 You're watching FJTN, the federal judicial television network. And welcome to another edition of Perspectives. I'm Robin Rowland. Today we'll explore a subject that has had a profound effect on probation and pretrial services officers, and from all appearances it will continue to have a huge impact. It is the phenomenon of substance abuse. Abuse of addictive substances has damaged millions of lives, lives that fall victim to crime or to addiction, and must find justice in the federal courts. In recent years these cases have come to dominate the criminal justice system. How's the system coping? That's the question we'll begin to answer on today's program. We'll talk to General Barry McCaffrey, the nation's drug czar, about the new national drug control strategy and its effects on officers' work. And take a look at some innovative programs in two districts, Georgia Southern and Texas Western, that have solidly reduced their repeat offense rates among substance abusers. We'll gain some perspective over time with an overview of caseload trends presented by the Sentencing Commission, and with an update on inmate statistics from Kathleen Hawkes-Sawyer, director of the Bureau of Prisons. John Hughes, chief of the Federal Corrections and Supervision Division, discusses officers' roles in substance abuse cases. David Adair is back to talk about the legal perspective. And as usual, we'll bring you news of interest from the administrative office, from the Sentencing Commission, and from us here at the FJC. For our look at the system's response to drug abuse cases, we'll begin at the White House, which recently signaled a new direction for what's been called the War on Drugs. At a special press briefing last year, President Clinton and members of his drug policy task force announced a new policy initiative for the handling of substance abuse cases, an initiative they believe will help break the cycle of repeat offense. One of the most effective things we can do is to make sure that prisoners don't get out of jail unless they regularly test clean for drugs, and that when they do get out, they continue to get appropriate testing and treatment. It makes no sense to send somebody back to the apartment over the open-air drug market where they got into trouble in the first place without providing them support and a way of maintaining freedom from drugs. The balanced budget I will submit to Congress will contain a $215 million zero-tolerance drug program designed to promote drug supervision, our nation's most comprehensive effort ever to test and treat not only criminals in prison but also those on probation and parole. We have an enormous opportunity to harness all the resources of the criminal justice system, our courts, our prosecutors, our prisons, our probation officers, our police to break the drug habits of prisoners and people on parole and probation. To learn more about the impact of this new White House initiative on probation and pre-trial services, we invited General Barry McCaffrey to our studios. General McCaffrey is Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. That's his formal title. Informally, he's known as the nation's drug czar. In that role, he's responsible for spearheading the development of initiatives to combat illegal drugs, coordinating the work of organizations throughout the federal government. This highly decorated soldier doesn't think we need a war on drugs. A more effective approach, he says, is prevention, treatment and education, including more supervision for offenders and less mandatory sentencing. Last year, his office released a new national drug control strategy based on some dramatic new statistics. The bottom line is if you're a chronic drug user and there's 4.1 million of us in America who are addicted to illegal drugs and you go into the criminal justice system and aren't given treatment, effective drug treatment, the chances of you going back to your criminal behavior are nearly 100%. If you do get effective drug treatment, and that includes a follow-on component with drug testing and supervision, then the chances of you reverting are pretty modest. As a matter of fact, the re-arrest rate in some studies is as low as 1%. Wow, that is dramatic. But it can't be just a discrete burst. You have to follow the chronic addict back into community care. So how did your breaking the cycle program grow out of this data? We got 1.8 million Americans now behind bars. It's an incredible population, bigger than the US Armed Forces, and it's growing at a considerable rate. If you look at that population, and the data is really soft, I know, but probably somewhere between 50% and 80% of them have a chronic drug and alcohol problem. So break the cycle. The notion was, yeah, okay, you've been arrested, you're going to go to trial, you deserve to go to trial because you were breaking into cars or burglarizing houses. You've also got a chronic drug problem. We're going to test you, and if you test positive, you will participate in drug treatment. And your whole course of your flow through the criminal justice system will be predicated on how you respond to drug treatment. Federal probation and pre-trial services officers are in a unique position to coordinate monitor and compel drug treatment in the community to make this program work for federal offenders. What would you like to see them do to support the national drug control strategy? Well, I'd almost turn it around. What would I like to see us do to support them? It's been an odd situation in a way. We're literally spending $36 billion a year locking up 1.8 million Americans. And we're safer because of it, I might add. But at the same time, you've got to recognize that if you're willing to spend lots of money to build now 4,000 places to hold people behind bars, why don't we spend the money to have an adequate pre-trial and post-release supervision system? We've got way too many much workload on the people we've got in these systems. We ought to give them the support they need, give them the