Dozens of people celebrated their graduations Friday from intensive treatment programs designed to keep people struggling with mental health or addiction out of jail.
The Community Service Council COURTS Program had more than 50 graduates. Thanks to drug court, Rhonda McCoy has a stable life after fighting addiction for 20 years. She said addicts share a common burden.
"Almost all addicts have some kind of trauma issues, whether they want to admit it or not, and trauma can be many things," McCoy said. "It can be a death of a loved one. It can be sexual abuse. It can be mental abuse, a house fire, just whatever, and undealt with trauma, I think, leads to poor decisions."
The Community Service Council estimates the COURTS Program costs $17,000 per defendant per year less than incarceration. Tammy Westcott directs the Community Service Council’s incarceration reduction division and said alternative courts change people’s lives.
"Had they gone to prison or not received the treatment, honestly — and I'm not being dramatic — some of them could be dead," Westcott said. "Most of them would be in prison. Their children could be in foster care. And now we have them in stable housing, clean and sober, with their families, having jobs."
There is concern, however, that the current state budget crisis will mean the end of funding for alternative courts, leaving current participants in the lurch and leading to more people in prison.
"To even be considering that we halt these programs across the state is unconscionable," Community Service Council CEO Kevin Burr told graduates. "There are 6,000 people in Oklahoma just like you in the alternative treatment court programs across every county. I can't imagine adding 6,000 more people to the penal system that's already overcrowded."
Westcott said if planned state cuts do go through, funding to administer alternative court programs across Oklahoma will be gone, effectively shutting them down.
In Tulsa County, nearly 600 people are currently in an alternative court program.
