Tag: Washington

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DC Safe Surrender 2011 – An Interview with Assistant MPD Chief Peter Newsham

February 24, 2012 by CSOSA

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2011/07/dc-safe-surrender-2011-an-interview-with-assistant-mpd-chief-peter-newsham/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Cedric Hendricks: Hello. This is Cedric Hendricks and this is DC Public Safety. Today we’re going to be talking about DC Safe Surrender with Metropolitan Police Department Assistant Chief, Peter Newsham. Welcome to DC Safe Surrender.

Peter Newsham:: Thank you Cedric.

Cedric Hendricks: Chief, can you tell us how many warrants there are outstanding in the District of Columbia and the types of warrants that you see?

Peter Newsham: We have over 600 felony warrants that are outstanding. The biggest category of cases that we have is misdemeanor bench warrants and there’s more than 12,000 of those, so that’s significant. And then we have another category which is other warrants, is about 1,000. So all told, we have more than 14,000 warrants outstanding.

Cedric Hendricks: And then one of the functions that the police department plays is arresting people on warrants. And how does that typically happen?

Peter Newsham: Absolutely. We have warrant squads and that’s their function is to go out and find folks who are wanted on all of these warrants, you know, any warrant would come into play. The other way, as you know, that people can be arrested when they have warrants outstanding on them is if they come into contact with a police officer. It could be something as simple as a traffic accident. They could be involved in a traffic accident, we run their name, their license and lo and behold if they have a warrant, we’re required to take them into custody.

Cedric Hendricks: Now can executing a warrant be a risky proposition for a police officer?

Peter Newsham: Well, it can be, you know, because you don’t know what to expect when you’re serving a warrant. They serve all kinds of warrants. There’s been some very profile cases where officers have been either injured or killed serving warrants. So there is, you know, the police have to be prepared for that potential eventuality is that it ends up becoming a violent confrontation. Most of the folks, I would suspect that are wanted on the misdemeanor bench warrants would not pose that threat, but the officers don’t know that so they have to be prepared for those kinds of things.

Cedric Hendricks: Now DC Safe Surrender offers an opportunity for individuals with non-violent felony warrants, misdemeanor warrants, to turn themselves in. So what do you see as the public safety benefit of an event like this that provides an opportunity.

Peter Newsham: Well first of all, I mean it’s a benefit to the individual. They can get this thing off of their back essentially. They don’t have to be concerned about it hanging over their head. You don’t, it’s very inconvenient to have a warrant served on you if you’re doing something, for example, at a family function, traveling somewhere, we’re going to take you into custody and you’re going to have to go through that process. If you come down here one of these Saturdays in August, you can resolve the matter. Once the matter is resolved, it’s resolved forever. As far as a public safety piece for us, the value that we see is that, you know, we have these warrant squads that are out there and in some cases, they are trying to apprehend folks who are violent. And they’re trying to evade capture. Like I said, I don’t think the large majority of the folks that have these non-violent cases are in that category, but if we’re able to get some of those folks to come in, it frees up our warrant squad to get some of the more violent folks. And that’s a benefit to everybody, to get the violent people off the streets.

Cedric Hendricks: Now one of the significant aspects of DC Safe Surrender is a collaboration of law enforcement agencies within the District of Columbia. How important is that in the success of an endeavor like this?

Peter Newsham: Oh, it’s very important and we’re very fortunate in the district because of the relationships that we have. As you know, we have the local Metropolitan police, but we have a lot of federal agencies, the CSOSA, pre-trial services, US Attorney’s Office, the Office of the Attorney General and all these folks, the courts of course. All of these folks come into play. And like I said, we had a relationship prior to going into the Safe Surrender Operation. We had a Safe Surrender, as you know, about three years ago which was very successful. But having those relationships is really critical to making the city safe.

Cedric Hendricks: Well now you mentioned the Safe Surrender back in 2007, I believe it was. And it’s my understandingthat there were about 530 individuals that turned themselves in. What is your hope as we approach Safe Surrender this time around, in terms of the success? What would be a successful outcome as you said?

Peter Newsham: Well, it’s going to be successful if we get any number of people to turn themselves in, a significant number of people you know? If we get hundreds of people to turn themselves in, fantastic; If we get thousands of people to turn themselves in, even better. You know, like I told you, being able to free up the warrant squads that are working in the city to go after the most violent people is really what the police department, I think it’s what most people expect the police department to do.

Cedric Hendricks: Well, we thank you for your participation here today. This has been Cedric Hendricks talking with Metropolitan Police Department, Assistant Chief Peter Newsham about DC Safe Surrender.

[Audio Ends]

DC Safe Surrender 2011 – An Interview with Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Paul Quander

February 24, 2012 by CSOSA

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2011/07/dc-safe-surrender-2011-an-interview-with-deputy-mayor-for-public-safety-paul-quander/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Cedric Hendricks: Hello, this is Cedric Hendricks and welcome to DC Public Safety. Today we’ll be speaking with Mr. Paul Quander, the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice about DC Safe Surrender. Welcome Mr. Quander.

Paul Quander: Hello, how are you?

Cedric Hendricks: Could you tell us what is DC Safe Surrender?

Paul Quander: DC Safe Surrender is an opportunity where all of the law enforcement partners, local, federal, judicial, legislative, have come together to provide an opportunity for men and women who have misdemeanor warrants and low level warrants, to provide them with an opportunity to turn themselves in to reconnect with their community and their lives. It’s an opportunity for people to come get correct so that they can move on with their lives. It’s an opportunity so that they can come, so that we can get a lot of these old outstanding warrants resolved so that individuals can move on, so they can get jobs, so they can continue their career. So it’s an opportunity to move forward.

Cedric Hendricks: Now what is a public safety benefit for the individual and this community by allowing an opportunity for people to come in and self-surrender?

Paul Quander: There is a significant overall public safety benefit. The more people that come in voluntarily, the less law enforcement resources need to be expended to look for, to search for individuals. The other thing is that it helps us to continue to connect with the community. We want to be in the business of preventing crimes. We want to be in the business of trying to reestablish our communities and making sure that they’re safe places to live. A lot of the people that we’re targeting have turned their lives around. They are no longer involved in any type of criminal conduct. So they have gone the right path. So now it’s time for them just to come on in, let us take care of these outstanding issues, let’s make it right and then let’s move forward. So there’s a significant public safety implication here.

Cedric Hendricks: Now DC Safe Surrender was first done back in 2007 and you were instrumental in making that happen here. What were some of the achievements of that Safe Surrender and how are those inspiring you all to want to do this again?

Paul Quander: Well, you know we often talk about working together as a government. That was one of the most significant endeavors whereby every part of the criminal justice system, every component, was involved in fugitive safe surrender. And it wasn’t just the criminaljustice agencies, but it was the community at large. We had a religious partner, Bible Way Church and all the members of Bible Way that accepted this initiative. They took it on as one of their projects for giving back to their community. So it brought the criminal justice partners, it brought the religious community; it brought the community at large together and was located in a church and in a safe environment just as the environment of Superior Court will be for this event. And it allowed us to reconnect with our community. There are in excess of 500 men and women who came in and got their lives turned around. When you think about 500, more than 500 individuals, that’s a significant number and some of them had outstanding warrants from the 60’s. And that’s a long time to have something hanging over your head. And a lot of these matters were resolved right then, right there. So it was a resounding success. It’s a great example of community partnering and community resolve to help everyone. So that’s why we wanted to do it again. We wanted to offer it so that anyone that is out there that has this type of low level misdemeanor, non-violent offense, can turn themselves in in a safe environment and will receive favorable consideration to get the matter resolved.

Cedric Hendricks: Now why should people get favorable consideration? That certainly is a hallmark of Safe Surrender. Why is that something you can get through this door and not otherwise?

