House Corrections hears more on drug courts

I'm just now listening this morning to the second half of yesterday's Texas House Corrections Committee meeting, and was interested to hear several criticisms lodged about HB 530 expanding drug courts in Texas to counties larger than 200,000. (See earlier Grits discussion of the bill.)

I support expanding drug courts, but some of the folks raising questions about HB 530, I thought, had particularly good points.

Magistrate Judge Joel Bennett from Travis County said the bill erred by failing to allow any violent offenders to participate in drug court programs. He said that's actually the group we should most want to include - those whose drug problems are causing significant anti-social behaviors. He said that Travis County's drug court originally did the same thing because it relied on federal money that had similar restrictions, but it was a bad idea and officials soon moved to change the policy once the program got going. He said since HB 530 relied on state money, there was no reason for the committee to make the same mistake.

Other significant critiques of the bill came from Dave Grasbaugh, a criminal defense attorney who supported drug courts but offered several caveats and cautions. For starters he objected to financing the bill through offender fees - he rightly said that offender fees have become so onerous many people already can't afford them, even with the best of intentions. The Legislature shouldn't continue to pile on fees, he said. I agree with that and believe that, given how much General Revenue (GR) money is saved in incarceration costs, drug courts deserve to be financed entirely out of GR.

Grasbaugh also wondered why the bill didn't allow drug courts for state jail felonies? Good question. He thought that might be a "sacred cow," but I can't understand why. The vast majority of felony drug possession cases are state jail felonies for less than a gram of a controlled substance. It makes little sense to me to exclude the vast majority of felony drug possession cases from participating in drug courts.

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, Grasbaugh suggested that there are significant, as-yet-unaddressed problems with drug courts diminishing the constitutional right of defendants. In many drug courts, he said, including in Travis County, defendants appear before judges without any defense counsel with them. Not only do they not have the right to remain silent, for example, they're expected to speak up and describe their addiction, etc. Grasbaugh said these constitutional rights issues have never been litigated and potentially pose a long-term challenge to the structure of drug courts that the Legislature, he predicted, must ultimately address.

The committee seemed generally favorable toward the drug court concept and I suspect they'll approve this bill, though with some modifications, hopefully, that address some of these concerns. We'll soon see. Stay tuned.