resources, the manpower and the capability to link treatment and criminal justice. Director McCaffrey, at this point in your tenure, what do you think are the most important steps left in implementing the national strategy? We haven't yet done enough on prisons and drugs. In December, Attorney General Reno and I and Secretary Shalala will host a conference with probably about 1,000 people from around the country. We're going to try and give them a model on how to effectively organize the prison population and the treatment systems. A lot of us believe we've got two systems that operate in parallel. We've got to hook them together. There's got to be a reward and a punishment for continued compulsive drug-using behavior. What advice do you have for officers on just the importance of their roles in the national strategy? Well God bless them. I don't know of a bigger payoff anywhere in this system than the people you're talking about. What dedication? Look, if you're compulsively using drugs, and again, there's 4 million of us who are in that situation. You're going to end up one of three places for sure. You're going to end up in hospital emergency rooms in accidents. You're going to be physically sick. You're going to end up in the welfare system because you're not going to have a job. Third place you end up is the criminal justice system. The probation trial services officers are going to see this population. I think their staying focused on it can have a greater impact on many of the social problems in America, whether it's the accident rate, the HIV rate, spouse abuse, common street crime than any other group in our government. Any upcoming developments you see that may affect officers' work? Well I think gradually these arguments are starting to be heard. They make sense. This is not a war on drugs for a year or two. We can achieve final victory and then we'll move on to the next problem. We have to talk to each new crop of grade school, middle school kids when they show up. We've got to reduce the onset of drug abuse, then we've got to deal with the populations chronically addicted. Director McCaffrey, thank you very much for sharing this encouraging and inspiring message with us. Good to be here. As General McCaffrey mentioned, when we spoke with him last fall he was preparing for a major conference. That conference, called the National Assembly on Drugs, Alcohol Abuse and the Criminal Offender, was held last December in Washington. It brought together representatives from across the nation, from both the public and private sectors, to discuss system-wide solutions to reducing drug abuse and crime. Over the course of the conference, many speakers addressed the idea that good public health is good public safety. Participants also suggested moving away from spending public funds on prisons toward investing those funds in treatment. The dedication that General McCaffrey spoke of is clear in our next story set in Savannah, Georgia, where probation officers discovered a problem. There was a steady stream of substance-abusing offenders coming into their office, but most of them were gone within 90 days. It's not because the offenders received short sentences. It's because their supervision was revoked. As officers know well, substance abusers are the most likely to relapse. And at that time, revocation was the standard response to that violation. So with the court's help, the officers of Georgia Southern set to work on their situation. In their recipe for success, they proved that some good ideas, plus a lot of effort, can go a long way. With a story, here's our correspondent, Mark Maggio. It was a challenging time in Georgia Southern. The caseload situation was much the same as in many other districts, with federal courthouses undergoing an explosion of substance abuse cases. And because of the insidious nature of alcohol and drug addictions, once the offenders had been in prison, probation officers had a great deal of trouble keeping them out. Historically, the drug addicted and alcohol-dependent offender has been the most challenging in the criminal justice system. We had looked at our court system, and we had over the past three or four years observed the fact that we were actually revoking more people than the BOP was actually releasing. There were times when I had just a handful of people on my caseload, and we did not consider that acceptable. I personally did not consider that acceptable. The district had tried for the past few years to lower its revocation rate for substance abusers with modest success. They knew if offenders could make it through the first 90 days after release, they'd have a much better chance of controlling their addiction. More treatment would strain the budget, so money would have to be saved elsewhere. All the pieces fell together in 1998 at the Systems Impact Seminar in Albuquerque. So essentially we went to the seminar in Albuquerque with a commitment for change, and we left Albuquerque with some profound new ideas that we were able to incorporate. With the cooperation of their chief and their chief judge, they laid out the four steps of their new action plan. First, identify drug use early. Second, improve their information flow. Third, make sure they had the right treatment provider and step-up treatment for offenders in need. And fourth, recommend graduated sanctions for relapsing offenders. This action plan would retool operations throughout the district. Providing drug use early began by training officers to do intake assessments, giving them a good starting base of information. It also was cost-effective due to the fact that we would save the cost of the intake assessment by the vendor. Another cost-saving move, a new instant drug testing procedure, also put information into officers' hands when it could do the most good. With the instant test, we now know within two or three minutes, after administering the test, whether a person is indeed currently using drugs or not. To expand their information base, officers reached out