[House Hearing, 107 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO PREVENTING CRIME AND REHABILITATING YOUTH AND
ADULT OFFENDERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 22, 2002
__________
Serial No. 107-165
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
85-124 U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON : 2003
____________________________________________________________________________
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Internet: bookstore.gpr.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
STEPHEN HORN, California PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
BOB BARR, Georgia DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
DAN MILLER, Florida ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
RON LEWIS, Kentucky JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JIM TURNER, Texas
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
DAVE WELDON, Florida JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
CHRIS CANNON, Utah WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida DIANE E. WATSON, California
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia ------
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
------ ------ (Independent)
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
JOHN L. MICA, Florida, BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
BOB BARR, Georgia DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
DAN MILLER, Florida JIM TURNER, Texas
DOUG OSE, California THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JANICE D. SCHAKOWKY, Illinois
DAVE WELDON, Florida
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
Christopher A. Donesa, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Amy Adair Horton, Professional Staff Member
Conn Carroll, Clerk
Julian A. Haywood, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on March 22, 2002................................... 1
Statement of:
Curie, Charles, Administrator, the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration............................. 9
Deary, Kevin, president and executive director, Boys and
Girls Club of Greater Goshen; Alisa Stovall, education
coordinator, Deer Run Academy; Matthew P. Schomburg, Wayne
Township trustee; Mark Terrell, CEO, Lifeline Youth and
Family Services, Inc.; and Glynn Hines, Fort Wayne city
councilman................................................. 59
Surbeck, John F., judge, re-entry court initiative, Allen
Superior Court, Criminal Division; Frances C. Gull, judge,
drug court, Allen Superior Court, Criminal Division; and
David C. Bonfiglio, judge, Elkhart Superior Court VI....... 27
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Bonfiglio, David C., judge, Elkhart Superior Court VI,
prepared statement of...................................... 39
Curie, Charles, Administrator, the Substance Abuse and Mental
Health Services Administration, prepared statement of...... 13
Deary, Kevin, president and executive director, Boys and
Girls Club of Greater Goshen, prepared statement of........ 62
Gull, Frances C., judge, drug court, Allen Superior Court,
Criminal Division, prepared statement of................... 32
Hines, Glynn, Fort Wayne city councilman, prepared statement
of......................................................... 91
Schomburg, Matthew P., Wayne Township trustee, information
concerning Twenty-first Century Scholars................... 76
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 4
Stovall, Alisa, education coordinator, Deer Run Academy,
prepared statement of...................................... 68
Terrell, Mark, CEO, Lifeline Youth and Family Services, Inc.,
prepared statement of...................................... 82
INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO PREVENTING CRIME AND REHABILITATING YOUTH AND
ADULT OFFENDERS
----------
FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 2002
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and
Human Resources,
Committee on Government Reform,
Fort Wayne, IN.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., at Ivy
Tech Auditorium, 3800 North Anthony Boulevard, Fort Wayne, IN,
Hon. Mark E. Souder (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Souder, Cummings and Davis.
Staff present: Conn Carroll, clerk; Christopher A. Donesa,
staff director and chief counsel; Amy Adair Horton, deputy
staff director; and Julian A. Haywood, minority counsel.
Mr. Souder. If everybody could take their seats.
Subcommittee will now come to order. I'm honored to chair this
hearing today for multiple reasons. Foremost is the fact we've
been able to gather so many quality professionals from local
communities, courts and government, to Federal officials for
this hearing.
It's a privilege to welcome Administrator Charles Curie of
the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
[SAMHSA], who happens to actually be a native of this area,
from DeKalb County to be exact. The Department of Health and
Human Services, through SAMHSA, provides the majority of
Federal funding for drug abuse treatment, prevention and
education programs in the United States.
With an estimated 26 million Americans presently addicted
to drugs and/or alcohol, costs to our community are
skyrocketing. The cost of both drug and alcohol addiction to
society, including costs for health care, substance abuse
prevention and treatment, preventing and fighting substance-
related crime and lost resources resulting from reduced worker
productivity or death, was estimated at an astounding $246
billion for 1998.
Administrator Curie will testify about the administration's
initiative to prevent drug abuse and treat drug users. He will
also testify about Federal funds flowing to Indiana for drug
abuse treatment, prevention and education programs, as well as
drug abuse trends in northeast Indiana.
I am also honored and pleased to welcome two of my
congressional colleagues to northeast Indiana today.
Congressman Elijah Cummings of Baltimore, who is a ranking
member of this subcommittee, and Congressman Danny Davis of
Chicago, who has been a leader in the House of Representatives
on the issue of re-entry of ex-offenders to communities.
Finally, I want to thank all of our distinguished
witnesses, many of whom have changed their busy schedules in
order to accommodate this hearing. The subcommittee will
greatly benefit from your testimony this afternoon.
For quite some time, I've been hoping to have the
opportunity to showcase the exemplary programs that have grown
from the grassroots in northeast Indiana. This region has
proven to be a prolific environment for innovative crime
control programs, initiatives that provide pre- and post-
adjudication services for high-risk youth and adult and
juvenile offenders. Such programs span a wide variety of
services, including adult re-entry and drug courts; juvenile
mentoring, educational attainment and character programs;
alternative schools; anti-drug programs; and partnerships
between law--local law enforcement and neighborhood
communities. Those of us from this area have reason to be very
proud of our community's leadership in providing narrowly
targeted services to juvenile and at-risk populations.
Of the local programs highlighted at this hearing, some
funding flows through various Federal grant programs, including
the Department of Education's GEAR UP program, the Corporation
for National Service's Americorps program, the Bureau of
Justice Assistance, and the Department of Justice's Community-
Oriented Policing Services, COPS, program. I am interested in
learning how the Federal Government can provide monetary and
other assistance to local communities who are on the front
lines of crime control.
Another reason for my distinct pleasure in hosting this
hearing is that some of the local initiatives highlighted today
are linked to legislation I have closely worked on in
Washington. As a member of the House Education Committee, I
have worked on juvenile justice legislation, the Safe and Drug
Free Schools and Communities Act, and GEAR UP, Gaining Early
Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. Since 1996,
the Education Committee has annually considered juvenile
justice bills. I worked heavily last year on the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act, which contained the Safe and Drug Free
Schools title. This is the Federal Government's major
initiative to prevent drug abuse and violence in and around
schools. And, in 1998, I worked with Congressman Chaka Fattah,
who is not here, to create--I was a major Republican sponsor to
create the GEAR UP program. GEAR UP seeks to increase
disadvantaged students' secondary school completion and post-
secondary enrollment by providing school--support services and
by assuring students of the availability of financial aid to
meet college costs.
As Congress continues to consider crime control
legislation, it is important that we learn about grassroots
programs that are effective in addressing specific adult and
juvenile justice issues. Some of these initiatives may be
fortified with the Federal grant money; others may not. The
central questions are what we can--what can we learn from these
programs and how can the Federal officials encourage and
champion programs like we see here in this area.
