Lending A Hand
The Monthly, October 2003

I’ve been writing books and articles about teenagers since I was one myself, driven then as now by the same Big Questions–the questions that drove me to smoke my first joint and write my first book in high school; the questions that drove me to write my last book about the lives of three Berkeley High seniors. How and why are things in America so different from the way they’re supposed to be? And what can the lives of teenagers–no longer cosseted as children; not yet accountable as adults–teach us about the price of our broken promises?

In the summer of 2001 I began researching the book that became DIRTY: A Search for Answers Inside America’s Teenage Drug Epidemic. By following a few different kinds of teenagers through a few different kinds of drug treatment programs, I hoped to understand why kids use drugs, what happens to them when they do, and what we might do about it. One of the most innovative treatment programs I found was the Richmond Juvenile Drug Court, which is where I met a fascinating girl named Zalika. I introduce you to both in these passages adapted from Dirty.

• • •

"Wen Ho made another suicide attempt last night," Drug Court Coordinator Kevin Charles announces to the Drug Court Team, gathered around the defense table of a Contra Costa County courtroom. "He sliced himself fifteen . We need to order a psych eval."

"Do we know what Wen Ho smokes or injects?" Judge Easton asks.

"Wen Ho’s a traditionalist, Your Honor," Kevin replies in his sardonic style. "He denies all but weed and drink."

"Guess he forgot to mention that little bit of crank he shoots." Judge Easton rolls up his shirtsleeves, squinting into the laptop in front of him. "We’re horrified they let him out of the hospital when they did. You know how they decided that? They asked him if he was gonna kill himself."

"His parents don’t speak English. They’re not here legally," says the Drug Court kids’ public defender, Tom Fleming, a 38-year-old Eurasian man in a blue suit and Jerry Garcia tie. "They’re totally intimidated by the system."

"Let’s leave him on JEM [Juvenile Electronic Monitoring]," Kevin proposes.

"I have a problem with that," Tom interjects. "What if the monitor gives us a false reading?"

"Wen Ho can’t come to court if he’s dead," Kevin says flatly. "We’re doing this for his safety. Agreed?"

Tom nods reluctantly; Kevin flips to the next kid’s file.

• • •

Most adolescent drug rehab programs have some number of tough kids: the gang-bangers and hard-core thieves, the deeply depressed and self-destructive teens whose ties to their families, the world, their own uncertain futures hang by frayed threads. The Richmond Drug Court has nothing but. Toting rap sheets that belie their short tenures on this earth, the Drug Court kids are the children of the crack epidemic, the victims of the demolition of ghetto family life by the wrecking balls of racism, poverty, despair. "In some drug courts," Kevin Charles told me when we met for the first time in his Spartan office across the street from the courthouse," if you sell drugs you’re out. Commit battery, you’re out. Not ours. I pushed for us to take the hardest kids." Among the current crop of Drug Court clients, 50% have prior convictions for auto theft, 20% for battery or weapons possession, 8% for burglary.

Nonetheless, the Drug Court achieves results that seem positively stellar, especially compared to the 75-90% dropout rate that is the bane of most adolescent treatment programs. Of the 81 kids admitted in the first eighteen months of the Drug Court’s existence, twenty-four remain in treatment, five have been transferred to other programs, nine were terminated due to new arrests, twenty-nine dropped out, and fourteen graduated. Not one Drug Court graduate, Kevin told me proudly, has since been arrested.

Saving these kids one by one is neither an easy job nor a glorious one. Few people care whether it gets done, so there’s not nearly enough money, resources, or people-power allocated to do it. Still, every Tuesday from 12:30 to 4 p.m., the Richmond Drug Court Team gathers in their courtroom and bends to the task.

The Team encompasses those now responsible for supplanting, or replacing, their clients’ parents, many of whom don’t have the resources to feed their children, let alone show up for their court appearances. Coordinator Kevin Charles goes to Juvenile Hall, screens kids for admission, and acts as liaison between the county, the program, and the kids’ families. Tom Fleming is every Drug Court client’s Public Defender. Pam Collinshill is their Probation Officer. Commissioner Steve Easton, a kindly faced grandfather, is the Drug Court judge.

Also present in the courtroom every Tuesday are counselors from Choices (Changing & Healing from the Outside-In Creates Enduring Self-respect), the treatment program where every Drug Court kid goes–is supposed to go–after school each day for drug testing, team sports, and individual, group and family sessions. Before the kids make their court appearances at 2, the Team reviews one of their cases after another.

• • •

"Mr. Jordan Andretti," Kevin Charles goes on to the next client up for case review.