to other agencies to create a continuous history of each offender, an information chain that includes reports from pre-trial services, the pre-sentence unit, the BOP, and probation's own intake assessment. They say the cooperative spirit among the agencies has been outstanding. The officers made a careful study to see whether they had the right treatment provider. Ultimately, they chose to look for a new provider, one who could get better results with this challenging offender group. For Georgia Southern, that person was Craig Finney. This is a very special population because the sociopathy is so high, and it's a challenge to be able to actually think as they think, and be able to get information from them that maybe has not come out previously, and information that can be used both for therapeutic purposes and for supervision purposes for the officers. How do you define amends? Savings in other areas of the program enabled Georgia Southern to assign intensive treatment to offenders in need. We are allowing vendors to see an individual two or three times per week, if necessary, in order to impact on this individual the need for a behavior change. Finally, the officers consulted with the court to develop a consistent list of graduated sanctions. We are now using various alternative sanctions such as halfway house placement and home confinement with electronic monitoring. Those two sanctions in particular have proven quite effective. We have received compliments from the court that they appreciate our efforts in making these recommendations for alternative sanctions as opposed to recommendations for incarceration. And I'm very proud to say that for the past four months, or in almost five months, we've had zero revocations among treatment offenders in this office, in my office, so it's working. Our treatment approach is working. I think everyone benefits. The offender benefits, the overall community benefits, the court benefits, everyone benefits. That feeling is echoed by offenders. Yolanda Williams was addicted to cocaine for six years before her conviction for lying to a federal grand jury. She began her treatment in prison and continued through her probation. I had a bad habit of lying. That was my first step to recovery. Once I can be honest, that I can recover. And today I do know that. That I can be honest, I will recover. I mean, I always be an addict, but I don't have to be an addict using and they instilled that in me in this program. The officers do say their program requires more effort than before, but Yolanda credits her success to the extra concern from her therapist and her probation officer. Calling Mr. Finney and calling Mitch when feeling lonely, they've stopped me from relapsing. Urges will always come. It's not the urge that's the problem. It's what you do with that urge when it comes. And I'll call one of them and speak with them. For their own success, the officers credit their leadership. These endeavors would not have been possible without the complete cooperation of my Chief Probation Officer, Jim Champion, as well as Chief Judge Dudley H. Bowen, Jr. So with all the extra work and difficulties that a system-wide change like this presented, would the officers do it again? Their answer is a resounding yes. I come from a law enforcement background and I've probably put more people in jail than anyone in this office. I understand that side and it was difficult for me to eventually come to the point where I had to make that change. And the key to making that change was I finally sat down one day and realized what I was doing was not working. Relapse is a part of recovery. I think that with our increased understanding of this, with the understanding now of our judges and our officers, we're not condoning relapse, but I think we've learned that that's a part of recovery. I can go to bed at night now and know that the people I've dealt with today have had an opportunity to change, but it's just a very good feeling. And then coming home and to have a program and to have a fine service, a probation officer was great. So I love nothing more today than being so far. For Perspectives, I'm Mark Maggio. The officers at Georgia Southern are careful to say that theirs is not the ultimate program for working with the substance abusers. Some tuning is always necessary, but they're encouraged by their achievements so far and are committed to keeping their district on a successful track. Coming up next on Perspectives, we'll examine the consequences of the war on drugs. And we'll talk with FCSD Chief John Hughes about officers' roles in substance abuse cases. There's much more to come, so please stay with us. Substance abuse issues play a major part in supervising defendants and offenders. Now probation and pretrial services officers can get the latest information directly from national experts. This is among the most complex phenomena facing our society today. Live on the FJTN, the Federal Judicial Center presents Substance Abuse, a continuing education series which brings you the latest on research, policy and strategies. Check the FJTN Bulletin or the JNET for air dates of the next edition of this provocative series. Although the war on drugs officially started under President Nixon, most people associated with President and Mrs. Reagan and with this speech from 1986. My generation will remember how America swung into action when we were attacked in World War II. The war was not just fought by the fellas flying the planes or driving the tanks. It was fought at home by a mobilized nation. Well, now we're in another war for our freedom, and it's time for all of us to pull together again. It's time, as Nancy said, for America to just say no to drugs. President Reagan set the tone for the new initiative by clearly framing the situation as a crime epidemic rather than a public health crisis. Our job is never easy because drug criminals are ingenious. They work every day to plot a new and better way to steal our children's lives. In this speech, President Reagan