Just several weeks ago, I was with Congressman Cummings in
Baltimore. We focused particularly on drug treatment, in which
he's been a leader in, but also the drug courts, which has been
very important here in northeast Indiana, and--and where I've
been on the forum multiple times advocating the drug courts and
we're going to hear more about that today.
And Congressman Davis is a champion on re-entry programs,
which Judge Surbeck will be talking about our challenges here
in northeast Indiana. I supported his legislation. One of the
most difficult problems we have in--in cities like the size of
Fort Wayne and especially in our smaller towns is where do you
find transitional housing, where do you find people who are
willing to employ people, retrain them, because, if we don't do
those kinds of things, it is difficult to see how we cannot
just accelerate the pace of crime and problems in our
communities. And we have two of the most innovative Members of
Congress here today and it's a great honor to welcome them here
to Fort Wayne.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I want
to thank you and--sincerely for inviting me to your
congressional district and for holding this very important
hearing in Fort Wayne today. I'm certainly very pleased to have
Congressman Danny Davis, a member of our subcommittee, with us.
Just 2 weeks ago, as you stated, Mr. Chairman, the
subcommittee held a similar hearing in my home district of
Baltimore City, and you were able to see and hear what the
Federal Government, the State and local agencies and the
private sector organizations are doing to combat the terrible
problem of drug abuse and addiction in Baltimore. In Baltimore,
as you are well aware, with a population of some 665,000, it is
estimated that we have 65,000 addicts, plus. I thought it was
important for you and for the Congress to know about the
remarkable progress that Baltimore has made in reducing drug
use and related crime and health problems by expanding access
to effective drug treatment.
Today's hearing gives me a similar opportunity to see what
the public and private sector are doing in northeast Indiana to
prevent crime and to rehabilitate youth and adult offenders in
your community. Here, as in Baltimore, the initiative and
creativity that spawns effective solutions often begins at the
grassroots level among the very people who are directly
affected in their own communities. Clearly, I affirm the
Federal Government has played, and must continue to play an
active role in supporting many such efforts in Baltimore and
northeastern Indiana and around the country. It is important
for us, as Federal legislators, to learn about and to talk
about local success stories so that we can replicate them
across our great Nation.
The work of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration is a primary source of Federal support for drug
treatment and research programs around the country. So I'm very
glad that SAMHSA's administrator, Charles Curie, appears here
with us today. I'm happy, too, Mr. Chairman, that Congressman
Danny Davis, who has spent phenomenal amounts of time
addressing the issue of re-entry is here with us, too. For he
brings a lot of the insight. So often what happens is that
people say, Put--when people run into drug problems, they say,
Put him in jail and throw away the key. Well, the fact is is
that people are going to come back into our communities and, as
we've found in Baltimore, so often they return to the same
corners, to the same house and to the same people and, next
thing you know, we have a revolving door. And, so, that--for
that reason, it is so important that we address re-entry.
The problem with crime in America is very complex, but its
connection to drug abuse and addiction is clear and easily
understood. Recently, the director of the Office of National
Drug Control Policy, John Walters, paid a visit to Baltimore
City, and we were able to sit down and talk with a number of
residents in a highly successful drug treatment facility there
called the Turk House. During that exchange, we conducted our
own miniature survey of among 12 recovering addicts and learned
that, on the average--and listen to this--that, on the average,
each of them spent more than $100 a day to support their drug
addiction and all of them--all of the 12 were unemployed.
During the subcommittee's recent field hearing in Baltimore
City, Police Commissioner Edward Norris testified that 8
percent of homicides in Baltimore and an even greater
percentage of property crimes, which are far more prevalent,
are drug-related. Certain crimes may be beyond our government
to prevent, Mr. Chairman, but we can do something about drug-
related crime if only we could get people to stop using drugs.
Baltimore's experience proves that. We simply cannot solve
either the drug problem or the crime problem simply through
incarceration, and that is why I'm such a strong supporter of
drug courts, which use the coercive power of criminal--of the
criminal justice system to get substance abusers the treatment
that they need. Still, drug and alcohol abuse are not the only
recursus of criminality. Child abuse and neglect, substandard
living conditions and many other factors can help make a
criminal out of someone who might otherwise flourish and
contribute as a productive citizen. And, so, our criminal
justice system must become flexible enough to identify and
treat underlying problems when offenders enter the system for
the first time. Often, as we know, that is very--that is very
early in an offender's life, so juvenile justice programs,
including juvenile family courts, are critical. For juveniles
and adults alike, if we simply punish without actually
correcting what's wrong with the individual, the cycle of
abuse, addiction and criminal behavior will quickly take hold.
As Representative Davis clearly understands, we must also
deal with those who are already incarcerated and who are or
will be returning from prison to society. Sending offenders
away for longer periods of time may ease the pain of victims
and others in the community, but it only defers the pain these
offenders will visit upon future victims if they are not
prepared to be law-abiding, self-sufficient citizens when their
sentences are up. We simply must do more to ensure that, when
an offender is released, he or she is equipped to function as a
healthy, self-sustaining and productive citizen, parent, spouse
and employee.
Based on the written testimony I've seen, some, if not all,
of these ideas have already been put to work on the State and
local level in the Fort Worth area, and I--and I look forward
to hearing how various justice programs are working and what
lessons our witnesses can offer to communities across the
country, including how the Federal Government has been helpful
to date and how it can be even a better partner in the future.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much.
Now, I'd like to recognize my friend, Mr. Davis, who's my
friend not just because he represents the Chicago White Sox,
for those of you who know I've been a White Sox fan for many
years, but he's been a great leader and Congressman,
Congressman Danny Davis.
Mr. Cummings. I'm waiting until next year. And I meant to
say--And I meant to say Fort Wayne.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And let me
first of all commend you and ranking member Elijah Cummings for
the outstanding leadership that you've both shown in this area
of drug use abuse and trying to find ways to correct problems
that exist. It is my feeling that's one of the most pernicious
and most threatening of all the problems facing our society, is
that of drug use and abuse, which becomes an integral part of
what happens with and within our criminal justice system. As
you have already noted, many of the individuals who are caught
up in criminal justice activity find it being spurred and
generated by the use of mind-altering drugs. Once they lose
control of the direction of their lives, then it becomes a very
empty situation for them; therefore, I commend you for the
efforts to take in-depth looks at these issues.
The Justice Department has predicted that more than 630
thousand people will be released from our prisons and jails
this year with the same thing happening next year and the next
year and, unfortunately, many of these individuals--most of
them are returning in worse shape than they were in when they
were first incarcerated. Half of them or almost half will find
themselves caught up again within a period of 3 years. And, so,
therefore, we must, as Representative Cummings has indicated,
find a way to provide more resources, more opportunity and to
help not only those individuals, because, as we help them, we
are really helping ourselves. That's why we take the position
that, when we help an ex-offender become a productive member of
society, we help a whole community realize its own potential.
And, so, I'm pleased to be here today in Fort Wayne, look
forward to the discussions that will take place and certainly
want to add my welcome to Administrator Curie and look forward
to his testimony.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much.