Paul Quander: The main reason is because of their own volition, their own will, the fact that they have decided themselves that they want to come in and have these matters addressed. It’s quid pro quo. They get something, law enforcement and public safety receives something. And the community wins as a whole. So if they can come in, get these matters resolved, then it’s law resources that need to be expended from the police, from the prosecutors, from probation and parole, right on down the line. So the earlier we can get matters resolved, the better it is for everyone that is concerned.

Cedric Hendricks: And finally, when will DC Safe Surrender be taking place? August 13th,

Paul Quander: I know there are three successive

Cedric Hendricks: 20th and 27th.

Paul Quander: Right, there are three successive Saturdays that we want to open this up at Superior Court, 500 Indiana Avenue. And we’re asking men and women to come in. And we’re also asking for family members to come in and to support them. This is an event for the community so if you have a grandson, if you have a nephew, if you have a niece, if you have a daughter, and they have an outstanding warrant, come down with them. It’s open to the public. It’s open for family members. And we want to get as many people to come in and to participate with us in August so that we can have a safe summer and so that beginning with the new school year, people will be free of anything that’s heading over their heads.

Cedric Hendricks: We’ve been talking with Mr. Paul Quander, the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice. He’s been briefing us on DC Safe Surrender. Thank you very much Mr. Quander.

Paul Quander: Thank you for the opportunity.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Fugitive Safe Surrender, Interviews with Policy Makers Tagged With: D.C., DC Safe Surrender, District of Columbia, Safe Surrender, Washington

ROOT, Inc (Reaching Out to Others Together) “DC Public Safety” Radio

May 9, 2011 by CSOSA

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts. We now average 200,000 requests a month.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2011/01/root-inc-reaching-out-to-others-together-dc-public-safety-radio/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From our nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. At our microphones today is Kenny Barnes, MS. He is the founder, CEO of ROOT, Inc. ROOT is one of these organizations in Washington, DC, very similar to ant-crime organizations throughout the United States, although ROOT has had a very long and illustrious background. These are individuals who work with ex-offenders. These are individuals who work with kids in the community. These are individuals, and this is an organization that is renowned for getting in and solving problems within the city of Washington, DC, working on the streets, working where the problem really is. Kenny is a recent recipient of the National Service Award from the U.S. Department of Justice for his work with victims. Joining Kenny today is Clint Murchinson. Clint is the community outreach coordinator of ROOT. The address for ROOT is www.rootinc.org, and with that introduction, Kenny Barnes and Clint Murchinson, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Kenny Barnes: Thank you for having us

Len Sipes: Kenny, you’ve been around a long time. You’re well known in Washington, DC. Everybody likes you, everybody respects you, and everybody knows your work. But remember, the audience for this program, well, 80% of the audience for this program goes beyond Washington, DC. In fact, 20% of it goes international. So give me a 30 second explanation of what ROOT incorporated is and does.

Kenny Barnes: ROOT is an acronym. It stands for Reaching Out to Others Together. It was founded back in 2002 after the horrific murder of my son by a young man who was a product of the juvenile justice system in the District of Columbia. It also stands for; we need to get to the root of the problem, what is creating such violent young children today.

Len Sipes: And what, by the way, as long as you bring that up, what is the root of the problem?

Kenny Barnes: Well, we need to learn, we need to know that violence is a learned behavior. It’s not innate. So the root of the problem is, we need to deal with issues that create violence rather than waiting to react to violence.

Len Sipes: And what are those issues?

Kenny Barnes: Mental health issue, the trauma that’s imposed on a community, the trauma that’s imposed when youth are exposed to violence, when youth are exposed to drugs, proper parenting, dysfunctional parents in the home, collaborative effort between all agencies and organizations working together, which we’ve not had in DC, which we’re striving to get in DC.

Len Sipes: Well, I would dare say, and before we get into these larger issues, Clint, you’re community outreach coordinator. You’re the person who does what? You’re the person on the street who directly works with individuals who have come out of the prison system who are acting out, who are being disruptive, you are the person who’s there to deal with them one on one, and my guess is that you’re there to get them back into a GED program if they’ve dropped out of school, if they’re acting out, to talk about anger management, if they’ve got potential, to get them into job training, your job is to show them the better nature of what it is they want to be and what it is they want to do and get them out of a life of possibly mugging and thugging, as some people like to put it, and move them in a better direction. Am I right or wrong?

Clinton Murchinson: Exactly, you are right. And one reason why I do what I do is because, you know, I’m ex-offender, as was mentioned, and I know the potentials and a lot of the people that’s out here, and I don’t just deal with ex-offenders, but I’m dealing with those who are out here in society and are being misguided, even though they don’t realize the misguidedship that they are, going down the road, so like, what I do, I work with them, pull them out, and do what ROOT said, reach out to others together as opposed to just mentioning ROOT, Inc, and having them come for us, we reach out to them, unlike other organization does, and when we work with them, you know, like I said, we listen to the kids, the young people’s concerns, because a lot of them want attention, and we listen to their concerns, and in listening to that, then we found out that, okay, this has a lot to do with their household, their upbringing, as opposed to just, you know, living on the streets, playing video games, listening to so called rap music, gangster rap, it starts at home. It starts at home, and I myself, as mentioned earlier, I’m an ex-offender, and yes, I was out there doing what I thought was right, even though my mother and father was always telling me, don’t do this, don’t do that, I became curious, and becoming curious, I had associates who I thought were friends and thought they were going to lead me right, but they led me down the wrong road –

Len Sipes: I’ve had a lot of people who come out of the prison system basically said, you know, Leonard, you can kick drugs, kicking drugs is easy, kicking the corner is impossible. Kicking your friends, kicking what you grew up with, kicking what you’ve become accustomed to is very, very hard to give up. You know, Kenny, I want to go back to larger issues, root violence, community violence, perception of violence, I mean, everybody in this country wants the golden key to preventing violence in cities. Everybody in this country essentially wants the same things. They want people who are caught up in the criminal justice system who, regardless of who they are, because in Washington DC, we’re talking about African Americans, in Minneapolis, we could be talking about whites, and in another city, we could be talking about Hispanics, and in another city, we could be talking about Indians. It is essentially the same set of dynamics regardless as to where you go and what particular group you look at, everybody wants these individuals to succeed. Everybody wants them to finish high school. Everybody wants them to go out and get a job. Everybody wants them to go on and get job training or education. Everybody wants everybody else to stay off drugs. Everybody wants everybody else to do well. Yet we have a society where we have the Kenny Barnes of the world, and we have ROOTs, and we have organizations like ROOT all throughout the country, and yet here we are sitting in 2010, and sometimes it just doesn’t seem to get any better.

Kenny Barnes: I’m going to slightly disagree with you, Leonard.

Len Sipes: Okay, go ahead.

Kenny Barnes: I think that we have, I know we have a city that reacts very well to violence. I know we have a country that reacts very well to violence. We have a prison, school to prison pipeline. We have a society that believes in incarceration that believes in locking people up instead of, that believes in prevention. I know this, because in a lot of the funding that is available, it’s not so much available for prevention. So I think that’s where we need to start gearing our attention. Ideally, what you were saying is true, ideally, we wouldn’t have a lot of the issues that we have if what you were saying is totally correct.