announced that he was proposing to increase federal drug control spending to $3 billion. Since then, Congress has steadily expanded the drug control budget, which reached $18.5 billion in this fiscal year, with an increase to $19.2 billion recommended for 2001. The ramifications to the entire criminal justice system have been enormous. Here to talk about some of the effects felt by officers is Lou Reed, Acting Director of the Sentencing Commission's Office of Policy Analysis. Lou, welcome to Perspectives. Thank you, Robin. What portion of the federal court's overall workload do drug cases represent? Well, Robin, as we can see in the first graphic, in 1998, 41% of all offenses sentenced under the federal guidelines were for drug crimes. That represents approximately 20,000 persons. And many more than any other classification. Yes. How has that changed over time? This has been a very consistent finding since the inception of the guidelines, with approximately 40% of the cases accounted for by drug offenses. What about the classification or type of drug represented in federal cases? How has that changed over time? Nearly all drug offenses are sentenced under one of five drugs, powder cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, marijuana, and methamphetamine. As we see in the next chart, these trends have shifted somewhat over the years. Cocaine generally, including crack and powder, accounted for approximately 50% of the cases between 1992 and 1998, although the blend of crack and powder has shifted significantly during that period. And they became equal in number at approximately 4,500 by 1996. Cocaine had been, in one form or the other, the primary drug sentenced under the federal guidelines until 1997 when marijuana became the most prevalent drug sentenced. And that has remained true in 1998 and preliminarily in 1999. What about the average length of sentences for these different types of drugs? Do you have information on that? If we group all drug offenses together, the average sentence is 78 months. But as we see by the next chart, that can change substantially by the type of drug involved in the offense. For example, marijuana offenders receive an average sentence of 37 months, while crack cocaine offenders receive an average sentence of 123 months. Lou, ONDCP director Barry McCaffrey says methamphetamine is sweeping across the country. How is it sweeping? Can you tell us more about that? We've certainly seen a large increase in the number of methamphetamine cases during this time period, increasing some 260% between 1992 and 1998. Just under 700 cases in 1992 to over 2,300 in 1998. Is that unique, or are there other drugs that have increased or moved in that way? As I mentioned earlier, the crack cocaine movement mirrors in some ways the geographic movement of methamphetamine. We have a series of charts that can demonstrate that. In 1992, crack cocaine was the most frequently sentenced drug in three states, and we have to graph them by states, even though these are federal statistics, because of limitations in the charting program that we use. But you can see that no states had methamphetamine as the primary drug. By 1993, one state had methamphetamine as the most frequently sentenced drug, and seven had crack as the most frequently sentenced drug. As we move through to 1998, you can see the pattern shifting. This I believe is the spread that General McCaffrey speaks of. Yeah, I can see sweeping there, definitely. Lou, thank you very much for joining us. Thank you very much. Taking our look into the consequences of the war on drugs, we turn next to the federal prison system. The nation's decision to tackle drug abuse as a criminal justice issue rather than a public health issue has had profound effects on its prisons. The inmate population in the federal prison system has doubled within a decade. This according to Kathleen Hawke Sawyer, director of the Bureau of Prisons. In remarks to judges at last year's sentencing institute, she pointed to stepped up investigations and sentencing reform legislation as the leading causes. All of that has meant that the increased investigations and prosecutions mean we get more inmates, and once we get them, we keep them for a long, long, long, long time. Last year, we experienced our largest growth year in the history of the Bureau of Prisons, which surprised the heck out of me. We grew by over 10,000 inmates in the last year, and that's gross, from the end of one year to the end of the next year. We had 10,000 more inmates in our total population. The director also briefed judges on treatment the Bureau offers to its growing number of drug offenders. Today, it's over 60% of our inmates are in for drug offenses. Now, it's important to remember, when I say that 60% of the inmates are in for drug offenses, not all of those need drug treatment. There are only 30% of our inmates that actually have a moderate to severe drug treatment need, but 30% of 126,000 inmates is still a whole bunch of inmates that have drug treatment need. In fact, the number of eligible inmates totals about 38,000. To keep disruptive elements out of the treatment program, Hawkes-Sawyer says inmates must volunteer. Approximately 92% have done so, meaning almost 35,000 inmates are currently in treatment. Hawkes-Sawyer also emphasized BOP's commitment to community corrections, and praised the role of probation officers in its success. We try to ensure that the vast majority, I think we're up to about 90% of the inmates sentenced to inmates who release from us go out through halfway houses because we see that as a much more successful way of them transitioning back into the community. In addition to those releasing from us, we do have about 600 direct court commitments that meet your needs in terms of putting someone with a relatively short sentence directly into a halfway house so they can serve their time close to home. And then we also have about 1,000 offenders who are in the halfway house as a condition of their probation. And we get wonderful