Before proceeding, I would like to take care of a couple of
procedural matters. First, that I have consent that all Members
have 5 legislative days to submit written statements and
questions to the hearing record and any answers to written
questions provided by the witnesses also be included in the
record. Without objection, so ordered.
Second, I ask to have consent that all exhibits, documents
and other materials referred to by Members and the witnesses
may be included in the hearing record and all Members will be
permitted to provide extended remarks. Without objection, it's
so ordered.
We are an oversight committee and it is our standard
practice to ask all our witnesses to testify under oath. So, if
you could stand.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that the witness answered
in the affirmative.
It's a great honor to have you here to initiate our hearing
today, and I'll now ask you, as administrator of this important
and the most important drug treatment agency, to outline some
of your accomplishments and goals.
STATEMENT OF CHARLES CURIE, ADMINISTRATOR, THE SUBSTANCE ABUSE
AND MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Curie. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Appreciate the
opportunity to be here today for broad reasons. One of you
mentioned this does represent my hometown district, and I know
my parents are pleased I'm able to come home for a visit on
this particular trip, but, also, professionally, I appreciate
the work you, Mr. Chairman, have done on this and as well as
Congressman Cummings and Congressman Davis, to further the
education of the public around substance abuse, which hopefully
I'll be able to elaborate on here. I do request that my written
testimony, which I'm submitting, be made part of the record.
And I do also appreciate the fact you clarified in your
opening statement and one amendment I'd like to make to that
written testimony is it had me down as a native of Noble
County. I'm a native of DeKalb County. My staff understands
that now as we move ahead. And I think the--what occurred is my
good friend, Judge Michael Kramer, came from Noble County to
visit me in my office and we talked about northeastern Indiana.
So I think my staff got a little confused with that, but I am a
native of DeKalb County. Also have roots here through having
been a graduate of Huntington College. And then Congressman
Davis and I were just comparing notes. Being an alumnus of the
University of Chicago and we were able to talk about common
social work around there.
Also, Congressman Cummings, if I might, I'd also like to
note your continued efforts to reduce the availability of drugs
and increase access to care. And I want to apologize for not
having been able to be at the Baltimore hearing. I was--my
attention that day was directed toward Chairman Regula and the
Appropriation Subcommittee, my budget. So I had that priority
facing me that day.
I'd like to also indicate that, with my visit here in Fort
Wayne, I arrived yesterday and had an opportunity to see first-
hand the inner-workings of the re-entry court under Judge
Surbeck, and I just want to say that I not only had a chance to
see he and his staff in action and the work of Executive
Director Sheila Hudson preparing for that court, but I was able
to sit in on a night court session last night. And I thought it
represented an excellent model of accountability, but also
recognition of what the members of this committee have already
articulated in terms of the underlying issue of substance abuse
and addictive disease and how that contributes to the cycle of
crime, but how we can also address this issue through
treatment, at the same time holding people accountable and
really work to restoring individuals to come to a life of
dignity and full participation in the community. And I think
Fort Wayne doing this basically proves grassroots movement in
terms of using the dollars that were already here to accomplish
that is a great testimony and I do believe that it will serve
as a model as we look to fund other programs in corroborating
with the Department of Justice to see that this type of model
can be available throughout the country.
It is SAMHSA's mission to fully develop the Federal
Government's ability to target substance abuse and mental
health services to the people most in need and to translate
research in these areas more effectively and more rapidly in
the general health care system. The Agency's work has shown
that prevention, early intervention and treatment for mental
and substance abuse disorders pay off in reduced HIV/AIDS,
crime, violence, suicide, homelessness, injuries and health
care costs, as well as increase productivity, employment and
community participation. I might add that the focus of this
hearing also, I think, points out that good public health also
can translate to good public safety. I--the comment that was
made, I believe by Congressman Cummings, the statistic of
630,000 individuals leaving the correctional facilities
throughout this country point out that if individuals still
have an underlying addiction disorder that's not been
addressed, they're going to be--continue to be a prisoner of
that addiction disease and the revolving door will continue to
spin.
The President's proposed budget for 2003 includes an
additional $127 million for substance abuse. It's a
continuation of the President's promise to reduce the treatment
gap. It includes an additional $60 million for the substance
abuse prevention treatment block grant that will bring several
contributions directly to the State to $1.785 billion. If the
President's budget is approved, Indiana, for example, will
receive $33,632,000. Janet Corson, who is the director of the
Indiana agency, is responsible for the block grants funds and
we pledge our continued work with her to see that these funds
are used effectively.
The President also has proposed increasing $67 million for
competitive grants. This year, Indiana is receiving an
additional $4.7 million in competitive grants in addition to
the block grants.
I encourage these programs also in this district to apply
for Targeted Capacity Expansion grants. The next application is
due May 10th, and these funds provide support to local
communities to address substance abuse treatment issues in
their area, whether it's Oxycontin, methamphetamine abuse or
services for adolescents, in particular, adolescents in the
criminal justice system.
We support and expect to expand also our State Incentive
Grant Program, which Indiana is a recipient of about $2\1/2\
million. Eighty-five percent of these funds are required to go
to local communities for prevention activities. SAMHSA will
also help local communities by identifying programs and models
that work so they can be replicated in different communities
with different populations. We do this through treatment and
prevention improvement protocols for substance abuse issues and
common and technical assistance.
I also wanted to point out two other things real quickly;
the need to focus in our systems on care of co-occurring mental
illness in substance abuse disorders. We are finding in our
service delivery system as high as 60 percent of individuals
being served by the drug and alcohol system, as well as mental
health have co-occurring disorders which are not being fully
treated, and I view this as an area that we need to address so
that we are assuring that we're maximizing the public dollar in
the first place. Because, if we treat the substance abuse issue
without treating the underlying mental illness, people are
going to continue to self-medicate and come right back in that
system. The same is true with treatment of mental illness.
Without dealing with the recovery around the addiction, again
we are not fully treating those individuals.
And the other point I would like to make is our system
needs to be thinking about giving people life in the community.
Whether we talk to prisoners coming out of the criminal justice
system who have a substance abuse disorder or whether we're
talking to individuals coming out of the State hospitals with
mental illnesses, I think that there's been scientific surveys
done on this and, in my own experience in just sitting down and
speaking with these individuals, you ask them what they need to
succeed. They don't talk about, I need a psychologist to follow
me around or a licensed drug counselor to follow me around or a
case manager. They talk beyond treatment. To make it in the
community, they say, I need a job, a decent place to live, and
I translated a date on the weekends, but significant emotional
relationships and family and friends to be part of the
community and to be accepted. We have failed in our system if
we don't do that.
I'd like to end with a quote from Douglas McArthur, who is
not known as a mental health advocate or a drug and alcohol
substance abuse advocate, but he spoke the truth when he said,
``In the central place of every heart is a recording chamber.
So long as we receive the message of beauty, hope, cheer and
courage, so long are you young. When the wires are all down and
your heart is covered with the small pessimisms and the act of
cynicism, then and only then are you grown old.''