"Jordy had a good week," says Leo Kidd, Choices program director. "Perfect attendance, good participation in group, four clean tests."

"See how he turned around when we stopped accepting his excuses?" asks Stacy, Jordan’s counselor. "I especially liked the one about him kissing a girl with cocaine in her mouth."

"Cookie or lunch for Jordy?" asks Judge Easton.

"I’d say cookie and lunch, but no prize," suggests Leo. The others nod their agreement; Judge Easton types that ruling into his laptop.

Cookies? Lunch? Prizes? In a court of law? "We take on kids who’ve been in the system for years," Kevin told me. "Many of them have serious mental health issues on top of their addictions. But they’re also children. They need immediate rewards for good behavior." Sure enough, on the judge’s bench there’s a pink bakery box smelling of warm chocolate. Beside Tom’s chair there’s a Target shopping bag full of sports t-shirts, Frisbees, and journals. Lunch, Kevin told me, happens after court each week, when he takes the kids who’ve earned it to the restaurant of their collective choice–most often, Mickey D’s.

The Team members work their way through the twenty kids on the docket, discussing the feedback they’ve gathered on each client during the week: drug tests, JEM reports, parents’ and teachers’ comments. When the report on a kid is good, the Team members radiate satisfaction. When the report is bad–Diamond had a full-blown coke relapse; Aaron threatened to stab his mother; Anthony ditched school all week–they ‘disposition’ the kid to Juvenile Hall, to CYA (the state’s harshest juvenile detention facility, the California Youth Authority), to placement at a residential program only after ruling out every possible option.

"As you and I sit here," Kevin told me, "there are tens of millions of teenagers getting high. I’ll never see them.

"Ours is a self-selecting group. When our kids ran into pot, cocaine, meth, alcohol, something went wrong. They failed in school. They committed crimes. They were offered a choice: go to jail, go to residential placement, or try Drug Court." Kevin added that there isn’t a lie the Drug Team hasn’t heard, a disillusionment they haven’t endured. "When I go to Juvenile Hall to interview a kid, I figure he’ll tell me ten to fifteen percent of the story. They’re teens. Controlling disclosure is one of the few ways they have to control their existence in the world." Yet the Team discusses each child with a nimble balance of respect and skepticism, take-no-prisoners resolve and tender-hearted compassion.

Where else in their world, I ask myself, do these kids get treated with this much care? And why did it take this–drug abuse, multiple criminal acts, multiple arrests– to get them the attention they need?

Kevin agreed to let me look for a drug court client to be part of my book, and invited me to start attending court in Richmond once a week, and Choices–whose mission is to send each graduate into the world a more whole and self-aware, as well as sober, person–on weekday afternoons. Kevin warned me just how difficult following one of the Drug Court kids might be. "About half of the kids we admit stick around," Kevin said. "And ‘sticking around’ often means doing our program for a few weeks or months, then relapsing, violating probation, going to residential treatment or the Hall, coming back, and running through the whole cycle again."

• • •

The first adult drug court was founded in Dade County, Florida, in 1985. Its guiding concept–instead of incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders (a population with sky-high recidivism rates), offer them a combination of drug rehab, vocational training, and court supervision–was as controversial then as it is now. Lock-em-up conservatives and prison construction lobbyists argue that this approach is ‘soft on crime.’ The evidence proves them wrong. In his 2001 book Hooked (New Press), Dr. Lonny Shavelson writes, "Drug Courts, in spite of their hug-a-thug reputation, have been more effective at keeping addicts off drugs and away from committing crimes than anything else the criminal justice system has ever thrown at them."

The U.S. Department of Justice agrees, and funds drug courts accordingly. Since 1995, more than eighty million federal dollars have been allocated to the eight hundred drug courts that now exist or are being planned nationwide. It’s proved a wise investment. Studies cited in Hooked show that drug courts graduate more than twice as many drug offenders as traditional treatment programs do. Repeat crimes among drug court graduates are greatly reduced as well.

Can the Drug Court model work this well for kids? Results gathered from the 167 juvenile drug courts operating in forty-six states–up from twenty-five in two states in 1997–look promising. The federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJBOP) reports that of 12,500 juveniles enrolled in drug courts nationwide, 4,000 have graduated and 4,500 are still enrolled, yielding a wildly successful retention rate of 68%.

The OJBOP acknowledges that juvenile drug courts face "unique challenges not encountered in the adult drug court environment," including the need to "counteract the negative influences of peers, gangs, and family members; address the needs of the family, especially families with substance abuse problems; and motivate juvenile offenders to change, especially given their sense of invulnerability and lack of maturity." To meet these challenges, the OJBOP recommends that juvenile drug courts "coordinate efforts among the court, the treatment community, the school system, and other community agencies, and (impose) immediate sanctions for noncompliance and incentives for progress for both the juvenile and family."

