miserable in the house, she was devastated to be kicked out. She needed to remain in compliance with her court orders for her kids, and she needed housing and peer support for her sobriety. But she still had Sober Faction.

“I held onto those meetings like they were just my air to breathe,” Hahn said. She told Dee what had happened, and Dee offered to write a letter of support for Hahn to use at her next court appearance.

The letter explained that Sober Faction was an official campaign of TST, a federally recognized tax-exempt religious organization, and attested to Hahn’s consistent attendance at four meetings a week, plus the Tuesday religious services.

“That letter turned my whole court case around.”

If someone assigned AA requests Sober Faction instead, there’s no legal basis for the court to deny them.

In documents reviewed by Filter, Hahn’s case plan required her to “attend a minimum of two (2) NA/AA meetings per week” as well as “attempt to gain a sponsor.” The documents included updates on when she was “not in compliance with this component.”

“I did express at the beginning about my beliefs and me being a Satanist, and not being comfortable going to the AA and NA, but I really didn’t have a choice,” Hahn said. “They said if I don’t follow the case plan that I wouldn’t be meeting my requirements, and if I don’t meet my requirements I’m subject to having my kids be put up for adoption.”

There’s some debate about whether it’s unconstitutional to mandate someone to a religious program like AA or just “dangerously close,” David Lucas, clinical advisor at the Health in Justice Action Lab, told Filter. Many in the field discourage drug courts ordering people to attend 12-Step programs, acknowledging that it’s too much of a legal gray area. And yet it happens constantly.

“Twelve-step is popular in the drug court world because it’s about personal responsibility, taking ownership,” Lucas said. “All those moral overtones that are very much present in the drug court culture.”

For many people who’ve gone through drug court, AA might have been the only peer support group option that was free and in their region, especially if they live somewhere rural. Even when there are other options, the court might not be aware of them or particularly inclined to look. Pretty much anywhere you live, AA has long been what’s closest, easiest to find and most familiar to the court.

But just because a court presents AA as the only option doesn’t mean that’s true. If someone assigned AA requests Sober Faction instead, there’s no legal basis for the court to deny them.

All of Sober Faction’s weekly meetings are publicly accessible over Zoom, so you can attend them from anywhere you can access internet. And you don’t have to be a Satanist; Dee said most people actually find their way to Sober Faction knowing little or nothing about TST, though some do discover Satanism to their liking and go on to join their local congregation.

“Sober Faction is under a religious program, and is just as valid as any other group’s recovery program,” Eldritch said. “Anybody who’s court-ordered to go to AA [and] they’re looking for an alternative that’s not focused on superstition, they’re welcome to come to our program. And we’ve been successfully signing off on those court documents.”

At her next court date, Hahn had to tell the judge she’d been discharged from her residential treatment. But, she continued, she was still sober, still attending more than the minimum weekly meetings through another program similar to AA and had brought a letter of support from a priest at her congregation. The judge reviewed the letter and found Hahn to still be in compliance with her case plan.

Following a home inspection, the court allowed her to move in with a sober family member. Her relationship with her mom is healing. She spent Thanksgiving and Halloween with her kids, whom she can see every day now rather than being limited to one two-hour visit per week.

At her next court appearance in January, she hopes her record of the required 90 days program attendance, including an updated letter from Dee and her Sober Faction 66-day chip, will be enough for the court to approve her request that her children no longer be eligible for adoption.

“Whenever I go to check into probation now they’re just amazed at my mentality and where I’m at versus where I was,” Hahn said. “Sober Faction did that for me.”

Sober Faction can’t fulfill every requirement that might be in someone’s case plan, like urinalysis testing. And it’s no more a medical entity than AA, which is another reason some drug court authorities and legal experts don’t recommend mandated 12-Step programs; they don’t technically constitute “treatment,” the case plan component often fulfilled by more comprehensive programs like the residential one that discharged Hahn in October.

But it’s not unheard of for drug courts to assign “treatment” that does ultimately consists of just peer support meetings. This would usually default to AA—but it doesn’t have to. In mid-December, Hahn’s lawyers told her that Sober Faction is now being considered her treatment program, at least for the time being.