And these words of McArthur are true in the person trapped
by addictions, the person devastated by mood swings and the
person distracted by the voices are people who become more and
more isolated. They may get in trouble with the criminal
justice system, become more isolated. The wires are truly down.
This then tells us that we need to be about not only bringing
the wires up, seeing that treatment takes hold, recognizing
that coerced treatment does work in prisons, but once treatment
does take hold, we must do everything in our capacity to assure
messages are sent to that central place of the heart, messages
of beauty, hope, cheer and courage and help people gain a life,
including a job, a descent place to live and significant
relationships.
So that's what we need to be about in the system. I look
forward to working with you and accomplishing that.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much for your testimony and once
again for coming.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Curie follows:]
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Mr. Souder. What do you see as the major trend that you'll
be addressing in this next year? Co-occurrence is an
interesting angle, one that hasn't been talked about enough,
but, clearly, people who abuse drugs and alcohol have usually
some other kind of problem that led into them. I'd be
interested in that, or if there are particular programs.
Clearly, we're seeing a rise in methamphetamines in many parts
of the country, of Oxycontin, of Ecstasy.
Do you tailor any of your treatment ranks around trends of
a given area? Are you looking for innovative programs that
address certain types, or is it more comprehensive presence
than that?
Mr. Curie. I'll answer the first part of the question and
then the second.
In terms of our priorities we'll be addressing this year,
you are exactly right, co-occurring is a No. 1 priority that we
will be addressing. I think it is SAMSHA's responsibility to
take a lead on that important field, identify, in collaboration
with providers, academic institutes, the research institutes
and in the national institutes for health what models really do
work in terms of integrative treatment models to treat people
that have co-occurring disorders.
And another reason that we're focused on that area as a
priority is 80 percent--while 80 percent of the individuals in
the criminal justice system typically across the country--when
I was in Pennsylvania as commissioner of mental health there,
we did a review of the State prisons there. Eighty percent of
the individuals in the State prison system had a drug and
alcohol issue, over 50 percent were under the influence at the
time of arrest, 10 to 12 percent had a serious mental illness
diagnosis and 90 percent of those individuals had a co-
occurring substance abuse problem. So that tells us right there
where we need to put our priorities in treatment. And we do
track trends across the country around Oxycontin, around
methamphetamines, Ecstasy, the club drugs and what we're
finding is that new drugs seem to emerge in cycles and many
times emerge in different geographic regions of the country and
then spread across the country, and we do try to follow that.
We find that there's typically the same type of intervention
and, both in terms of prevention and treatment, are--can
address.
Even though there are different drugs, the same underlying
dynamics are at play. So, what we do is try to identify those
drugs and determine are there some tailored approaches we may
need to take. We think that's why we need to have an ongoing
approach to assure access to care and be addressing that club
drug issue, in particular, as well as issues of--that arise in
various localities.
Mr. Souder. And a co-occurrence question. Do you see
different patterns of drug and alcohol abuse depending upon the
mental health problem? Do you see it as something that is more
common with the mental health problem that you've identified,
or is it--does it get greater as you get older? Are some more
identified with youth and adult? Could you give us a couple of
examples of that, because, working on this for some time, there
are obviously many variations of this----
Mr. Curie. Sure.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. But what would be a couple of
examples?
Mr. Curie. No. That--that's an excellent question.
What we have found is a typical pattern has been that
there's an onset of serious emotional disturbance or a mental
illness in an individual in their teens years--adolescent teen
years. We call it kind of the 5-year window of opportunity to
address it if it's identified early on. If it's not addressed,
those individuals are at very high risk of beginning to abuse
substances, not only because of perhaps it's something that's
experimented with as teens, but also it begins to be a way of
self-medicating the underlying bipolar disorder, for example,
and they have both manic phases, as well as depressive phases.
The drugs temporarily take an edge off of those symptoms and,
so, they begin to get into a cycle.
We find that if we address the mental illness early on
appropriately with appropriate treatment and appropriate
prescribed medication, that what begins to happen is you can
avert the substance abuse from occurring. So that's one typical
cycle that can occur. The other thing that can occur is a long-
term use of drugs can begin to have an impact organically on
the brain and begin to also address--you begin to see some
fatalities around a mental illness. But, typically, what we're
finding is more along the lines of a self-medication that
occurs.
Mr. Souder. Do you see much difference--and, if you can
follow this up, if you can give me a preliminary of
differences--in ethnic and income backgrounds and the drug and
alcohol abuse related to mental health? In other words, would
economic questions or other pressures be greater in an urban
center and some of the other mental health questions be more
suburban, or is it kind of uniform across the board, different
kinds of patterns, such as Hispanics, say, from African
Americans from Europeans from Asians?
Mr. Curie. I'm not aware that we have necessarily been able
to isolate it in terms of being able to say that it's--there's
great variation depending on ethnicity. I think it's more of a
general--a trend. In fact, I would say, if you turn the clock
back 5 years ago and before--and I remember early in my career,
we used to talk about whole morbidity, people with co-occurring
mental illness and substance abuse as if it was a small
speciality population. Today, again, we're seeing about 60
percent of the individuals in our system have some sort of co-
occurring issue.
So it's not a specialty population; it's more the norm. And
the concern that we have is that we're spending block grant
dollars, we're spending dollars on treatment and, if we're not
treating the whole disorder, then people with a concern go, if
we're treating a new disorder, are we going to need more money?
Are we going to be wasting our--wasting money? My feeling is
we're currently wasting dollars by not treating the co-
occurring issue up front, not identifying it early on, not
identifying it through assessment.
So it's a pop---we know more today than we ever have
before, and I think part of what you just outlined in the
question is we need to pursue in terms of what are the
differences of urban versus rural suburban, as well as
ethnicity.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Dr. Curie, how much of SAMHSA's grant moneys was treatment
for persons through the criminal justice system?
Mr. Curie. I may not have that readily available. I do know
that we have several grants and several partnerships that we
have with the Department of Justice. At this point, I can give
you that--I can give you some representative figure. I know,
currently, we have $8 million that we have contributed to the
re-entry program, which the Fort Wayne model's being a basis
for that, and we're looking to make awards across all 50 States
in collaboration with the Department of Justice, Department of
Labor, HUD, as well as the Department of Education, to address
all the needs of individuals as they're coming out of the
criminal justice system into the community in a collaborative
way.
So those are some of the newest dollars we're putting in
there. We have made criminal justice issues a priority--a
stated priority of SAMSHA's budget for this year. And for 2003
and for 2004, it's one of the proposals actually right now of
beginning to redistribute some of our current funding to line
up with that, because I'm a firm believer that we have missed
out if we have not collaborated with justice to maximize--to
maximize. Justice is responsible for treatment within the
walls, but we need to make sure that the bridge is there and
that we have treatment and ongoing supports once the
individuals are outside the walls in order for them to realize
a life in the community.