cooperation from the United States probation staff because they hook up with these cases much earlier than normally, and they begin to work the case early on. Officers also assisted in BOP's ongoing check of its residential drug abuse treatment program, a study called the Triad Drug Treatment Evaluation. Officers who were interviewed for triad provided much of the outcome information. BOP has released interim results that highlight the treatment program's effects on inmates in their first six months after release. Among inmates who completed the residential drug treatment program, only 3.3% were likely to be re-arrested for a new offense as compared to 12.1% of inmates who did not receive treatment. In other words, treated inmates were 73% less likely to be arrested. The study also found that 20.5% of treated inmates were likely to use drugs within the first six months after release, while untreated inmates use drugs at a rate of 36.7%, making untreated inmates 44% more likely to return to drugs in the first six months. For BOP, these findings are especially noteworthy because research shows that the first six to 12 months after release are the most difficult for former inmates and can be critical in whether or not they successfully re-enter the community. Perhaps no one is better equipped to offer experienced commentary on how these trends might affect officers than John Hughes, Chief of the Federal Corrections and Supervision Division. With field service both as a probation and a pretrial services officer, as well as service in Washington, Hughes is a familiar face to many within the system. We asked him first for his views on the connection between law enforcement and treatment. Really, the worlds of law enforcement and treatment converge in the person of the probation officer and the pretrial services officer. We talk a lot about law enforcement versus social work and treatment and that sort of thing. These things are not mutually exclusive. The job of the officer really is both. He is both a cop and a treatment provider. There is a tension between those two and it's a healthy tension. Officers sometimes feel frustrated at what are we? Are we law enforcement or are we treatment? Sorry, but we're both. And it's a professional job and it requires balancing both of those things all the time. It is a unique job in that respect. Do you feel that the roles and expectations for probation and pretrial services have changed over time? It's interesting, I reread an article. It was written in 1975 by Merrill Smith, the former chief of the division. And he talked about the previous 25 years and he noted that the job of the officer had not really changed much. It basically was about being an independent fact finder for the court and supervising people in the community. And we can say now in the year 2000, it still hasn't changed that much. Those are still the basic functions of the job. What I think has changed is the attitude in the public and among politicians, the get tough policies and then take no prisoners and lock them up and throw away the key policies, have filtered into our system and we have been influenced by those. I think what officers need to remember is that we have a job to do and when the public wakes up and realizes that the lock them up attitudes and philosophies are costing a fortune, they will turn again to community corrections. Pretrial supervision with conditions and supervised by a pretrial services officer is an awful lot cheaper than putting somebody in a jail. We have very low failure to appear rates. We have very low rearrest rates. Maybe we could let a lot more people out at a lot less cost. The same with probation. Probation with appropriate supervision, monitoring, electronic monitoring, drug testing, you name it, we can do it. That's a lot cheaper than putting somebody in a prison. It's more effective and a lot cheaper to use us and we're here, we're still the Cadillac of the community corrections systems as a lot of people think of us and we'll be here when the public and the politicians wake up and realize that there's a better way to cost a lot less money. Chief Hughes also reminded officers that they're not without resources when dealing with substance abusers. Drug testing and treatment does not have to be voluntary to be effective, he said, and officers do have the power to require participation. Coming up, we'll get the legal perspective from David Adair, but first, we'll go to the Western District of Texas to look at an innovative new treatment program. Stay with us, we'll be right back. Hi, I'm Michael Burney, your host for Court to Court. Our mission is to provide education and information that will enhance your job and how the courts function. What ongoing challenges do you face each day? What innovative practices are other districts applying? What makes your work satisfying? We'll find these stories and share them with you. We're excited about what's in store. Be sure to watch Court to Court on the FJTN. Check the FJTN Bulletin or the JNET for broadcast dates and times. Welcome back to Perspectives. It's time to go back out to the field to look at an innovative project that's promoting compliance and saving costs. The Western District of Texas, with seven divisional offices, is achieving success with high-risk offenders with a homegrown in-house substance abuse treatment program. I've spent almost all of my adult life, the majority of my young life in jail in one time or another, and I was just tired of it. I knew something had to change. I was tired of spending time in prison. Armando was having a difficult time staying away from the friends and the drugs and the use. I was in such a hurry when I came out of prison to just make up for all that lost time. And I was attempting to work and to do things and I would become so stressful because I would get so stressed out, man, because it was like, man, this is impossible. I'm never gonna do it, I'm never gonna do it. And then I would go like into a depression. In the past, the