“There’s a saying in this field: ‘If you’ve seen one drug court, you’ve seen one drug court,’” Lucas said.

Even voluntarily attending Sober Faction meetings on top of mandated requirements could help boost someone’s drug court resume. Lucas said that peer support meetings look good on a participant’s record and that drug courts factor them in as extra credit—a sign that the participant is taking their case plan seriously.

For drug court participants whom AA doesn’t fit, Sober Faction stands to increase their odds of ultimately meeting the court’s requirements—and decrease the odds of a huge range of harms with which drug courts are associated, from incarceration to overdose.

Mostly people just don’t know Sober Faction is an option.

Sober Faction is currently signing off on mandated attendance documents for a half-dozen drug court participants, and has served as an AA alternative for around 10 altogether. Dee and Eldritch foresee no issues with scaling up if demand increased; mostly people just don’t know Sober Faction is an option.

“As long as folks attend the meetings, there’s no cap,” Dee said with a smile. “I could sign off on them all day.”

Not every judge or other drug court authority may be as amenable to Sober Faction as Hahn’s. But they have no legitimate argument against it, and Dee and Eldritch are prepared to support members who face any ideological resistance.

“If they have any issue—a judge or someone doesn’t allow it or doesn’t back them up—they could come to us and we can advocate on their behalf,” Dee said. “Which we have successfully done.”

Scaling up Sober Faction’s advocacy for people who are court-ordered into groups like AA and prefer something evidence-based would be a natural fit with TST’s broader activism—and drug courts precisely the kind of irrational, inequitable power that its Satanic mission opposes.

“Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of One or All,” reads the TST Invocation. “That which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. It is Done. Hail Satan.”

Top photograph of Satanic altar with Sober Faction chips, inset photograph of Seven Rituals text and inset photograph of Sober Faction 1-year chip courtesy of Reverend Jon Eldritch. Infographic by Pope Wonka via The Satanic Temple

The post Court-Ordered Into AA? You Could Use The Satanic Temple Instead. appeared first on Filter.

Far from being in jail for committing a serious crime, she was there because of a violation of probation under Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement program, or HOPE Probation for short.

Steve Alm, a former judge who now serves as the elected top prosecutor of Honolulu County, Hawaii, invented HOPE Probation in 2004. He explained in 2015 that his philosophy sees probation and parole like child-rearing. “You tell your child you care but families have rules,” he said. “All misbehavior results in a swift, certain, consistent and proportionate response.”

Since 2014, the federal government has issued nearly $15 million to more than 30 states to develop similar programs. In recent years, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections both looked to bring HOPE to their states. It has even been the subject of debate in parliamentary bodies in Australia.

The Hawaii State Judiciary’s website explains that HOPE Probation seeks to issue “swift, predictable, and immediate sanctions—typically resulting in several days in jail—for each detected violation, such as detected drug use or missed appointments with a probation officer.”

HOPE is different from other court supervision programs. The typical probation set-up involves a probation officer watching for behavioral slip-ups and reporting to a judge if someone significantly breaks the terms. By the time the judge hears the violation, it may have been weeks or months. A stay in prison measured in weeks or months is a frequent result.

Keeping people who use drugs in long-term limbo between jail and freedom feels decidedly “tough-on-crime.”

HOPE prioritizes heightened monitoring and speedier, but less severe, consequences. In theory, it gives people a better chance to remain free in the community longer term, rather than threatening long-term incarceration for small, technical violations. On the flip side, a person on HOPE Probation is even less free than someone on normal probation. Being formally cited and brought to court for a violation is not like a lightning bolt, rare but devastating. Rotating between jail and the outside world is more like a certainty, unless someone is able to adapt their behavior all at once.

Keeping people who use drugs in long-term limbo between jail and freedom feels decidedly “tough-on-crime.” Yet the program has been embraced by some criminal justice reform proponents. The American Constitutional Society, a “leading progressive legal organization,” posited in 2009 that HOPE Probation could be part of the solution to mass incarceration. Leading liberal magazine Slate ran an article in 2013 with the dubious subheading, “Swift and certain punishment reduces crime. Parolees love it.”