Mr. Cummings. The--when you--when we--you know, it's
interesting. This is--I mean, I've heard a lot of testimony
with regard to drug treatment, but this is the first time I've
heard about this co-occurring. That's the first time I heard of
it. This is amazing. I mean, I knew it, but I never heard
anybody really talk about it. And I was just wondering, does--
is this something that SAMHSA has sort of now said, we got it
and this is something we're gonna just work on, or was this
something that SAMHSA pretty much had long before you even got
there and just never talked about it? You follow me?
Mr. Curie. Yeah. I understand.
Mr. Cummings. Because I think it's a very--I mean, that is
a very important point.
Mr. Curie. There have been some efforts within some of
SAMHSA's staff to begin with operation address co-occurring,
but SAMHSA, as an overall agency, has never stated it as a
major overall priority.
Mr. Cummings. Right.
Mr. Curie. And we are--Congress requested that SAMHSA
address co-occurring and a report was due in October, which
I've very pleased with, but this is a major priority that we've
established in the last few months since I've come aboard.
Because, again, we know more today than we ever have before and
the data, I think, is very compelling that we need to make sure
our systems of care are addressing the real issues that are at
play in the people that are in our system already.
Mr. Cummings. It has been estimated, I think, that about
1.4--1.3 million people need treatment, but only about 800,000
are getting treatment and I'm just wondering, first of all, do
you believe that there should be treatment on demand?
Mr. Curie. Do I believe there should be treatment on
demand? I believe people should have, when they're--especially
when they're ready for it, because we do know denial is a major
issue around addictive disorders. So, when someone is ready to
receive treatment, we need to make sure that we have the access
to care when they're ready to receive it.
So I think we do need to and I think the President is
committed to addressing that treatment gap issue, but what
we've found in the Lake Tahoe survey is that there were about
3.9 million individuals who have a substance abuse disorder
based on the response to the survey. Out of that, there were
about 381,000 individuals who recognized they had a drug and
alcohol problem or issue. Out of that number, 129,000
recognized they had an issue, tried to seek treatment, could
not find it. And, so, that is the population we're going to be
working with States with these additional dollars that the
President has put in the budget to try and establish a plan by
State to especially address that issue or that population of
individuals who know they have a problem, but were unable to
obtain treatment. We think that's a major gap that needs to be
filled as quickly as possible.
Mr. Cummings. Do you think, Dr. Curie, that the public is
getting it? That is, you know, just a moment ago, I talked
about Director Walters' visit and how 12 people talked about a
$100 a day habit, plus, with no jobs. And, you know, sometimes
we wonder--I wonder whether the public understands how all of
this is interrelated----
Mr. Curie. Uh-huh.
Mr. Cummings [continuing]. And how the quality of life--
their quality of life is affected. I mean, do you get the
feeling that the public understands that it has a commitment to
making the changes and----
Mr. Curie. I think----
Mr. Cummings [continuing]. The different resources for it
to address it?
Mr. Curie. I think we still have a ways to go before the
public fully gets it. I think, for example, when we talk about
this issue, especially the connection with the criminal justice
system, a major part of the education needs to be clarifying
with the public that we're not talking here about the older
notion of rehabing criminals; we're talking about individuals
who have an addictive disease disorder that gets them in
trouble with the law----
Mr. Cummings. Uh-huh.
Mr. Curie [continuing]. And that it's a treatable disease
and disorder. And that, once it's treated and that person
attains recovery, then we need to assure that we're
facilitating and sustaining that recovery. The person has some
responsibility for themselves around recovery; that's what it's
about, but there are various model programs that show us that
it really does work and that return back into the criminal
justice system is drastically reduced when you address
substance abuse.
And, so, I think it's--I think education of the public is
going to be critical in this process.
Mr. Cummings. Just one last question, Mr. Chairman.
You know, I think people have a tendency, Dr. Curie, to say
when they hear about a person, the kind of people you just
talked about, they say to themselves, you know, it should--he
shouldn't have done it. You know, that serves him. He shouldn't
have gone out and used that crack cocaine. And I was telling
some people earlier that, in talking to recovering addicts in
Baltimore, a lot of them told me that something like crack
cocaine, as soon as you use it--and they say particularly with
regard to women--this is not a scientific survey I've done;
this is talking to people--that it's almost instantaneous
addiction.
And I just--and, so, when you say what you just said, when
you also have that group of people who are saying--the public
saying, well, that serves him right, they shouldn't have gone
out and done that, I mean, that's really a tough--it becomes a
tougher sell. Would you agree?
Mr. Curie. Absolutely. And I think educating people on the
results of programs, I think tracking the data, sort of called
the re-entry court here, for example, and it is going to be a
great help, but I think we are up against--I would agree with
you.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Curie, let me thank you for your testimony.
You know, the more I'm looking at this--the issue and the
more I listen to discussions and, as we try and analyze and
figure out how much headway we're making, I am trying to come
up with a definition of successful treatment. Would you share
what the department might view as successful treatment?
Mr. Curie. Yes, I would. And let me share that from a
systems perspective service first. We've been able to conclude
that treatment reduces drug use and benefits society. We did a
survey, a 5-year study, that was conducted by our Centers for
Substance Abuse Treatment. And a total of 4,400 clients were--
who received substance abuse treatment services from 78
programs were reviewed and the result was the following--and
this is how we would define success in terms of outcome: 50
percent, there was a decrease in drug/alcohol use 1 year after
completing treatment compared to a controlled group who did not
receive treatment; 19 percent increase in employment and
income; 43 percent decrease in criminal activity; 43 percent
decrease in homelessness; 53 percent decrease in alcohol and
drug-related medical visits.
And, again, people who, when they are addicted, their
medical records typically are like this. And once they are
recovered, their medical records are a lot thinner. Fifty-six
percent decrease in sexual encounters for money or drugs and 51
percent decrease in sexual encounters with an injection drug
user.
Again, I think that indicates progress and success and
shows that treatment does work. And so, I think we need to
focus on, again, more than just not using drugs, but what type
of life does the person--are they able to have? And do they--do
they get a job or do they have day-to-day activities that they
find meaningful? Again, safety plays a role. Do they have
meaningful relationships? Those are the outcomes we need to be,
I think, constantly looking at to see if we're succeeding.
Mr. Davis. Since we kind of noted these, we also know that
the vast majority of the individuals who are addicted and end
up in the criminal justice system now have two problems--one,
they have an addiction; two, they have a criminal record, which
makes it more difficult for them to obtain employment--is it a
part of the Department's effort to also help educate the
general public to try and soften the difficulty so that ex-
offenders or individuals who have been addicted will have
opportunities to work?
Mr. Curie. Absolutely, that is a priority. Secretary
Thompson feels very strongly that we need to be collaborating
with justice addressing an issue of what we would call a double
stigma. You're exactly right; people with an addictive
disorder, there's a stigma anyway against drug addiction, and
you put a criminal justice record on top of that and/or an ex-
convict type of status, you're talking pretty heavy stigma.