Len Sipes: Well, the question is, is that you go back all throughout criminology. I mean, there’s a book that all, when I left the police department years ago and had to, when I went to study criminology, Street Corner Society, which is a classic book that every criminology student has to read about Italian street corner gangs in New York, they didn’t say New York, but it really was New York in right around the 1920s, and the dynamics from the street corner gangs today and the Italian street corner gangs back in the 1920s, it is in essence the same thing. There are differences, there are, you know, the level of violence wasn’t there, but these are people who carried guns, these are people who loved to do substances, these are people who dropped out of school, these are people who mistrust authority, these are people who don’t see themselves as having a future, these are people who see themselves as fate decides what happens to you. I mean, these are all the same things that happen on the street corner of Washington DC, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City, it doesn’t matter. My point is that there just seems to, decade in, decade out, there seems to be, if you don’t mind me saying this, an underclass, regardless of what race they happen to belong to, that are caught up in the criminal justice system that are caught up in mugging and thugging, and they don’t see a way out for themselves.

Kenny Barnes: Yes, but I want to make a difference, is that from a criminologist’s perspective, my background is clinical psychology. So we may have a different viewpoint as to what causes this, I don’t know, because I’ve not studied criminology, I have studied psychology. The fact of the matter is that we live in a system that almost demands an underclass. There almost has to be an underclass for this system to be successful. Now when you throw in racism and you throw in poverty and you throw in lack of education, you throw in dysfunctional families, you throw in dropping out of school, you now add on top of that, you already have a fire burning in the community already. Now what you do is you add on top of that music, kill, murder, drugs, b, whore, and you add that on top of that to an underclass that is already on fire, that’s like pouring gasoline on the fire, so now what happens is you see children now that are, and I have to say, it’s still a small percentage. I’m not saying all children, it’s still a small percentage, but it’s growing, and I see children that are almost out of control.

Len Sipes: And you know, you’ve said so many things, and we could move in so many different directions, and I, there are people out there who just take a look at the music and cannot fathom how it was ever created and how it was ever produced and how it was ever embraced because the messages are so self-destructive to younger people, yet the next person who comes into this studio will see it as an art form and as a form of urban expression and as an expression of who we really are. You’ve touched upon a lot of different things, but it’s almost not that we have, that this system creates an underclass, needs an underclass, the music part of it is beyond comprehension, because it’s so self-destructive, and that’s something I’ll never quite understand, but I’m glad you brought it up. Clinton, I want to get you in here. Somewhere along the line between the two of you gentlemen, I want to get to three things, and we talked about them at the beginning of the program: prevention, the fact that we can’t glorify former offenders, and the fact of what it is that ROOT does, but we need to leave a message to people today from all across the country all around the world who are going to be listening to this program, what communities need to do to lower crime and to get kids in school and to create an atmosphere of success for these kids. What is it? You work on the street, you know these kids better than anybody else. What is it, what should we do?

Clinton Murchinson: Well, a lot of people might disagree with me, but what motivates me in helping these kids and understanding these kids is understanding myself first. You know, recognizing how precious life is in the beginning, and in doing so, you know, I look at how I want to be treated. And a lot of people don’t do that. They don’t do that. They do not look at how they really want to be treated, and I, myself, for one, is a person who loved myself, which in turn, make me love others.

Len Sipes: All right, so you’ve got to know yourself, number one, and there’s got to be respect given and respect returned.

Clinton Murchinson: Exactly, because that’s one thing that is motivating a lot of youth out here in society –

Len Sipes: Oh, lord knows!

Clinton Murchinson: – you know, is respect. They don’t respect anybody. They don’t even respect themselves.

Len Sipes: Got it. Now where does that come from? Number two?

Clinton Murchinson: Where did it come from? I think that comes from a breakdown in the household again. You know, you have one parent household, the father might be in jail, or he might have ran off, messed with some other woman, and therefore the woman has to fend for herself, and then she, in turn, are doing what she thinks she has to do in order to get by.

Len Sipes: All right, I’m going to stop you right there, and now the question’s going to go to both of you is, there’s a lot of people who believe that the root cause – the root cause, I love the term, because ROOT Inc. is here before our microphones, ladies and gentlemen, the root cause of all of this is what’s happening in the home, the root of all of this is child abuse. The root of all of this is that even if Mom is the last one there, even if Dad’s not part of the picture, that kid’s, in essence, raising himself or herself from an early age, and that kid is growing up feeling abandoned and unloved, which goes to the alcohol, which goes to the drugs, which goes to the violence, and is that anywhere, is that feasible as in terms of being the major contributor to the problem that we have today, Kenny?

Kenny Barnes: I’m going to go heavy on you, Leonard, for a minute.

Len Sipes: Go ahead, please.

Kenny Barnes: Okay, as I said, my background is clinical psychology, and so what you do in a scientific experiment, you look at what is variables and interchanging variables. What is going on today that didn’t go on 40 years ago, 50 years ago? Why are children becoming more violent today? Why do we have, and it’s getting younger, why do we have some of the most violent young people we’ve ever had in the history of the United States? What’s changed?

Len Sipes: Why?

Kenny Barnes: Number one, this is going to cause some controversy on your show, you’re going to get all kinds of calls about this.

Len Sipes: All right.

Kenny Barnes: First of all is, African Americans, we don’t live in a patriarchal society. We live in a matriarchal society. We need to understand that first of all. We need to understand that a lot of times, black men weren’t in the families before just as they’re not there today. The only difference is that if they were in the family before, all they did was basically brought a paycheck home. The woman was always the strength of the family, always the black family. So number one, what is the first missing variable is that women of today are no longer the matriarchs like they were years ago. We have three types of women that we see dealing with these children. One is the good mother that’s out there struggling and trying to keep her family together. She’s working, she can’t afford it. No man around. The second mother is the type that’s out there running the streets chasing men all over the place or hanging out running the streets. And then the third type of mother is the one that’s on drugs and alcohol, but under either situation, children are raising themselves together.

Len Sipes: Well, okay, we agree. Kids are basically raising themselves or getting up in the morning and pouring their own cereal. We’re talking about 6 year olds, 7 year olds, they are pouring their own cereal, they are sitting down in front of the television, they are dressing themselves, and if they go to school, they’re going to school by themselves, Mom’s not in the house, or Mom’s sleeping it off.

Kenny Barnes: And Father’s not around.

Len Sipes: And Dad’s not around at all.

Kenny Barnes: That drives them to gangs, because why do you join a gang?

Len Sipes: Right, for companionship. Or family.

Kenny Barnes: Or either for safety. The gang’s got my back. Okay, that’s the first problem. The second problem is going to create some controversy to, and you’re going to say, wow, I didn’t think about that, is the church. Before years ago, churches were an integral part of the community. It was a part of the family, extended family. Churches have become corporate entities now, more concerned about making profit than they are about the community. Their doors are no longer open to the communities and families. It’s more about making money. That’s a second issue. And the third issue, when you take those two issues, it goes back to what we talked about. From the time a child wakes up now, they see 18 hours of video or TV every day, and that subconsciously has to have an effect on your mind. So you put all these three factors together, and I’ve got to say this one last thing. I want you to think for a minute, if you’re a black child in America, and you have a mother that you can’t respect, then who can you respect?

Len Sipes: If you can’t go to the church because the church has lost its authenticity, if you can’t go to the mosque because it’s lost its authenticity –

Kenny Barnes: You can’t go to government.

Len Sipes: – if you can’t go to the government –

Kenny Barnes: You can’t go to the police.

Len Sipes: The only person that you’re going to go to are gangs.

Kenny Barnes: That’s all you’ve got left.