Since the Richmond Juvenile Drug Court’s first session in May of 2000, it has confronted these challenges and others. Despite the heartbreak they encounter daily, the Team members remain evangelists for the cause. "Untreated, these kids don’t disappear when they turn eighteen," Kevin Charles says. "They become full-time addicts and criminals. The question is, do we want them to wreak havoc on themselves, their families, their communities? Or do we want to do this kind of early intervention instead?"

Compared to other ‘dispositions’ available to Drug Court clients, Kevin says, the program offers not only the best, but also the most cost-effective results. "Incarcerating a kid at the Boys’ Ranch or CYA costs about the same as residential treatment: sixty thousand dollars per kid per year. Our program costs fourteen thousand.

"And when those kids get dumped out of residential programs with no after-care"– the follow-up treatment that’s critical to maintaining sobriety, yet is offered by few programs–"guess who gets ‘em? We do!"

• • •

After I’d spent several frustrating months hanging out at Drug Court, meeting kids who seemed perfect for the book only to watch them disappear, in November of 2001 I got this email from Stacy, the Choices counselor.

[Zalika] is a 16 year-old black girl who’s been prostituting & stripping since she was 12-13. Her pimp is now 28 years old and still in her life. She is bright & articulate with a vocal faith in God (how does she reconcile that???). Two-parent home (parents state that Drug Court is her ‘one more chance’) with two younger siblings. Crack possession, summer on the run in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, cocaine abuse, PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder].

The next day Stacy brought me into her office and introduced me to a five-foot-tall, mocha-complected girl with an intricate braids-and-extensions hairdo, a skin-tight, glittering Eiffel Tower t-shirt, skin-tight hip-hugger jeans, and the tell-tale bulge of a JEM ankle monitor under her sock. When I tried to interview Zalika, she interviewed me. When I asked if she’d be part of my book, she asked if I’d help her write hers. I agreed, and a deal was struck. Since that day Zalika and I have been building a friendship that has been at least as life-altering for me as it’s been for her.

• • •

"Looks like there’s some good developments this week; some not so good." Two weeks after Zalika’s admission to the program, Judge Eastman, now wearing his black robe, peers down from the bench at her. "How do you feel you’re doing in the program, Zalika?"

"All right, I guess," she answers from the defense table where she sits with Tom, her public defender, at her left side, and me at her right. Parents are encouraged to attend their kids’ court appearances, but few ever do. So whenever a kid is accompanied by anyone–a cousin, a grandmother, a friend, an author–Tom enlists that person to sit in the parents’ place.

"What have you been doing well?" the judge asks.

"Attendance, and my ability not to do drugs," Zalika answers.

From the left side of the courtroom, where PO Pam Collinshill, counselors Stacy Harris and Leo Kidd, and Kevin Charles sit–the men now wearing suits and ties–Kevin confirms, "That’s right. Zalika’s tests have been negative."

"Zalika’s had a very good week," Leo adds. "We see her making some real progress."

"What does JEM say?", the judge asks Pam. He knows the answer, of course; the Team discussed it a few minutes ago. It strikes me that Case Review is the rehearsal; this is the show, costumes and all. And although the outcome of Drug Court has a very real and lasting impact on each of these kids’ lives–graduating the program means being released from probation, offering them the possibility of a life outside ‘the system’–what happens in this courtroom is more about care than punishment; more therapy than adjudication; a living enactment of the ‘treatment versus incarceration’ debate.

"Apparently there were some violations," Pam says.

"Four hours out of range on the tenth, six hours on the fifth, four hours on the eighth. Took five hours to go to an AA meeting." The judge reads from his laptop screen, looks down at Zalika. "We’ll hope you do better with that next week. Meanwhile, your progress at Choices gets you a cookie." The judge steps down from the bench bearing a plate piled with huge chocolate chip cookies. He approaches Zalika, proffers the plate a like a butler serving champagne. As they do every time this scene is played out, all the kids applaud. Zalika returns to her seat among them; Judge Easton returns to the bench, calls the next client.

Next up is Diamond, an African American girl with a flaming bruise beneath her eye. Judge Easton asks how her week went. "Crazy," she replies.

"Anything else you’d like to share?"

"I relapsed. On coke," Diamond admits.

"Diamond did a good job of processing her relapse, so she’s still on track to graduate in January," Leo interjects. Straight-faced, Judge Easton offers Diamond a choice between getting off JEM and having lunch with Kevin. "JEM!" she exclaims, and the judge comments dryly, "So far we haven’t had anyone take the other option."