So I think one of the efforts we can put forth is in
educating the public. I think it's partly you pave a way for
individuals, there's also prevention in one sense. So our
education efforts should not only be addressing with youth and
young people the dangers of drug and alcohol use in those
efforts, but I think there needs to be a general awareness
campaign of a type of public safety. And I think one way we can
get at that is helping the public understand that we're talking
more than just public health here; we're talking about if we
can really make an impact on people cycling in and out of the
justice system. It's an issue of also safer neighborhoods. And,
as you well know, it's very easy to sell issues around getting
tough on crime and law and order. It's tougher when you begin
to overlay that with a treatment, but if you tie it in and let
folks know that forced treatment in prison--you get a captive
audience--does work, and the indicators are that it does take
hold, then we have a responsibility to assure that we're giving
support for recovery outside of prison. And if we can
demonstrate to the public that the neighborhoods that they live
in are safer because of that, I think that's something that
could get the attention of the public at large, as well.
Mr. Davis. I appreciate that, because my question was
generated, just last evening, my wife--and my wife is the
president of our local NAACP and they receive work
opportunities from different companies, and she was reading one
and we're going through it. And it stated very specifically
that individuals who had drug problems or who had had drug
problems or who had had a felony conviction pretty much need
not apply.
Mr. Curie. Yeah.
Mr. Davis. The job was a laboring position that required
heavy work and being outdoors. But, at the end of it, it simply
said pretty much that individuals with these two conditions
need not apply.
Mr. Curie. Well, I would add, Congressman, because I think
that, unfortunately, is not atypical; that's why this
initiative we have with re-entry courts involving the
Department of Labor is, I think, going to be critical. And I
think one way we can get at the truth is if the Federal
Government has true collaboration that gets translated locally.
Mr. Davis. Yeah. I appreciate that and appreciate your
comments, because, in the State of Illinois, for example, we
have 57 job titles that an ex-offender cannot hold. You can't
be a barber, you can't be a beautician, you can't be a nail
technician, you can't work around a school, you can't work
around a day care center, you can't work in a hospital. Even if
you're a janitor or a maintenance person or clearing the
grounds, it does not matter; you are barred. And, so, you
wonder where are they going to work? Of course, in many
instances, they're not going to work and they're going to end
up back in the penitentiary.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. I wondered, too, in your grant
application, are you--do you have a way to measure these
accountability standards that you've put out? Is that going to
be part of the grant application?
Mr. Curie. Yes. In fact, we do have an evaluative component
that, up front, we delineate in terms of what type of outcome
we're going to be measuring.
Mr. Souder. That--I also wanted to comment in response to
Congressman Cummings' question, that, hopefully, we can move
some legislation, because termination of insurance coverage is
one of the primary reasons people are booted out of an alcohol/
drug rehab program or even a mental health program. And
Congressman Ramstad has introduced legislation in the House.
Senator Wellstone has several things in the Senate and it is
very difficult, because it's potentially costly. We're trying
to work through that, but I've worked with Congressman Ramstad
in the House to try to see if we can do that in a way that
doesn't cost people their total health coverage and caps it at
some limit. But we have to figure out a way to cover that gap
and, in some degree, your funding can do it.
And we also need to look at the insurance industry and
business coverage, because, clearly, it's one of the primary
reasons for lost work time for those who can get a job, is we
can rehab them while--before they lose that job through their
insurance and we can avoid some of the problems that
Congressman Davis voiced.
And, last, that treatment is--and we talked when I took
over the subcommittee and Congressman Cummings became the
ranking Democrat on the committee about the need to continue to
focus attention on treatment. It's clear that we have to keep
the nuisance from coming in and prevention, but the large
percentage of the drug and alcohol problems in America are
concentrated in an intense user population, and that's what's
really been driving, as we see around the world.
Yesterday, I met with some people who are trying to tackle
the problems of drug treatment in South America because, as
we've consumed more cocaine and heroin in the United States,
they've developed more production. They didn't used to have the
problem. Now, each year, their percent's small compared to our
U.S. problem that's doubling, and our problems spread around
the world.
Last fall, Congressman Cummings and I were in Rome. We met
with the King of Afganistan and that was one of our questions
there, because they've been exporting the heroin. As we met
with our embassy there and elsewhere we're seeing these drugs
from around the world, our problem becomes interconnected.
Unless we can tackle the heavy consumers here and elsewhere,
the problem merely builds because people are going to supply as
long as there's a market.
I thank you very much for being here today, for your
dedication. I'm sure we'll be hearing from you as we do
oversights to see how your stated goals are actually being
implemented through the next year, because this is one of the
toughest categories to challenge--the toughest challenges we
face in how to get accountability effectiveness with the amount
of treatment dollars we have. And we'll be following up with
that and also this co-dependency question. That's really the
first time we've had that come out in a hearing since I've been
in Congress and appreciate you raising it today. Thank you very
much.
Mr. Curie. Sure.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Just one other thing, Dr. Curie. I hope that
you will continue to stay on the practical road that you're on.
I think when we've been in this political business, you know,
for a long time, you--you know, some people come along and they
see things for what they are and they come up with solutions to
truly try to get to the problem as opposed to just talking
about it, and you seem to be really on the road to the
practical solution road. And, you know, it's really a breath of
fresh air and I really do appreciate, you know, what you're
doing and I hope you will continue to, you know, spread that
practical word, because a lot of people that I'm sure you well
know are depending on you.
Mr. Curie. Thank you very much, and I appreciate that.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
If the second panel could now come forward, Judge Surbeck,
Judge Gull and Judge Bonfiglio.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that all witnesses answered
in the affirmative.
As I mentioned, this is an oversight committee and we do
this. You're now part of the favorite committee that's done
everything on--from the travel office to Waco to the China
investigations and, because we, as a House committee that does
oversight over community branch implementation and legislation,
that's why we go through this process and appreciate you being
willing to do that.
Judge Surbeck, who is the re-entry court initiative in the
superior court criminal division and one of the certainly most
innovative programs in America right now, and we look forward
to hearing your testimony today.
STATEMENTS OF JOHN F. SURBECK, JUDGE, RE-ENTRY COURT
INITIATIVE, ALLEN SUPERIOR COURT, CRIMINAL DIVISION; FRANCES C.
GULL, JUDGE, DRUG COURT, ALLEN SUPERIOR COURT, CRIMINAL
DIVISION; AND DAVID C. BONFIGLIO, JUDGE, ELKHART SUPERIOR COURT
VI
Judge Surbeck. Thank you very much. Thank you for the
opportunity and privilege to be here to speak with you
gentlemen today and to provide this testimony.
I provided a brief overview. I'm not going to read that,
but perhaps touch on some of the elements of it. About--just
about 2 years ago this time, spring of 2000, I received a call
from Sheila Hudson, our director of Community Corrections, who
is, in fact, here in the audience and who has been vital to the
creation of re-entry court. Sheila called me and said that
she'd received a call from an old friend of hers, Terry
Donahue, who is an experienced advisor staff person to the
Department of Justice and that, at the request of our mayor,
had wanted to address the crime problems in Fort Wayne. She had
called me, saying that they wanted--wondered if I would be
interested in being involved; they thought it was important to
have a judicial perspective, and I certainly agreed.