Len Sipes: Ladies and gentlemen, we’re halfway through a program that’s streaking by like a comet going through the evening sky. I want to reintroduce our guest. Kenny Barnes, MS, he is the founder and CEO of ROOT, Inc. ROOT is a grassroots organization here in the city of Washington DC working on the streets with individuals, ex-offenders, people in trouble, people caught up in the criminal justice system to try to intervene. He is the recipient of the National Service Award for victim services from the United States Department of Justice. With Kenny Today is Clint Murchinson. Clint is a community outreach coordinator. The address is www.rootinc.org. So in essence, let’s get back to the conversation, gentlemen. The bottom line is this, that you’re talking about it in terms of the African American community. I want to talk about it in terms of any community, and I’m not trying just to be politically correct here. If you go and work with, I did street counseling on the streets of the city of Baltimore. I was out there doing gang counseling on my own. Clint, I used to do what you’re doing. And all I had was the Appalachian kids, from the mountains, whose parents brought them down to Baltimore City, and so I’m out there, you know, 11:00, midnight, 1:00 in the morning on the streets with the Appalachian kids. There were some black kids there, there were some other kids there from some other races, but it’s principally Appalachian. Kenny, what you just said applies to them. And we’re talking about during the 1970s and 1980s –

Kenny Barnes: Let me tell you the difference, though.

Len Sipes: Okay, go ahead.

Kenny Barnes: Okay. You picked out one segment, and I’m not going to debate you, I wouldn’t debate you about economics plays a role. It does. But look what you did. You picked out one segment of the white community, the poorest segment of the white community to make a comparison. What I’m talking about takes place in every major city in the United States of America. What you’re talking about, you picked out one segment, right? Okay, that’s the difference. We’re talking about a problem that is systemic and endemic in the African American community, not one segment of it.

Len Sipes: Is it systemic regardless of what community you go into, or is it just the African American community?

Kenny Barnes: The issues that I’m talking about, let me show you the difference. When I talk about this, and it does offend people, I’m not going to lie about that. But if you look at a black family, and you look at a mother raising her children, when the black man leaves his family, his children, he’ll leave his children, he will go to another family, and he will help raise the other family, and he’ll raise children from the other family, or have new children, and forget all about the children he left behind. With a white family, the mother and the father will fight, they may hate each other, they may try to kill each other, murder each other, but they will fight for the death of their children, and let me give you another example –

Len Sipes: What do we do about all this?

Kenny Barnes: Let me give you one more example. I went to Loyola, Loyola College in Baltimore. I was in the doctoral program there; I was the only African American at the time. I looked at, because the fact of the matter is, white people, 80% of rap music is more about white people. That’s the fact of the matter. I looked at these kids who were trying to be cool when I was at Loyola, listening to rap music. Now again, the difference is, when they graduated, Len, they went on to become right wing Republicans!

Len Sipes: That’s the point, that’s –

Kenny Barnes: But to us, it becomes a way of life.

Len Sipes: You know, when my kids screwed up, they had safety nets. They had a mother and a father who was going to get in their face and threaten them and say, we’re going to cut you off and yadda, yadda, yadda, we worked hard for these kids –

Kenny Barnes: But that’s my point.

Len Sipes: – loving them, threatening them, doing whatever is possible, most kids caught up in the criminal justice system, they don’t have that luxury. They don’t have parents who are fighting tooth and nail to try and pull that kid out. They’re on their own.

Kenny Barnes: Well now, you just validated what I’m trying to say.

Len Sipes: No, no, it’s not that I disagree with what it is that you’re trying to say. I do believe that an awful lot of it applies to any group, an awful lot of it applies through, not just to today, but it applies all throughout the history of criminology within this country –

Kenny Barnes: But the difference, Len, the difference is, if you look at percentages, look at percentage of homicide. 52% of the homicides taking place in America today are black people killing black people. If you look at the prison system, the percentagewise, the largest percentage of people in the prison system, percentagewise, are black people. If you look at the economy, the largest percent of the people unemployed in any city you go in are black people. So we have to stop the systemic and endemic, directly affecting black people.

Len Sipes: We’ve got 10 minutes to solve all this!

Kenny Barnes: That you can’t correlate with overall society. That’s what I’m saying.

Len Sipes: Kenny and Clinton, we’ve got 10 minutes to solve all this. So the point of this is that I have, every time I listen to music, and I’ve heard the lyrics, it’s like, oh my god, why don’t we just stop playing this crap? How self-destructive could this possibly be? But it just explodes and continues and moves on, and it gets mainstream, I mean, sometimes you begin to wonder, okay, is the only solution here to move away from the problem, which seems to be the preferred solution of people, regardless of what city you go to, to get away from all of the ills of society, you just move, and that doesn’t really solve the problem. What do we do with all this information? If we know what’s causing the root of the crime problem in our cities, what do we do about it?

Kenny Barnes: Well, again, we have a system that, in the prison system, once again, it’s a for profit system right now, which means that it’s about money, it’s about making money, it’s about numbers. It really isn’t about rehabilitation anymore. It’s about how many people, because the more people you have in prison, the more money you make. Okay. So when you look at it from that perspective, you begin to understand why. You begin to understand –

Len Sipes: So we want the system to fail? We don’t want these kids to go to school, we don’t want these kids to get an education, I mean, so the society is set up to the point where that’s our desire? Our desire is to have the kid fail and go to prison because it’s a money making enterprise?

Kenny Barnes: Well, let me say this. From my perspective, if you know, and what we are both agreeing to, that if there is no support system there, you’re doomed almost to failure. It takes an extremely strong individual with no support system to come overcome their situation.

Len Sipes: I agree, I agree. How do we get to that support system? Clinton?

Clinton Murchinson: Well, like, I kind of differ on some of the things that Kenny has mentioned as far as, like, you know, the prison system not rehabilitating. Yes, being incarcerated, I have noticed that back in this 80s, they have gotten away from the theory of rehabilitation, but I’m going to say in the 90s, they’ve taken things away from you that they was giving you in the prison system, like certain magazines, you couldn’t even order. I’m talking about, like, what is it, Ebony Magazine, and one reason for that, because they have pretty women in there, so they use that to kind of curtail a lot of sex offenders that were incarcerated, right? And musical magazines, because of the rap music. They take all that away from you in prison. This was in the 90s they started doing this, and I myself have seen that that was a form of, like, rehabilitating you by taking away from you what was motivating you, but again, that goes back to a person has to understand themselves. I’m talking about not just understand that I’m black, or I’m from DC, or I’m some, understanding the nature of being a human being, and that ties in with spirituality. Once a person would tie into that, then they’ll want to do good. They want to do what is right, because they fear the ultimate punishment.

Len Sipes: Every person coming out of the prison system says that you’ve got to make that decision for yourself. I do agree with Kenny from the standpoint that only 11% of people in this country, in our prison systems in the criminal justice system get drug treatment. 11% who need it get it, which means that the overwhelming majority don’t. So for those people who say that they believe that the system is self-perpetuating, and it’s set up to be self-perpetuating, that it’s going to just continue, well there’s a piece of evidence right there that the vast majority of people who need the drug treatment programs, need the mental health treatment programs, they don’t get it, and I’m not talking necessarily about the federal prison system, I’m talking about any prison system, the money is not there to help them, and the research is pretty clear that, if they got the help, then they would do a lot better. But let’s get off the prison system just for a second, and we can do an entire additional show on the prison system if you like. So what do we as a society do? I mean, what I’m hearing is religion, what I’m hearing is ethics –

Kenny Barnes: No, no.

Len Sipes: – what I’m hearing is changing –

Kenny Barnes: You heard that from Clint. You’re not hearing religion from me.

Len Sipes: Well, tell me. Tell me.

Kenny Barnes: No, religion, not at all. When my son was murdered, and I saw a bullet hole in his head, and a minister came to me and said, that’s the will, turn it over to Jesus, that’s the will of God, I didn’t want to hear that. When you have people that are hopeless and despair, and you have ministers that are out there trying to get them to give them their last dollar, people have a tendency to sort of shy away from religion.

Len Sipes: Okay. So what do we do? What do we do then? If it’s not spiritual –

Kenny Barnes: Okay, what we do is, first thing we do is we know that the, turning to violence, research shows that it starts to begin from early kindergarten and elementary school to middle school. We know that the transition starts to take place. So what do we need to do? We need to go in early on and start doing preventative measures early on, early on prior to transitioning for violence to take place. That’s what we need to do, number one.