Akeel, whose dad is the only parent present, receives a glowing report. "In the last few weeks we’ve all noticed you making a significant turnaround," Judge Easton comments. "What helped, Akeel?"

"Getting locked up for a long time."

Judge Easton turns to Akeel’s dad. "How do you feel your son’s doing?"

"At program he’s doing well," he says through a thick accent. "At school he can do a little more."

Leo jumps in. "Our philosophy is, we’re looking for progress, not perfection."

"Cookie, lunch, and a prize for Akeel," the judge beams.

Anthony is called next. "We all love Anthony, but he needs to work on his temper," Leo says. "And we’d like to see his mom."

"If she can’t come to Multifamily Group tonight," Judge Easton tells Anthony, "she needs to make contact and tell me what the problem is. Did you get a sponsor yet?"

Anthony shakes his head. "I’m trying to find someone good," he says earnestly. "I don’t want no drug addict." Anthony looks utterly baffled when the kids erupt into raucous laughter.

• • •

When she was admitted to Drug Court, Zalika had a lot riding on the outcome. The charges against her were serious. If she failed the program, she faced a long stretch at CYA. Her parents–emotionally and financially depleted by years of therapists’ and boarding school bills, frantic all-night searches for their runaway daughter, trying to raise their two younger children while struggling to save their eldest–were calling Drug Court Zalika’s last chance, too.

At 16, Zalika had been on her own for years, unwilling and unaccustomed to taking orders from anyone, with the possible exception of her pimp. Weeks after she entered Drug Court she started violating her court-ordered curfew, cutting school, going "out of range" of her Juvenile Electronic Monitor, starting a forbidden romance with a fellow Drug Court client. The Drug Court Team used every tool in their repertoire to try and reign her in. Twice they sentenced her to several-day stints in Juvenile Hall. Each time, upon hearing her disposition, she fled the courthouse. Each time, with Tom’s encouragement, I chased her down, convinced her to come back and face the handcuffs. The Drug Court Team kept fighting to keep Zalika in the program, while Zalika battled the urge to do what she’d always done when adults tried to constrict her freedom: disappear into the underworld of teenage runaways.

• • •

"Zalika showed up wearing all red on Friday," Leo Kidd announces in a December Case Review meeting. The team members around the table frown; wearing red or blue–gang colors–is forbidden in Drug Court, as it is in most adolescent treatment programs. "Other than that, she’s doing better in the program. Three out of four on attendance, all clean tests. She still gets negative with staff; she pouts if you get on her for anything. But she’s flirting less, participating more in group. And she turned in proof of attendance for two NA meetings."

"She did not have a good week on JEM," Judge Easton reports, scanning his laptop screen. "She was out every night. Let’s see…last week we went for the story about the monitor being unplugged. The week before that, she said she was out of range for six hours, looking for an NA meeting."

"I’ve heard it can take all night to find a meeting," the DA says dryly.

"I think the kids have discovered the value of meetings," Kevin adds: "Get-out-of-JEM-free cards."

"She’s dealing with a lot of issues," Tom says.

"So–Juvenile Hall for Zalika if she shows?" Pam asks.

Knowing this was a likely outcome, I’ve come prepared. I’m wearing my running shoes.

"She’s had a pretty rough life," says Judge Easton. "What are we gonna do with her?"

"I think if we can get her into custody, I should interview her in the Hall, ask her what she needs," Kevin suggests. "This ain’t working."

I know what that interview will mean: unless Zalika can talk Kevin out of it, she’ll be dropped from the Drug Court roster and sent to placement–residential drug treatment, or a group home–instead.

"Mom is frustrated that she keeps violating," Pam says. "Of course her parents don’t know what time she gets home, since they’re never there."

"She’s not using drugs, as far as we know," Tom says.

"What scares me about kids like this," the judge says, "when prostitution’s been a way of life–she takes off, goes back to that life… I’ve had a number of girls like Zalika end up dead."

So: custody and an interview for Zalika?" Kevin says.

"Should we give her a cookie for being good in program?" Judge Easton asks.

"I think that would be taken as sarcasm, Your Honor," Kevin answers. "Also, she might throw it at your head."

• • •

Unlike most American social issues, drug abuse is stunningly democratic. No race, class, gender, or age group is immune. The consequences of drug abuse, on the other hand–the treatments and penalties that determine just how devastating its effects will be on the addict, his or her family and community–precisely reflect, and effectively perpetuate, the inequities that bisect our society along the fault lines of class and race.