That came in a very timely way. I had been a criminal
defense lawyer for about 16 years and had been on the bench for
about 14 years. And, at that time, I was becoming quite
frustrated with the fact that I was seeing--at the end of 30
years, I was seeing three generations of people through our
system. The first generation, I had represented as a criminal
defense lawyer, the second generation would have--which would
have come on the cusp, if you will, I either represented or I
sentenced as a judge early on in my career. And, now, I was
seeing the third generation, and it didn't seem like anything
that we were doing was making an impact.
It's certainly very easy to just send people to jail, as I
think you gentlemen have discussed and you are all aware. On
the other hand, change of behavior is something else again
entirely. We discussed how to approach this problem, the three
of us--Terry and Sheila and I--and arrived--after some
brainstorming, had arrived at the fact that returning offenders
were a significant problem in the community.
Literature that we reviewed at the time seemed to indicate
that about 63 percent of offenders returning from a Department
of Corrections-type setting were re-offending within a year on
either--as a result--excuse me--were being returned to the
penitentiary as a result of either new offenses, re-offending
or as a result of repeated violations of technical rules and
parole and probation. We decided that if we could address that
population and those return--that returning issue, that we
could significantly address the crime problem as we saw it.
We went about designing a program based upon several--our
design is nothing terribly new, other than being a new or
innovative combination of some existing concepts in justice,
one of which is restorative justice. That is a coming concept
that says that, instead of dealing with the State and the
offender in a crime, we need to deal with not only the
offender, but the victim of the community. And only if we
satisfactorily deal with all three of those parties do we
effectively deal with the crime.
Also, a relatively new judicial concept is part of the
issue of problem-solving courts. Any number of the drug courts
are one of them. Other problem-solving courts would be, for
instance, I think the grand-daddy is considered the Manhattan--
midtown Manhattan court that provides services for offenders as
opposed to putting offenders in jail, letting them stay a few
days, dump them back out and start the cycle again rather than
providing treatment after assessment. And, of course, drug
courts, if you will, are all familiar with and, particularly,
that part of drug courts in which the judge plays a central
role and is actively involved with offenders throughout the
process opposed to--as opposed to just at one end.
So we put together the re-entry court, as I say, based upon
three concepts. We use the community corrections as a receiving
point from the Department of Corrections. They come into our
system, they are assessed, do a forensic evaluation. Based upon
that evaluation, we create a re-integration plan of which is
imposed by the Court, Which will include things like jobs,
places to live, counseling for necessary issues and also
provide some mentoring. In that area, our faith-based community
has been particularly effective in stepping up and taking that
role to provide positive modeling for these offenders, and it's
been quite effective. They appear before me on a regular basis,
similar to the drug court type of protocol.
We have a couple other things. I know that we're short on
time, but a couple other things I do want to mention and that
is that we have done most of what we're doing based upon a re-
allocation of resources as opposed to an application for large
Federal grants that, of course, tend to run out. And, when they
run out, then everyone has a problem. Rather, we have, in
partnership with the Department--Indiana Department of
Corrections, they have funded our program through Community
Corrections through the savings that they are receiving from
the folks that we take and, hopefully, that we save from coming
back. We are doing a thorough and intensive process impact
evaluation over a period of 2 years. That's being conducted by
Arizona State University and a Dr. Alan Brown, who has served
on a regular basis for the Justice Department in the past.
The other--the only other issue that I wanted to mention
and in your request and invitation to be here, and that was
what the Federal Government could do. One of the things that
we're finding is that there seems to be significant
impediments, either statutory or of a policy nature, that tends
to prevent our offenders, our population, from receiving
benefits to which they would appear to be entitled. That seems
to be a policy-type thing, whether it be in job placement,
whether it be in public assistance/welfare sorts of programs
and housing. There are various impediments to folks with a
felony history. Those are impediments that we need to remove in
order to provide assistance to these folks in order to
effectively and positively re-integrate these people back into
the community. And on that--it's on that issue that I would ask
your assistance.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much, and we'll have questions
after we hear all the testimony.
The next witness is Judge Frances C. Gull, the only
superior court and criminal division who's running the drug
courts. And let me say, as I'd be remiss if I didn't
acknowledge the long-term commitment of Judge Shiedberger, as
well to the drug courts. This is one of the most
enthusiastically supported programs in Congress. And we've had
our fair battles--fair share of battles here in Allen County
with drug courts, but I have stood with this from the beginning
on the House floor and here. I think expectations are on the
out-of-whack as far as how--how both Judge Surbeck's program
and your program are suddenly going to change everybody, but if
we can't make these kind of programs work, it's not clear what
can work.
I appreciate my colleagues and others who stuck with this
and your willingness to lead the court now. She was one of our
lead deputy prosecutors and then elected judge, and it's great
to have you here today to talk about the drug court. Thank you.
Judge Gull. Thank you, Congressman. I'm glad to be here.
I'd be remiss in not acknowledging that, in 1997, Judge
Shiedberger began the pilot drug court project for Allen
County. Our drug court, as most drug courts throughout the
country, target nonviolent, substance-abusing offenders in the
expectation that judicial intervention will interrupt the cycle
of addiction and crime that you've heard about--repeatedly
heard about, I might add. This is a nationwide movement and it
recognizes the importance of treatment and acknowledges that
treatment without accountability, as Mr. Curry has indicated--
or, Mr. Curie--excuse me--has indicated, is ineffective. Though
offenders are presented with the option of intensive drug
treatment in lieu of incarceration or jail or prison, it's
empowering the authority of court that is utilized to achieve
what's intended to be a high degree of accountability. These
offenders are continually monitored with judicial supervision,
mandatory drug testing, programmic case management,
surveillance and enforcement, intensive treatment and
counseling, education, important community stabilization and
employment.
As I said, our drug court treatment program began in 1997
as a pilot project. Further development was possible through a
series of funding initiatives. We've received modest
appropriations from city and county block grants, small grants
from our local Allen County Drug and Alcohol Consortium and a
major grant from the U.S. Department of Justice Drug Court
Program Office, which was impetus to get off of the pilot
project and on to a major commitment by all three of the judges
in Allen Superior Court Criminal Division to support this
program and to, again, target the nonviolent offenders.
The offenders are generally those charged with Class D
felonies for possession of a controlled substance or
paraphernalia. The offenders enter a plea of guilty and charges
are dismissed by the prosecuting attorney after successful
completion of the program. The prosecuting attorney is the gate
keeper, and I think in most drug courts across the country, the
prosecutor is the one that determines eligibility. The
prosecutor is the one who agrees to put the offenders into the
program and is it the prosecutors who make the recommendations
to the Court if offenders are continually violating treatment
programs, not showing up or testing repeatedly dirty and
basically making a tremendous lack of progress. That is the
prosecutor that moves the Court to re-docket the offense and
resume prosecution.