Alm wrote in a 2015 Minnesota Law Review article that HOPE Probation is one prong of his two-part strategy to “make court-ordered community supervision more effective.” The other is expanding drug courts and redirecting their focus to a “higher-risk probation population.”

Similar to drug courts themselves, HOPE Probation seems to set probationers up to fail, while relying on the fallacious concept that drug criminalization is necessary in the first place. When the program is implemented, resources that could otherwise go to addiction treatment programs and other services end up going to zero-tolerance enforcement.

Jesse Zortman, a forensic psychotherapist in Pennsylvania, spent years interviewing men who were assigned to HOPE Probation in Pennsylvania. He did not find that they “loved” it.

“HOPE is a deterrence-based paradigm,” he told Filter. “Unfortunately, this correctional model ignores empirically-known causes of recidivism, favoring certainty of punishment over treatment. Simply put, rehabilitation is not the goal.”

“Sure, you might get some short-term compliance,” he continued. “But when you ignore over 40 years of criminological research and do not address things such as antisocial attitudes and cognitions, these underlying factors will continue to develop and lead the individual into future crime. Just like programs such as ‘scared straight,’ specific deterrence simply does not work.”

Zortman also pointed to an evaluation of HOPE Probation published in Federal Probation magazine. It predicted that, “when jurisdictions exhaust their ability to improve swiftness and certainty, they will seek to reduce violations and recidivism with the only component of punishment remaining in their arsenal: severity.”

A different result from the DOJ study perhaps shows the real purpose behind the program: abstinence from drugs.

Other evidence suggests that HOPE does not succeed even according to its architects’ framing. When the Justice Department encouraged the implementation of HOPE via grant funding in four pilot counties in 2012, under the name Honest Opportunity Probation with Enforcement, researchers found that “HOPE probationers had a statistically significant greater number of probation violations,” when compared with the probationers in the control group. On that basis, the National Institute of Justice’s CrimeSolutions portal rates HOPE “no effects.”

A different result from the DOJ study perhaps shows the real purpose behind the program: abstinence from drugs, including alcohol, and never mind if it’s achieved coercively. HOPE probationers had “statistically significantly lower odds of a positive drug test.”

In its original Hawaii context, early HOPE proponent Mark A. R. Kleiman previously counted an increase in abstinence as part of its success. Despite his lukewarm opposition to the War on Drugs, Kleiman, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Los Angeles before his death in 2019, still believed that “D.A.R.E. is a wonderful tool for police-community relations, particularly, in poor neighborhoods.”

None of the objections to HOPE have curbed Alm’s popularity in a state that virtually always votes Democratic.

After allegations against Alm’s predecessor as Honolulu prosecuting attorney, Keith Kaneshiro, damaged public confidence in the office—Kaneshiro is subject to an ongoing FBI probe for corruption—Alm took it upon himself to leave retirement to run for the seat.

His victory might as well have been preordained. He won first place in the nonpartisan top-two primary in August 2020 by a landslide, then dispatched Megan Kau by 11 percentage points in the general election that November. Jacquie Esser, a progressive candidate in the mold of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who received backing from national social justice icon Shaun King, received less than 20 percent of the vote in the primary, coming in third.

The program itself, which some local politicians cannot imagine doing without, remains intact despite concerns. In 2018, the Hawaii legislature’s Task Force on Prison Reform recommended that “the state stop using incarceration to sanction HOPE probation violators,” despite short-term stays in jail for all probation violations being the point of the program. It does not appear that this recommendation became law, while other recent bills in Hawaii seek to expand HOPE further.

Hawaii leads the country in probation term lengths, with an average duration of 59 months.