"If I’m a kid with a drug problem and I’m caught burglarizing someone’s home," Kevin Charles tells me, "am I going to Juvenile Hall or am I going to treatment? Am I going to get charged or am I going to see a therapist? If I’m black, brown, or poor, odds are I’m going to the Hall."

National statistics confirm Kevin’s observations. As is true for adults, punishment for juvenile drug offenders often fits the criminal, not the crime. For example, African Americans constitute 12% of the U.S. population and an estimated 13% of American drug users–but they account for 35% of the arrests for drug possession, 55% of all convictions for drug possession, and 74% of all prison sentences.

Juvenile drug use and convictions mirror this pattern. "Contrary to popular assumption," the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reports in its "Monitoring The Future" survey for 2001, "African American youngsters have substantially lower rates of use of most drugs than do Whites." NIDA adds, "Differences in use by socioeconomic classes are very small."

Journalist Tim Wise writes in the March, 2001 online magazine AlterNet, "White high school students are seven more likely than blacks to have used cocaine; eight more likely to have smoked crack; ten more likely to have used LSD and seven more likely to have used heroin.

"There are more white high school students who have used crystal methamphetamine (the most addictive drug on the streets) than there are black students who smoke cigarettes. White youth ages 12-17 are 34% more likely to sell drugs than their black counterparts. White youth are twice as likely to binge drink, and nearly twice as likely as blacks to drive drunk."

Why, then, do kids of color, who make up about one-third of the youth population nationwide, account for nearly 70% of juveniles in custody?

Not because they commit more drug crimes. Between 1991 and 1998, when the number of juvenile drug offense cases more than doubled, the proportion of drug cases involving white youth increased from 49% to 68%, while the proportion of cases involving black juveniles decreased from 49% to 29%. And these numbers reflect only those teens who were arrested and remanded to ‘the system’–not those whose race and class keep them below the radar of the law.

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJBOP) acknowledges that "Delinquency cases involving black juveniles were more likely to be handled formally than were cases involving white youth or youth of other races." In fact, the OJBOP says, "78% of drug cases involving black juveniles were handled by formal petition, compared with 56% for white juveniles and 55% for juveniles of other races."

From those facts come these: a black male born today has a 29% chance of going to jail in his lifetime. And there are currently more African American men in jail than in college.

Sitting in group therapy sessions at Choices; sitting through sessions at the Richmond Drug Court, I can almost hear the ‘ka-ching, ka-ching’ of those grim statistics adding up. Tuesday after Tuesday the Drug Court Team struggles to wrest its clients back from the jaws of the monster that would swallow them whole: the increasingly privatized, increasingly profitable penal system in which nearly one out of seven African American men between the ages of 25 and 29 is now incarcerated. (In comparison, 2.9 percent of Latino men and 1.2 percent of white men are in prison.)

Every time a Drug Court kid steals another car, relapses, runs, those jaws snap and drool. Every time a Drug Court kid gets clean and graduates, the monster slinks off in search of new prey. And finds it.

• • •

She’s gonna run as soon as I tell her she’s going to the Hall," Tom confirms my prediction when he and I huddle before his pre-court consultation with Zalika. "As her lawyer, I can’t tell her this, but the best thing for her might be to let her run. If she gets busted she’ll be forced into placement. That could save her life."

"What if she runs and doesn’t get caught?" I argue. "She’ll just go back to her pimp that much sooner."

Tom shrugs, calls Zalika to his lectern in the hallway, delivers the news. She bursts into tears.

"I’m gone," she says, and heads for the stairs. I hesitate for a moment–who knows what’s best for this girl right now?–then follow her.

"I’m through with these people!" Zalika slams through the courthouse door. I speed-walk beside her as she crosses the street, heading for the bus stop a few blocks away. "I could be out there making money."

See that cute guy?" she says, her voice suddenly low. I follow her glance to the late-model gold Buick driving slowly ahead of us, a young African American man at the wheel. "He’s a pimp. I could be out there for him in an hour."

The car pulls over at the curb ahead of us. The man watches Zalika like a hungry lion eyeing its prey. "You know him?" I ask. Zalika shakes her head. "Then why–" I ask.

"He knows a ho when he sees one," she says, flouncing past him. The car follows us as we walk.

"I need to call my dad," Zalika says. I hand her my phone, relieved to realize that she wants her dad to talk her out of running.

Her dad yells at her till she agrees. We walk back to the courthouse, trailed by the gold Buick. Before she walks into the courtroom Zalika turns to me. "You better come see me in the Hall," she says, and I promise that I will.

As we walk into the courtroom the kids burst into laughter, no longer captivated by the drama queen’s now-predictable performance. Head held high, Zalika takes her place at the defense table.