Len Sipes: I agree, by the way. You know what? There’s a review of research, talking about the most powerful prevention programs out there, the most powerful prevention program is working with the young mother early on when the kid just begins –

Kenny Barnes: Exactly.

Len Sipes: So you are 1,000% correct.

Kenny Barnes: Exactly.

Len Sipes: What’s your next point?

Kenny Barnes: Okay. The second point is, it’s almost like the public health model, the way the public health model is the tertiary model. You have prevention early on from elementary school and pre-elementary school, you have prevention methods. By the time a child gets to middle school, some thoughts and theories have formed in their mind. Some things begin to take place. Then you need intervention.

Len Sipes: Okay, so give me something specific. Okay, so we’ve said we’re going to send, the first example, we’re going to send social workers in to work with a mom to make sure that she’s reading to the kid, be sure that she knows she can’t hit the kid, be sure that she knows she’s got to give the kid a hot breakfast every day, basics that she may not know. So now we’re taking it into, the kid’s now 7 and 8 years old, though, what do you do for that kid? Prevention, you’re talking about prevention.

Kenny Barnes: I’m talking about prevention.

Len Sipes: Give me an example.

Kenny Barnes: Okay, we can talk about issues that create violence. We can talk about gang violence, how to prevent them from joining gang violence. We can set up a default system for parenting. We can give parenting classes. We can give therapy. We can give psychology. Okay, we can do all type of interventions, and it has to be a multimodal comprehensive approach. It’s not any one answer.

Len Sipes: So what you’re talking about is replicating the gang. You’re talking about a gang for good. You’re talking about making sure that the kids are in a group environment, and they’re being supportive of each other and getting the services that they need.

Kenny Barnes: You know Maslow’s theory of hierarchy. You know about that.

Len Sipes: Mm-hm.

Kenny Barnes: What is the foundation for Maslow’s theory of hierarchy? Public safety, housing, food, shelter. If we don’t provide basic fundamental security for young people, why do we expect that they won’t join gangs?

Len Sipes: Okay, and getting into the last minutes of the program, give me one more. You’re doing a good job. You’re doing a good job laying out specifics. Give me one more.

Kenny Barnes: Education.

Len Sipes: Education.

Kenny Barnes: Education.

Len Sipes: School’s got to be 1,000 times better.

Kenny Barnes: Education. The other thing is community policing.

Len Sipes: All right.

Kenny Barnes: Community policing, and what I mean by community policing, I mean we’re policing the community, actually begin to understand each other with, and I didn’t say more police, I said community policing, with a strong emphasis on violent offenders, because we know, you know and I know, that most violent offenders are recidivists. So we have to pay close attention, and I don’t care, I don’t care what age they are, we have to pay close attention to violent offenders.

Len Sipes: You have done what I consider to be an extraordinary job, because most of the people that come to the microphones, they can tell you why they have the problem. We all know why we have the problem, but very few people can come up with specifics in terms of how to deal with the problem, and you’ve just given us four. We’ve got 30 seconds left, Kenny. You want to sum up? I mean, in the final analysis to the child listening to this program, the mother listening to this program, the mayor of Minneapolis listening to this program, you say what to that person?

Kenny Barnes: We must learn how to prevent violence rather than react to it, and we do, far too many instances react to it, and that’s what’s increasing a prison population that’s increasing and bulging at the seams.

Len Sipes: You’ve got the final word, and Kenny and Clinton, you guys are invited back. There’s just no way that you can cover this within a half an hour, just went by way too fast. Kenny Barnes, MS, he is the recipient of the National Service Award for Victim Services from the United States Department of Justice from our current U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, he is the founder, CEO of ROOT, Inc, Clinton Murchinson, he is a community outreach coordinator for the ROOT, Inc. program here in Washington, DC, that’s www.rootinc.org. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. I’ve been your host, Leonard Sipes, and we really appreciate your participation in the program, the emails, the letters, and the comments that you give us. Look for us next time as we explore another topic within the criminal justice system. I want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Interviews with Policy Makers, Reentry, Violence Reduction Tagged With: community organization, D.C., prevention, ROOT, violence, Washington

Drug Courts in Washington, D.C. “DC Public Safety”

January 3, 2011 by CSOSA

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts. We now average 200,000 requests a month.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/11/drug-courts-in-washington-d-c-dc-public-safety/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes: From our nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Today, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to talk about drug courts. Drug courts seem to have a pretty impressive research history from the U.S. Department of Justice and other sources essentially stating that people involved in the drug court process do well, better than the people who do not go to drug court, people involved in substance abuse, they go to drug court, they interact with the judge, they interact with supervision staff, and generally speaking, the outcomes are positive. To talk about the program that we have here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, we have two principals with us today. Carline Claudomir and Amanda Rocha, they’re both community supervision officers assigned to our drug court, but before we get into the program, our usual commercial, we are up to 220,000 requests for DC Public Safety radio, television, blog, and transcripts. If you need to get in touch with us, and we really appreciate all of the emails, we really appreciate all of the comments in the comment line, and whether it’s criticisms, or whether it’s platitudes, we embrace whatever it is that you have to say to us, and we take it very seriously, and we appreciate all the suggestions in terms of future programs, you can get in touch with me directly via email: Leonard, L-E-O-N-A-R-D – dot-sipes – S-I-P-E-S – @csosa.gov, or you can follow us via twitter at twitter.com/lensipes or you can go to the site itself, www.csosa.gov and look for the radio and television programs, or you can go to media.csosa.gov directly and take a look at these programs and comment through the comment line and back to our guests, Carline Claudomir and Amanda Rocha, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Carline Claudomir: Hi, Len.

Amanda Rocha: Hi, Len.

Len Sipes: All right, Carline. How many times did I butcher that first name? And last name? Carline Claudomir!

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay. And I know I’m going to get the emails saying, Leonard, you can not pronounce names correctly! Amanda, you’ve been before our microphones before, correct?

Amanda Rocha: I have, Len.

Len Sipes: You’ve done some other stuff for us.

Amanda Rocha: Yes, I have.

Len Sipes: All right, so you’re star of stage and screen.

Amanda Rocha: Oh, no!

Len Sipes: And you’re very used to the microphone process. Drug courts. You know, ladies, the research on drug courts is positive, Carline, and the first question’s going to go to you. The research is positive. Drug courts do seem to work. Individuals going into the drug court process do seem to do fairly well. The whole idea behind, or the history of drug courts, for the audience, was to try to provide an alternative to incarceration, and an alternative to doing nothing. If you take a look at national research, out of all of the offenders caught up in the criminal justice system, 11% get drug treatment.

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: Now, the overwhelming majority of people caught up in the criminal justice system do not get drug treatment. That’s amazing to me. That’s amazing to me, considering all the social ills that are out there. But here, what we do is provide drug treatment, and in some cases, we simply provide supervision services. We do whatever is necessary to stabilize that person with a substance abuse history, correct?

Carline Claudomir: You’re correct.

Len Sipes: All right, tell me about it.

Carline Claudomir: My name is Carline Claudomir, and I work with the STAR/HIDTA team. STAR/HIDTA stands for Sanction Team for Addiction Recovery. Our program entails the clients being assigned by either their judge and their attorney, or coming through transfer from other teams at CSOSA, or through our pre-trial drug program. Once they come to STAR/HIDTA, they are signing a contract stating that there are a number of things that they will and will not do while on probation, and they understand that there’s immediate consequences for any positive drug test or noncompliant behavior.

Len Sipes: Okay, so if they screw up, there are immediate consequences –

Carline Claudomir: Absolutely.