Meanwhile, local leaders told Filter about how Steve Alm is approaching his current role. Both Nikos Leverenz of the Hawai’i Health & Harm Reduction Center and Kat Brady of the Community Alliance on Prisons sounded the alarm about his support of the “Weed and Seed” program, which he oversaw an earlier iteration of during his tenure as US attorney of the District of Hawaii during the Clinton administration.

Weed and Seed is supposed to strategically use law enforcement resources to ferret out criminal activity in specific neighborhoods, then replace it with community building initiatives.

Leverenz said that what Alm’s Weed and Seed program really constitutes is “dozens of arrests for drug possession and sending people experiencing homelessness elsewhere.” The drug possession arrests then lead to bloated terms of probation; Hawaii leads the country in probation term lengths, with an average duration of 59 months. Brady said that “prosecutors and the courts are just sending people, who are struggling to survive, into the petri dish [of COVID-19 in the local jail].”

Ultimately, Alm’s legacy seems to be the creation of a “prison without walls” for people who use drugs, a harmful and increasingly antiquated strategy as major cities across the country move away from criminalization and toward a public health approach.

Photograph by Boyce Duprey via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post The Influential HOPE Probation Program Is Badly Misnamed appeared first on Filter.

Bates has claimed, falsely, that Mosby’s non-prosecution of marijuana possession—a policy that is not radical in any way—is a threat to public safety. “What you have done is you have now created a marijuana turf war,” he told the Intercept, “with these guys killing each other for control of the black market.”

Out of 741 people whose possession cases Mosby declined to prosecute, the number later rearrested on “serious” charges—violent crimes, sex crimes or drug distribution—was six.

Bates believes that people charged with drug possession shouldn’t necessarily be prosecuted, but that “we need to steer them to drug treatment.” This oft-repeated political talking point belies the realities that most people found in possession of a state-banned substance do not have substance use disorder (SUD), and that compulsory treatment has never been shown to be effective—often causing, rather than reducing, harms.

In Baltimore, nearly half of participants in court-ordered treatment programs are “terminated for non-compliance,” which means they are subsequently jailed anyway.

State’s Attorney Mosby faces both Bates and her former employee Roya Hanna, who is also running to her right. But Mosby herself had a conservative record until recently. She campaigned as a typical “tough-on-crime” prosecutor, and has repeatedly demonstrated a penchant for overzealous sentencing. She gained widespread attention after she charged the six police officers who killed Freddie Gray, but the cases were a disaster, leading to acquittals and a trial court ruling that she committed prosecutorial misconduct.

However, Mosby has also demonstrated growth, and not only by introducing her non-prosecution policy. Once a proponent of drug courts, she now recognizes that they do not work. The vast majority of US prosecutors have not similarly evolved.

But many voters in the heavily Democratic city, especially progressives and anti-carceral organizers, might not consider whether Mosby is a net positive on drug criminalization to be the most important factor. What everyone does care about is the case of Keith Davis Jr.

Ousting Mosby would likely only install an even more punitive alternative.

Davis gained national attention this summer after he was shot by police, then charged by Mosby in an unrelated homicide case. Many nationally famous area activists believe he is innocent, and that Mosby has repeatedly charged him in order to save face with the Baltimore Police Department.

There seems a very real chance that left-leaning voters might abandon Mosby over her actions in Davis’s case. But ousting her would likely only install a more punitive alternative, prosecuting marginalized residents for so-called crimes like possession and prostitution.

A cautionary tale: In the 2019 Delaware County, Pennsylvania district attorney race, the potential innocence case of Leroy Evans became a similar political lightning rod. Jack Stollsteimer, who successfully ran as a moderate reformer against tough-on-crime incumbent Katayoun Copeland, promised that he would reopen Evans’s case. 

Once his campaign was won, Stollsteimer seemed to forget that promise. Evans is still in prison, serving a de facto life sentence. This is despite another person confessing to the murder he was convicted of; the government has refused to test DNA evidence found on the scene.

And while Stollsteimer is less harmful than Copeland, who once convinced a trial judge of the existence of a nonexistent school to justify harsher punishment for a man who sold a little cannabis, he has had his own fair share of issues.