Western District of Texas had no mental health component among its treatment options and all other treatment was through contractors. Can you do that? In the office, do you have your paycheck stamps? Yes, I do. This offender is a high-risk offender and our target group are high-risk offenders because those are the ones that we're gonna see most significant change. But when I got the second dirty U.A., I said, okay, let's find out. And I told her, I said, well, you're telling me I shouldn't do this and you guys shouldn't do this and do that. I said, but help me, help me. How are you gonna help me? Show me how I can help myself. And she goes, okay, I'm gonna put you in this program. The program is called SAT, Substance Abuse Treatment Services. It's one part of the district's arsenal of graduated sanctions for non-compliant offenders. With the court's permission, the district often uses formal administrative sanctions hearings to help offenders find ways to achieve compliance. You know, while we're here, we've discussed having to come to this administrative hearing because of your violations. I've explained your case background and history to the panel. We discuss what sanctions that we can impose and what we need to do to get them in compliance and what the possibilities are if they don't get into compliance, be it modification of the conditions, going back to court with revocation and time in prison being the ultimate possibility. One of the graduated sanctions that we can use is of course the SATS program. SATS uses cognitive behavior restructuring and builds on the Bureau of Prisons' 500 Hour Substance Abuse Program. This program is geared towards giving offenders responsibility for their own behavior, having them take ownership for their own behavior and knowing that the choices they make are the choices that are theirs. We're moving everything to the new house, so it's really been hectic, you know? That's how I was a little late this morning. That's great. You were working on that and you finally got what you wanted, huh? Finally. She did it because she really wanted to help me. Once I noticed that she wasn't out to get me, and that she was really trying to keep me from going back into prison. Sometimes offenders are difficult to engage in the program. At first, it's us against them. They're the enemy. I've been through this before. I've been through classes before. Pre-trial in the system, halfway house. Now, here they're telling me again, I've gotta do this. So I've been there, done that again. But even Ferrer was willing to try. Because I'm sick of the person that I once was. You know, it's just revolting. Well, do you feel like you're doing better at like not blaming other people? Oh, sure. Yeah, no question. The Western District of Texas has seven divisional offices. When the program began, Chief Ruby Lehrman wanted to find a way to make use of her staff's counseling skills. Now, did they violate during the term of the program or after they completed the program? During the term of the program. Okay. So, and then some more graduated actions were occurred from them. And they stayed in the program. Right. All right. Some of them went into the halfway house, some of them went into electronic monitoring, but we were able to use those situations in the group. As part of the group. Excellent. We had representatives from each of the seven offices. It was a group project. So it's a grassroots project. Everybody has a buy-in to it. Everybody feels like it's mine because I helped create it and they did. The officers lead weekly group sessions with offenders for 21 weeks. And the reality is, you know, every day it's a battle. You know, every single day, every moment. You know, a little thing can trigger a memory or memory can be a trigger. Obviously doing the SATS program does take time away from our families and from other activities because it's something that we do after hours in most cases. This is a voluntary program. There are times when you think, you know, it's the end of the day, you've worked all day and now at six o'clock and you have to go to a group until eight o'clock that night. And you know, it sounds tiresome, but once you get into the group and you have that energy in the group, it's energizing, it's revitalizing. If it helps even one person make a change in their life or make them think about things differently, then that extra time is not lost. That makes it worthwhile because it's about helping people change their lives and by doing that, protecting the community. And it looks like we had a 70% successful completion rate. And I was really impressed by that because I hadn't looked at the figures in a following when you asked for them, I went back and pulled them and was looking at how many people did well. You'll occasionally see the light bulb go off in these people, you know, those sunnies. You'll see it in their eyes, in their face that, oh yeah, I understand now. And you finally have reached that point and then you can begin that process of change. One of the hardest things is trying to remember at that moment in time before you react that you have to use these skills. I had little cards that I would put on my visor in my truck, you know, and I'd put like, be slow to anger. I'd jump in my truck and I'd see that little card and I'd go to the side, man. Did I got to work on that? The most satisfying part of working in a substance abuse program with the offenders is to see that there is some change in their attitude, the way they make their decisions. And knowing that you're not only affecting an offender, but you're also affecting his family and in turn affecting the community. Everything that he touches with his new thinking skills and his new behaviors has a positive effect. Self esteem goes up, confidence goes up. You know, if you allow, if you keep your mind open, if you allow and make a conscious decision to say, hey, I'm gonna try this, what do I have to lose? After officer Mendeola attended an FJC systems impact seminar, she and officer