Len Sipes: – and that’s what seems to work, correctly?

Carline Claudomir: Yes, it’s the blessing and the curse for some of the clients.

Len Sipes: Because we need to understand that people with substance abuse histories, shall I say, always screw up. Recovery, problems are part of the recovery process, so it’s not, go to drug court and never do drugs again. It’s go to drug court and work with that person as that person faces their addiction history and relearns how to live life without drugs.

Carline Claudomir: Yes, and a lot of times, when they come to us, they sit, stand up in court before the judge and say, Your Honor, yes, I want to do probation, Your Honor, yes, I want treatment, then they come to the office, and then they reread the contract and realize it’s not only treatment!

Len Sipes: Oh, my heavens! What have I gotten myself involved in?

Carline Claudomir: Yes, it’s treatment and sanctions, so if you continue to use drugs, unfortunately, there are jail sanctions involved, which are treatment, tough love all the way.

Len Sipes: You’re tough love all the way, but that’s what is necessary. Amanda Rocha, in terms of that sense of tough love, correct?

Amanda Rocha: Yes, absolutely. It really does help to have that median sanctioning, because it puts a little fear in the offenders so that they don’t go back and use, it gives them that second thought before deciding to use, oh, that’s three nights in jail if I go ahead and do that, or oh, you know what? I’m on my fourth sanction or fifth sanction, and now it’s seven nights in jail. So they don’t want to continue going back and forth. It gets old for them to have to do that, and so kind of helps them along the way a little bit.

Len Sipes: Well, I think it’s important for people to understand just that, because, you know, this whole concept of treatment, the research is pretty clear that the reason why most people don’t get drug treatment is not its availability or lack of availability. The principal reason for why people don’t get drug treatment is that they don’t feel they need drug treatment, and in many cases, in terms of the criminal justice system, we basically coerce them into a) getting drug treatment, b) sticking with it because of the sanctions along the way. If you have a positive urine, we don’t care if it’s for marijuana, we don’t care what it’s for. If you have a positive urine, this is what’s going to happen to you, and those punishments, if you will, are going to increase as you continue your substance abuse, correct?

Carline Claudomir: It’s the accountability factor, and a lot of times, they come to us never having to be held accountable for their drug use, never had to be held accountable for their actions, and when they come to us, they realize every time they mess up, there is no passes, there are no passes, so immediately, you go see the judge, and you can explain to the judge why you felt it was okay to make this decision, regardless of the consequences.

Len Sipes: You know, the interesting thing is that there’s an increasing number of research programs out there, studies that, interestingly enough, it’s the judge who seems to be at the centerpoint of a lot of these mental health courts, substance abuse courts, reentry courts, there’s something magical about the judge being involved in this process, I think.

Carline Claudomir: It’s the authority, because if I say he needs treatment and the judge says he needs treatment, that holds a lot of weight. You don’t want to go to a judge and say, no, he doesn’t need treatment. No, it doesn’t work that way. The judge says he needs it, then you’re going to listen, because they’re in the midst of the battle.

Len Sipes: Okay. Now it’s extraordinarily confusing for the people of this audience, because it goes way beyond Washington D.C. 20% of our audience is international, and the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area is not our top city in terms of people listening to this program. So we have to explain that under the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, administratively, we have an entity called pre-trial services who are their own independent agency with their own board and their own mission, but they fall under the generic auspices of the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, both are federalized, and they also have a drug court program focusing on pretrial individuals, correct?

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay, and I know you can’t speak for them, but in essence, the gig is that the person goes before a judge, and if he completes, or she completes the provisions of the drug court program, the charges are dropped.

Carline Claudomir: It has an affect on the charges or what is actually ending sentencing.

Len Sipes: All right, there you go. It has an effect. You should be a public affairs officer. But ours, what we’re talking about is post-conviction. We’re talking about probationers.

Amanda Rocha: Yes.

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay, and the probationers, we’re talking about, the incentive here is early termination, it’s where the judge or the attorney feels that this person has a substance abuse background, not necessarily currently doing drugs, but having a substance abuse background, and this person may not be new to the criminal justice system. This person may have multiple arrests and multiple contacts with the criminal justice system, correct?

Amanda Rocha: That is correct. We have people who are 18-years-old up until, well into their 60s, so yeah, it could be somebody who is their first charge, or it could be somebody who’s, it’s their 20th.

Len Sipes: Right, and that part, by the way, the process in terms of people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s and older. I’ve had a chance to encounter them, in terms of the write-alongs that I’ve done with our folks, and that’s sad, don’t you think? I mean, when you walk into this apartment of this guy who’s been through heroin, who’s been through crack, I mean, these older heroin addicts, these older coke guys, you know, they just have the hardest time staying away from drugs. It’s just amazing to me to go into the home of a 50-year-old and 60-year-old because they continue to do drugs.

Carline Claudomir: Can I go back to the incentive process?

Len Sipes: Yes.

Carline Claudomir: I always hear the biggest incentives for our program is the fact that you can come off of drugs, and you can be successful in the community without using illicit substances. We actually have a client right now, he is part of the TAP program, but we also see some of those clients sometimes, and he’s working, he’s successful, he’s drug free. That is the biggest incentive. Most of our clients, however, see early termination, and that’s their goal, and they don’t actually think of, to get there, I have to also be drug free.

Len Sipes: Here’s my guess, and either one of you, feel free to tell me whether I’m right or wrong. My guess is that they think that they’re entering this program, and the early termination is the only thing that’s on their mind, and getting off of drugs is way, way, way, way, way back on the list of –

Carline Claudomir: – priorities.

Len Sipes: Yeah, priorities, because a lot of people, they’ve done drugs the good part of their lives. You know, 12, 13 years old, starting alcohol, 14, 15, starting marijuana, 16, 17, graduating to the harder drugs, a lot of these individuals that we supervise here at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, and this applies to any parole and probation agency in the country. You know, they work with people who don’t know how to live life without self-medication.

Carline Claudomir: And unfortunately, in their minds, they believe it’s recreational, even though they have a 20-year history of drug abuse and treatment situations, they still believe it’s recreational, I can stop at any point in time.

Len Sipes: I can handle this.

Carline Claudomir: And unfortunately, when they get in front of, into the STAR/HIDTA program, and there’s consequences, and they realize, well I’m just going to jail because I can’t stop using, is that really worth it? And that’s when it may click in their mind, okay, I really do, I have a problem. I can’t do this on my own.

Len Sipes: We, we have this come to reality be, again, I’ve used other terms, but I don’t want to be disrespectful. Where that becomes a defining moment in their lives, does it not, that they have lived their life with the needle, lived their life with a powdery substance, lived their life smoking reefer, they really don’t know what to do without drugs.

Amanda Rocha: And I think, for example, we have somebody assigned to us right now. Her grandmother had a history, apparently she’s not using now, but of use. Her mother is actively using, and she’s a young girl, 19 years old, and is using, so that, not only has she been using for a good amount of her short life that she has had so far, but she also has been living with this substance abuse through her generations.

Len Sipes: Right. I guess that’s the point that I’m trying to get across to the audience, because we have this extraordinarily simplistic sense as to the problem that we have with people, the 16,000 people that we supervise on any given day, and most of the people in the audience that I talk to understand that out of the 7 million people under correctional supervision, 5 of those 7 million are on community supervision. So when we talk about corrections in this country, the overwhelming majority of these individuals are in the community being supervised in the community. The overwhelming majority of these individuals have substance abuse histories. The overwhelming majority of these individuals just don’t smoke a joint every couple weeks. That investment in drugs is a long term early age of onset life altering experience, but they don’t know how to have a life without drugs. So every time the boss gets in their face, they smoke a joint. Every time life takes a turn, the needle goes in their arm. That’s who they are, that’s what they are in terms of their own self definition. Now am I exaggerating, or am I in the ballpark?