Stollsteimer cleared two white police officers who beat and tased a man for being publicly intoxicated. He also declined to prosecute officers who fatally shot an 8-year-old Black girl, in favor of charging two Black teenagers who were in the area.

Adjudicating an elected prosecutor on potential injustice in a single case can result in electoral outcomes that actually drive up incarceration overall. Similarly, when a candidate delivers a campaign promise to address potential injustice in a single, high-profile case, it could be nothing more than cynical politics.

Photograph of Marilyn Mosby via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0

* The author briefly worked for Jack Stollsteimer’s campaign for Delaware County district attorney in late 2019.

The post What Drugs, Sex Work and One Key Case Mean for the Baltimore DA Race appeared first on Filter.

Can drug courts be meaningfully reformed? A new report argues that they can—by adopting the methods and principles of harm reduction.

Center for Court Innovation authors Alejandra Garcia and Dave Lucas outlined how drug courts can adapt their methodologies, specifically in the context of the changes being wrought by the COVID pandemic and the movement for racial justice. Their recommendations include drug decriminalization, bail and sentencing reforms and increasing awareness among elected officials that incarceration does not decrease drug use. Both authors have seen the drug court system up close as social workers.

“We have an inside perspective on how drug courts are operating and what we see across the country that can be improved by incorporating harm reduction,” Garcia told Filter. “We’re taking a look at the nuances in these practices and thinking about how we can improve them.”

Arguably the most important change drug courts can make is to abolish the use of jail time.

Courts should begin by changing their relationship with participants—inviting them to design their own treatment goals with medical professionals, rather than handing down requirements decided by judges and lawyers with no medical expertise. The evidence Garcia and Lucas analyzed shows that collaborative treatment plans, centering participant input, are more effective than non-collaborative plans.

Drug courts must also change how they view the concepts of use and abstinence. Criminalizing drug use perpetuates its stigma, and paints so-called “relapse” as a moral failing. The authors recommend that instead of punishing people for recurrence of drug use, courts offer additional counseling or consider medically appropriate changes to their treatment plan.

Arguably the most important change drug courts can make is to abolish the use of jail time. Currently, incarceration may be used as a punishment for participants whose urine tests positive for banned substances, or who don’t follow their agreed treatment plan. Jail is also used as “emergency housing” for participants waiting to be admitted to a court-mandated treatment program.

The authors rightly point out the absurdity of this latter use. Research shows sending drug users to jail puts them at much higher risk of overdose. Garcia and Lucas note some courts are using alternatives including community service, written assignments and court dates to “promote compliance” with their program.

“I know firsthand we can do this differently,” Lucas told Filter. “We can help and support people making changes in their lives without relying so heavily on things like drug testing and jail as a sanction.”

Drug courts aren’t only used for people charged with drug possession.

Drug courts can play a role in preventing overdose by distributing naloxone to all participants and training them on its use. Garcia and Lucas also recommend that all drug courts provide participants access to medication for opioid use disorder including buprenorphine and methadone. Many courts still hesitate, or outright refuse, to allow participants use these evidence-based, federally regulated medications. They’re also frequently banned in the housing services with which the drug courts partner.

Drug courts aren’t only used for people charged with drug possession. They are also used for people facing unrelated charges, like property crime or theft, who may want to avoid prison time by participating in a treatment program. In these cases, a history of substance use can be used to cut a deal with the prosecutor.

“We haven’t addressed all the upstream structural issues that lead people who use substances to be on the streets, be economically marginalized or be excluded from the health care system,” Lucas said. “Many of these people will end up in the criminal legal system facing jail time.”

Garcia and Lucas acknowledge the many different harms that are often linked to drug courts, and forced drug treatment especially. But they also expect drug courts are not going anywhere anytime soon.

Even in Oregon, which decriminalized all drug possession in small amounts, drug courts stay in business. “There will still be people facing one, two, three years in jail for criminal charges that relate to their substance use but aren’t necessarily possession charges,” Lucas said.

Photograph Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0.

The post Can Harm Reduction Reform the Drug Courts? appeared first on Filter.