Hicks proposed adding a 10 week family component to the program. And what we hope to do with this component of our program is teach the offenders significant others how the program works so that they can support and help the offender when we're no longer in the picture. However with the family, it's strictly voluntary and to get them to come in and commit to continuing and completing the 10 weeks will be the biggest problem to get them to do this on their own because they want to. You have to be careful not to say to the family that, well, you're in need of therapy too, even though that may be the case. But you can't say that you're part of the problem, only that the family is part of the solution. If our district can implement it with the size that we have and the workload that we're now carrying, any district can do this if their staff is ready, if they have the emotional temperament for it. The officers who get involved have to be committed officers. They have to have the commitment to want to do this for the offenders. Before I had nothing, you know, and I was like, who cares if I go back to prison? Who cares if I news? You know, I have nothing anyways. I've lost it all. Hernandez now has a better job and hopes of setting up his own construction subcontracting company. He and his girlfriend have bought a house and recently had a baby girl. And his old friends don't come around anymore. You know, I have all these positive things that have happened and it just improved all my self-esteem, you know, and I think that's one of the biggest things that improved my self-esteem and myself and in who I am. For Perspectives, I'm David Cohn. That sounds like some good work down in Texas. David Adair is back with us now with an update on the legal perspective. David, welcome back to Perspectives. Thanks, Robin. Glad to be here. Have there been any recent developments that officers should know about? Well, there have been no final legislative actions, but once again, there are a few legislative initiatives that officers should be aware of. Now, in the first one, I feel like a broken record because I've mentioned it so often before, but one is a proposal to amend the federal juvenile delinquency statutes to make it easier to prosecute juveniles in the federal system. Depending legislation is essentially the same legislation that's been proposed before, and if officers are interested in the specifics, they might wanna check the December 1999 issue of federal probation. That issue is devoted entirely to juvenile offenders, and there's an article co-authored by Dan Cunningham of the AO's Legislative Affairs Division and me. It sets out the details of the proposed legislation as well as the prognosis for enactment. Other initiatives have been inserted into the pending bankruptcy reform bill. One would reduce disparities between the penalties for crack and powder cocaine by increasing the penalties for powder cocaine. Another would direct the sentencing commission to raise methamphetamine penalties, and it would also provide for mandatory restitution for methamphetamine offenses. And the passage of any of those would really have an impact on the courts, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. That's right. Have there been any frequently asked questions that you think our audience would be interested in? There've been several. The first that I wanna talk about involves the newly enacted penalties in 18 USC section 924C for the possession or use of a firearm during the commission of certain offenses. The new penalties are not less than five years, seven years or 10 years, depending on the circumstances. Officers have asked how these offenses are classified under section 3559, principally because the classification influences the statutory maximum supervised release term. We believe that they must be classified as Class A felonies with a five year maximum term of supervised release. Since the penalty is at least a certain number of years, the maximum term of incarceration is life. That makes them Class A felonies. The second question involves charitable contributions in lieu of restitution to a victim of the offense. These are usually proposed in situations where there's no victim or the victim has recovered all the monetary losses and the defendant has assets. It seems like a good idea in this kind of situation to require the offender in effect to reimburse the community for the crime by making a contribution to an organization that's helping the community. Unfortunately, except for the very specific provisions for community restitution for drug offenders in section 3663C, there's no authority for this kind of order. And many district courts have been reversed for ordering it. Now this is an issue that comes up every few years. All the parties seem to forget about the cases that disapprove of this kind of penalty and they try to impose what seems like a just sentence. Well, it may be just, but unfortunately, it's not legal. There's an old but still accurate looking at the law article in the December 1986 version of, I'm sorry, issue of federal probation that discusses the issue. Now finally, there's a very interesting development regarding the confidentiality of drug treatment records. You know that the records of an individual undergoing drug treatment as a condition of release are confidential because of the drug treatment confidentiality regulations in 42CFR part two. Recently, a state has demanded a person who's receiving public assistance consent to the disclosure of his drug treatment records. The purpose of this disclosure, I understand, is to assist state welfare officials in helping substance abusing welfare recipients move from public assistance to employment and it's in response to the requirements of the 1996 Welfare Reform Act. A refusal to give consent could result in the individual losing welfare benefits. Now one might question whether the use of drug treatment records for this purpose is appropriate, but there's no way to prevent the state from