Carline Claudomir: No, even when they’re successful, the way they celebrate is by using drugs!

Len Sipes: That’s right! They reward themselves. We had a case one time when I was with the Maryland Department of Public Safety. The guy comes out of prison, reunited with his family, he’s going to drug treatment, he’s working, he’s getting along with the kids, and he’s doing so well, that what he does is fire up a joint to celebrate! And he kept pulling positives for marijuana! First positive, second positive, third, fourth, fifth, sixth. Now there’s a certain point where we’re sitting down and saying, my man, you’re very close to going back to prison, and your wife let you come home, and the kids, you’re getting along with the kids, and you’re working every single day, and you’re going to drug treatment, and the drug treatment folks say that you’re progressing, and you’re within a hair’s breadth of going back to the prison system! What’s up with you?

Carline Claudomir: Well I have clients like that right now in my caseload. I had a client who, by some confusion, believed that her termination date was a month earlier, and so when I called her in, I said, I need you to come in and drug test, because I’m sorry, you actually terminate in May instead of April, and that drug test was positive for marijuana, and her explanation was, I thought I was off of probation! But she had not tested positive in close to 7 months!

Len Sipes: But that’s not the point!

Carline Claudomir: It’s not the point!

Len Sipes: So you, the criminal justice system, in essence, in these drug courts or other modalities that we have here at CSOSA, when we involve people in long term residential group substance abuse, that is, for the first time in their lives many of these individuals come face to face with the prospect of never using drugs again, and facing the prospect as to why they use drugs to begin with. That is a pretty scary place to be, is it not?

Amanda Rocha: I would think so, yeah. Some of the offenders have already had drug treatment, though, and this is their second time coming around, because like you were saying, it is a scary thought, so maybe that first time they weren’t open to it. They didn’t really reap the full benefits of receiving that treatment, so here they are, back in the criminal justice system, and we’re giving them another chance, and we’re hoping that this time, they are receptive, and they do keep that open mind, and they aren’t so put off by the whole idea of addressing that issue.

Len Sipes: We’re halfway through the program, ladies and gentlemen. This is DC Public Safety today. We’re talking about drug courts. We have two principals with us. We have Carline, let’s see if I can actually pronounce Carline’s last name correctly, Claudomir, and Amanda Rocha, both community supervision officers with drug court. Again, there are two drug courts in the District of Columbia, ours under the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, which is post-adjudication, which means the person’s on probation, and we also have one on the pretrial side of it, and the whole idea is, when the judge or the attorney takes a look at this individual’s background, they say that this person’s involvement in criminal activity is principally due to substance abuse, and that person may not be new to the criminal justice system. This may be the person’s fifth, sixth, seventh, twelfth time, but he has a substance abuse history, she has a substance abuse history, and what we try to do is to get them involved in treatment, but the interesting part of it is that treatment may not be the first stop, correct? We have other, we assess the individual –

Carline Claudomir: When they come in to this, the HIDTA drug program, initially, some clients actually are [INDISCERNIBLE] from either the pretrial or from a request from their judge. A lot of our clients come in, and we assess their drug, their current drug test to see, what level they would actually go into. Some clients come in and never drug test positive, and they had dealt with their issues prior to coming to –

Len Sipes: Or they make the voluntary decision to stop as long as they’re under supervision. So the interesting part, this was the point I was trying to get to, and both of you were looking at me, so why did I, the interesting part of it is research years ago that basically said offenders take vacations from their drug use all the time. There’s a certain point where even the person involved in substance abuse will say, I’m doing it too much. I need my wife or my significant other, or for whatever reason, I’m going to be drug tested, I’ve got to stop for the next 3 or 4 months, and then oftentimes, the person goes right back to it. So this sense of an uncontrollable craving for drugs, that craving is always there, but the person can stop for a certain amount of time.

Carline Claudomir: It depends on the person, but yes, sometimes we do have clients who may have tested positive three or four times at the very beginning, and we never, and then complete their whole probation with no, with no positive drug tests, but then we’ll see them later on in court, and they got another charge, and they tested positive at some other point after they leave the STAR/HIDTA program.

Len Sipes: So with the criminal justice system has the wherewithal, and mothers have the wherewithal, and pardon my sexism, wives have the wherewithal, and in the case of women offenders, husbands have the wherewithal, people who have a certain amount of power regarding the offender, have the ability to get that offender to stop doing drugs, at least for a certain amount of time.

Carline Claudomir: Specifically when the consequences is jail time. A lot of our clients, after they sit, do their first sanction which is a jury box sanction for three days, and they see the judge stepping back, client after client after client for a positive drug test for three nights or seven nights or 14 nights or 28 nights, they look at that and say, oh, I’m not going to do 28 nights for a positive marijuana. I can stop for –

Len Sipes: That’s the point, isn’t it?

Carline Claudomir: Yeah.

Len Sipes: Isn’t that the point? I mean, it’s like we have these endless debates about substance abuse and what works and what doesn’t work. Well, holding a 28 day setback, as we refer to it, of spending 28 days in jail for smoking a joint seems to be an awfully heavy price to pay, and a lot of these individuals under our supervision consciously make the choice not to continue to smoke marijuana because they simply don’t want to spend 28 days in jail, correct?

Carline Claudomir: Correct, but the flipside is those who actually are in the grips of their addiction, no matter how many sanctions you provide, they’re not going to stop.

Len Sipes: They’re not going to stop.

Carline Claudomir: And those are the ones we really try to focus on and really try to get them out of the community immediately, because every time they pick up, they’re, one, they’re breaking the law, and they’re violating their probation contract, and they’re violating probation, and they’re hurting themselves, and they may become a threat to the community, so we try to get them out of the community as fast as we can through treatment.

Len Sipes: All right, and then some cases, through residential treatment.

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: Okay. So let’s walk through those steps, those sanction steps, because we have, sitting in the jury box for three days, which is a real pain.

Carline Claudomir: First violation.

Len Sipes: Okay. Second violation –

Carline Claudomir: – is going to be 30 days on GPS with [INDISCERNIBLE] conference.

Len Sipes: So 30 days being tracked electronically through global positioning system satellite tracking, so wherever you go, you’re tracked.

Carline Claudomir: With a curfew.

Len Sipes: With a curfew.

Carline Claudomir: And sometimes, a stayaway. You can’t go to the neighborhood where you usually get your drugs from.

Len Sipes: There you go.

Carline Claudomir: If you do, we know where you are.

Len Sipes: There you go. So he’s being watched all the time. Okay, so that’s pretty cool. Now the next sanction after that?

Carline Claudomir: Third sanction is three nights in jail.

Len Sipes: Three nights in jail. In the D.C. jail.

Carline Claudomir: D.C. jail.

Len Sipes: Well that’s a lovely place to visit! Is it on the weekend, during the week?

Carline Claudomir: It’s whenever they get their sanction.

Len Sipes: It’s whenever they get their sanction.

Carline Claudomir: It starts immediately.

Len Sipes: Okay. Fourth?

Amanda Rocha: It would be a case staffing. So Ms. Claudomir and I, or our supervisor or other team members get together and discuss this individual’s case to see what we can do at this point, because in the past, what has been going on isn’t working. So a plan, in a sense.

Len Sipes: Is that, is that where you give your riot act pronouncement to the individual, basically saying, hey, you’re this far from going into prison?

Carline Claudomir: They’ve been getting it the whole time! And we tell our clients when they come in, if we get to the case staffing stage, please understand you’re leaving the community and going to treatment. There is no if, but, can I, can I get one more chance? No, your chance was when you stood in front of the judge and said you would be clean and sober.

Len Sipes: And there’s a certain point where we will send them away to residential treatment.

Carline Claudomir: That’s the case staffing stage.

Len Sipes: That’s the case staffing stage. Okay, after that, what happens?

Amanda Rocha: Then we have the seven nights in jail sanction.

Len Sipes: Okay, and then it just basically goes from 7 nights to 14 nights to an entire month sort of thing.

Amanda Rocha: That’s right, and if somebody gets placed in residential treatment and gets discharged unsuccessfully or voluntarily chooses to leave, then that would be 15 nights in jail.

Len Sipes: The average person listening to this program, people within the criminal justice system are going to say, eh, that’s pretty much common business, drug positives and sanctions. The average person outside of the criminal justice system listening to this program would be appalled. They’re going, how many positives, how many bites at the apple are you giving this guy? You’re telling me that he’s got 15 prior contacts with the criminal justice system, and now we’re up to our fifth and sixth drug positive? For the love of good god, put that person in prison! Obviously, that person doesn’t want to comply. Obviously, that person is posing a public safety risk. Just put him back in prison.

Carline Claudomir: But see, you look at the context of the situation, the average individual on probation actually provides a number more of positive drug tests are a lot more noncompliant. We get them immediately, after the first, second, third, fourth, fifth. So in the context of probation, sometimes a client won’t be able to go before the sentencing judge until the 20th plus drug test because we can’t get a show cause until then to tell the judge he is noncompliant with probation.

Len Sipes: Okay, but that’s a technicality, and I’m glad you brought that up, but the principal issue here for the average citizen is, you know, are, the people that we have under supervision are not exactly the most popular people on the face of the earth.

Carline Claudomir: No, but they are your neighbors.

Len Sipes: Well, that’s a good point. That’s a good point. But my, the other point is that, you know, when we go out, the citizens asking them to support, whether it’s mental health programs or substance abuse programs or educational programs or vocational programs, the response oftentimes is, Leonard, we’re going to give to the church, we’re going to give to the schools, let the money go to the kids, let the money go to the elderly, I’m really not all that enthused about giving criminals. Money for programs, so the point is, is that there’s a frustration level and a tolerance level on the part of the average citizen as to how many chances we’re going to give that individual from the standpoint of public safety, and we need to explain why we do that.

Carline Claudomir: Public safety is our number one concern, so we always talk to our clients in regards from the aspect. When you become a threat to public safety –

Len Sipes: Boom, you go.

Carline Claudomir: – you need to leave the community.

Len Sipes: That’s right.

Carline Claudomir: But up until that point, we have to work with you, because once you leave probation, you’re done with this. You go back into that same community, because you don’t walk around with a sign saying, I am a criminal. You walk around into those churches, into those schools, pick up your children, those same places that the public wants to provide their money, those clients are there with them.

Len Sipes: 1 out of 45 individuals, according to national research are on probation right now or community supervision. Now, if you can, these are active. So if you count people who have been caught up in the criminal justice system, it’s at least 1 out of 20. So every time, regardless of where you go, where you shop, those, you’re going to encounter hundreds of individuals who have been caught up in the criminal justice system. So I think the rationale is, is that we want them to quit drugs, we want them to become taxpayers, not tax burdens, we want them to stop criminality, and I think that’s what we try to do with these individuals in drug court.

Amanda Rocha: That’s right. We want them to make that lifestyle change, so they’re not back in and out of the system.

Len Sipes: We want them to toss off substance abuse for good.

Amanda Rocha: That’s right.

Len Sipes: And stop messing with us.

Carline Claudomir: The problem is, sometimes it doesn’t happen in one try. I have sat in drug court and did my cases in drug court and have turned to the left, and looked into the jury box and saw a client I had a year ago who got off on early termination who is now back on pre-trial.

Len Sipes: That’s exactly right. And it is the process of recovery, and when we do live talk radio, people have a hard time listening to this, because their sense of the criminal justice system is, you’re getting a break, buddy, and maybe one, maybe two, but you hit three, and I want you to go back to prison. I think the average person in the larger community, not in the criminal justice system, feels that way. So we have to be accountable to the average citizen and explain to them that recovery, in terms of substance abuse, is a messy process that takes, in many cases, two, three times at treatment, and in many cases, involves multiple positives for drugs until we can convince that person to stay away from drugs, at least for the period of their supervision, or go to jail.

Carline Claudomir: I have a client who has been on probation since 1995, and he has been through every team at CSOSA, and when he finally made it to STAR/HIDTA, and he started messing up, and we did the warrant initiatives and went into his home and arrested him, and we brought him in front of his judge, the judge said, no, we’re going to give him one more chance, and that is it. One more chance. And it just continues on. But I will say that after this last opportunity, he has been clean and sober for 7-8 months, is working full time, and now, he is back, part of society. But see, it didn’t work the first, second, third, 10th, 15th time.

Len Sipes: You know, the interesting part of this is that the average person hearing it has a low frustration level for people caught up in the criminal justice system, but that is our reality. Our reality is that we have individuals who don’t know how to live life without a needle. They don’t know how to live life without a hallucinogen. They don’t know how to do it, and what we do is we teach them how to live life without using drugs, and that created a much safer society, a much saner society in the long run, and we turn people who are tax burdens into taxpayers, and I think that’s the heart and soul of it. It’s messy, it’s sloppy, sometimes it’s hard to explain to the general public, but we take individuals who are problems and we turn out individuals who are no longer problems, and we do that more often than we don’t, correct?

Carline Claudomir: And sometimes we’re the only ones who hold up that mirror to that individual and make them see how sloppy and messy they are, and they have been living their life, and hold them accountable, and when they think they’re almost done, hold them accountable even more and make them be the successes that they say they want to be when they first came to probation.

Len Sipes: It’s a fascinating process. Most of the people that I’ve encountered after a certain point, especially the older guys, sick and tired of being sick and tired. They are. I mean, it is just a terrible process of being arrested and rearrested and rearrested and reincarcerated and reincarcerated. These aren’t necessarily violent criminals. Most of these people are involved in nonviolent crimes, but there’s a certain point where they just get sick and tired of being constantly put through the criminal justice system, and they finally quit. They finally make that break. So I think what you’re doing is intervening in that process earlier, if at all humanly possible to get them to that point where they understand that they’re sick and tired of being sick and tired, correct?

Amanda Rocha: Well, and also, think about the example that I gave before where this young adult has this generational, you know, substance abuse that she’s been around, and those people who have dropped out of school in the sixth grade, or who have all these different issues, and they’re using to kind of, you know, make themselves feel better about the issue, or they’re trying to fit in with their peers, or with their family. So you have all these issues that are going on, and part of probation’s job is to address those issues, get them into an employment training program, get their GED, so now that they have these positive things in their life that they didn’t have before that would help them to stop using or even wanting to go back and use.

Len Sipes: Or put them back in jail or prison, and either one protects public safety.

Carline Claudomir: Yes.

Len Sipes: That’s the bottom line. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’re out of time. Carline Claudomir, and I said it for the first time correctly, community supervision officer with our drug court unit. Amanda Rocha, also a community supervision officer with our drug court unit. You can find information about CSOSA at www.csosa.gov. You can also access the radio, television shows, the blog, and transcripts through the CSOSA website, or directly through www.media – M-E-D-I-A – dot-csosa – C-S-O-S-A – dot-gov. You can follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/lensipes, and you can also email me directly, Leonard – L-E-O-N-A-R-D – dot-sipes – S-I-P-E-S – @csosa.gov. Ladies and gentlemen, I want everybody to have themselves a very, very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

Filed Under: Courts, Drug Treatment, Education and Vocational Assistance, Interviews with Staff, Parole and Probation, Probation, Reentry, What Works Tagged With: Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, CSOSA, D.C., drug court, Washington

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