asking for consent and no way of preventing the cutting off of benefits if consent's refused. But remember in addition that consent alone is not sufficient to authorize a treatment facility to disclose records. It may be sufficient for compliance with the drug aftercare confidentiality regulations but the treatment facility is also bound by the court's confidentiality policies. For pretrial services, those are in the pretrial services confidentiality regulations and for probation and supervised release, the general policies for confidentiality of supervision information apply. Now I think both of these situations allow for the disclosure but you'll need to get the appropriate authorization for disclosure under those policies in addition to consent. Okay, once again how can officers get in touch with your office? Well as I mentioned in the last broadcast, Rob and officers should exhaust local resources before they get in touch with us to try to get the answers. Otherwise my office can't handle the volume but if officers need to call, please use our now not new voicemail number which is 202-502-1120. That way we can do any necessary research before we get back to you. And finally please don't use email for legal questions. We can't handle the volumes of the responses that we have to prepare in response to those messages. Thanks very much, David. Good to have you back. Thank you Rob. Turning to news of interest on our regular segment FYI, we'll begin with events at the Sentencing Commission. After more than a year without commissioners, seven new commission members were sworn in by Chief Justice Rehnquist in early January. Five of the group are federal judges. The new commissioners are Professor Michael O'Neill, Judge Sterling Johnson Jr., Judge William K. Sessions III, Judge Joe Kendall, John R. Steer, Judge Diana E. Murphy, Commission Chair, and Judge Rubin Castile. The commission's first priority is to issue guideline amendments to address new congressional directives and to resolve some conflicts in interpretation among circuit courts. The commission has until May 1st to submit the amendments to Congress. For more information on the proposed amendments, you can visit the commission's website at www.ussc.gov. In news from the administrative office, a supervision working group has been appointed by the director to update probation and pretrial services supervision policies with a focus on transitional services responding to non-compliance and performance measures. The group, which consists of four probation and pretrial services chiefs, four officers, and a representative of the FJC, had their first meeting on March 30th and 31st. The federal corrections and supervision division is conducting a pilot test of publication 114, the new draft monetary penalties monograph in eight districts. The pilot should identify areas of the monograph that need to be clarified and also provide input on implementation, management, and training issues. The revised monograph will be presented to the Corriminal Law Committee in June. A strategic assessment of the probation and pretrial services system intended to ensure its continued excellence is slated to begin this year. Plans are to make use of a contractor to analyze and facilitate the assessment, gathering ideas from a broad spectrum of probation and pretrial services staff, stakeholders, and outside experts. The selection process for the contractor is underway. The study will take two years to complete. On a related note, be sure to watch the next edition of Perspectives for a summary of the National Chiefs Conference to be sponsored by the FJC in May. The conference will examine the current status and explore the future direction of the federal probation and pretrial services system. The fifth program in the Center's Substance Abuse Continuing Education series is scheduled for April 25th. The interactive program entitled Substance Abuse Assessment, What Works, addresses best practices to follow once substance abuse has been detected. The program has been approved for two hours of continuing education units. And mark your calendars for a program that should benefit all court staff. On May 25th at 3 p.m. Eastern Time, tune into the FJTN for Overcoming Overload, a PBS cosponsored broadcast featuring humorist Dave Berry. Berry and workplace experts will apply a light approach to learning how to cope with information overload, stress, and procrastination. Coming up, we'll take a look at what you'll see on the next edition of Perspectives. But first, please stay tuned for someone we hope you'll become better equated with. I'm an evaluation form you've surely seen me before. Well, I'm part of your materials and I perform a vital chore. Well, the information in me helps the center to take stock. It helps them make their programs work to help you do your job. Please fill me in. We need this information. Please fill me in. We need to know the score. Please fill me in. Your feedback is important. And if you don't complete this form, we'll sing this song again. Your feedback is important. Please fill in the evaluation form available in your program materials or online on the JNAT. That's right. As we near the end of our program, we'd like to remind you to fill out that friendly little evaluation form and send it to us here at the FJC. If you don't have a copy already, you can get one from your district training coordinator, or you can fill it out online by pointing your browser to the JNAT address you see on the screen. Put yourself in the show by giving us your feedback to make our programs more informative, more useful to you. You've already had a hint of what's coming up in the August edition of Perspectives. The big story is the National Chiefs Conference in San Antonio. We'll bring you the highlights, plus lots of other news and views from the field and from Washington. That's it for our show today. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you again next time. For all of us here at Perspectives, I'm Robin Rowland. Thank you.