Our court has narrowly defined nonviolent offenders to
exclude individuals who have criminal records for sex offenses,
those who have a record of convictions for violent offenses,
those individuals who have outstanding detainer, warrants or
past parole/probation violations. It's our belief that those
offenders have indicated that they're not willing to change.
And you've heard from Mr. Curie that forced treatment can work
and it does work, but there comes a point where we have to,
with limited resources, if somebody is going to change, we can
help them along that path, but we do have limited resources,
unfortunately.
Again, the prosecutor is our gatekeeper and there is a team
approach. The prosecuting attorney reviews incarcerated
defendants pretty much immediately after they've been arrested.
The goal is to get them into the program within 72 hours. The
offender is the one that has the final say if he or she chooses
to enter into the program. It's an 18 to 36-month program with
intensive treatment, going from the traditional intensive
outpatient and inpatient treatment. We offer and require as a
part of the treatment plan that individuals be assessed to find
out what are their specific needs. We then tailor a treatment
program for their specific needs and they go through phases of
the program.
Their progress is monitored by case managers through the
drug court. They make weekly or biweekly or monthly appearances
in court to meet with the judge and to have the judge basically
pat them on the head and tell them that they're doing well or
to kick them in the rear and indicate that they're not doing
well. Those individuals that just repeatedly indicate that
they're not willing to make any kind of progress, the
prosecutor has the option and oftentimes will re-docket those
cases and resume prosecution. It's the carrot on the stick. The
carrot in the case is going to be dismissed and you're not
going to have a felony conviction. If you fail, the individual
is charged with the felony conviction. So the carrot is you
must comply with the program, be successful, become a
productive member of society, support your children, get a job,
obtain your education, get a GED; those types of things, and,
in result, you get the charges dismissed.
National statistics from American University indicate that
drug courts are expanding across the country. As of March of
this year, there were 793 drug courts operating in the United
States. These programs have enrolled 200,000 individuals in
treatment and rehabilitation instead of incarceration. The
estimated number of graduates from those programs is 74,000
with, currently, 77,000 individuals enrolled in drug courts
across the country. Our programs have, approximately, 300
participants; 131 of those participants successfully completed
the program and graduated as of December of last year. These
are successful people who broke the cycle of crime that was
committed to support the addictions and these are people that,
once again, are productive members of society.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Judge Gull follows:]
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Mr. Souder. We will next hear from Judge Bonfiglio from the
Elkhart County. Fort Wayne is basically 200,000 people with
another 100,000 in the county. Elkhart County is--Goshen is
about an hour and-a-half northwest from here. There, the
largest city is Elkhart, which is about 50,000, Goshen is maybe
30 and then lots of rural area.
So we're going to hear from some of the witnesses in the
second panel, too, about the mix out of urban and rural. So
he's got a particular challenge, also a tremendous increase in
Hispanic population, probably the most in the State of Indiana,
other that East Chicago.
It's an honor to have you here with us today and look
forward to hearing your testimony.
Judge Bonfiglio. Thank you very much. In my written
testimony, I focused on my nearly 16-year experience on the
bench hearing cases of abuse, neglect and delinquency. In
brief, I'd like--I would observe that most of the times, our
juvenile courts function like the emergency room of a hospital.
That is, a horrible accident occurs and the patient needs life-
saving and very expensive services. To prevent the accident
saves lives and enormous human and financial costs. The same is
true with the lives of children. To prevent the problem is
cost-effective and saves human suffering.
In juvenile court, most of the children who come through
the door with severe problems have been created through the--
through what's occurred to them, neglect and abuse. To prevent
delinquency, we must prevent the abuse and neglect of the
child. Secondary prevention is certainly possible if, when
children who are abused and neglected come to our attention,
they receive effective and comprehensive treatment. Every child
that acts out delinquently in the school and the community is
not a victim of abuse or neglect, but there is a very high
correlation between the two.
Other children are at risk because of the influence of
illegal drugs, criminal gangs and violence in their environment
in which they live. It's been my personal experience that 80 to
90 percent of all the cases that I heard involved alcohol and
drug abuse in some manner. The most effective tool I found in
successfully fighting the most serious of these problems is the
drug court and Judges Gull and Surbeck have given you certainly
views of the kinds of things that are going on in the re-entry
courts and the drug courts. What is different in the juvenile
court in our community is the development of the residential
program. That is, we use intensive cognitive behavioral
approaches. We actually put kids into residential treatment.
We started in 1998 and--1997, and we started in 1998 and
we've actually seen in 1999 and 2000 a slight decrease in the
number of felonies that the prosecutor filed in our juvenile
court, and I attribute that to the particular drug court
offenders that were successfully treated in that period of
time. It's only when the community as a whole perceives that it
has a joint say with the justice system that delinquency
prevention and successful intervention can be accomplished.
A majority of prevention occurs at the hands of community
organizations. The court, as well as other parts of the
criminal justice system should collaborate with community
organizations to help prevent delinquent behavior. The goal of
collaboration between the court and the community agencies is
the creation of what I would call continuing care for children
and families. In most communities, and it's in our community,
competition for finding and bringing conflicts in overlapping
programs. Over--it's important to establish a culture of
collaboration with the agency directors and staff and civic and
government leaders and the courts can influence and help create
that culture.
One of the best accomplishments we've had in our community
is the creation of a concept called Wraparound. This
intervention method works for both prevention and intervention
and it works in any age of a person, from a child to an adult.
The essential elements of the Wraparound plan are built on
family strength, forming a child and family team that includes
family, friends, church members and the necessary
professionals. In other words, the natural support system, plus
the professional that needs to be involved. If the natural
support system doesn't exist, then we help the family create
one.
To intervene early in children's lives at the first sign of
trouble is also an essential piece, but well planned programs
take into consideration the use of development--developmental
issues can be successful at any age. Our youth agencies,
including at our schools, our churches and local government,
are the proper tools to prevent delinquency. And one of the
best agencies to represent here today in our community, Kevin
Deary will be speaking to you shortly.
The ingredient that makes for successful prevention
programs, I believe, are connecting the child with another
human being, such as an adult with another person that--that
can communicate with them on a personal and human level,
providing life skills training for children, presenting and
providing parenting skills for parents, as well as providing
recreational and social activities.
Healthy Communities and Healthy Youth-Forty Development
Assets Intiative addresses these points and more. The assets
are positive building blocks that young people need to grow up
healthy-principled and caring individuals. And, in Allen
County, you have a great example in Judge Pratt, that has taken
a leadership role in helping establish developmental assets in
this community.
The juvenile and family court is an excellent place to make
the connection between children and family. When children or
their parents enter the justice system for any reason, if it be
delinquency, if it includes marriage and adoption, there should
be a short assessment to determine what their needs might be
and what community interventions could help them. A unified
family court hears all the cases involving the children and has
sufficient resources to address those needs. Establishing
mediation and dissolution marriage cases and seminars for
divorcing parents are really steps in the right direction.
I believe, to be successful as a community and as a Nation,
and controlling crime and improving all our lives, it really
comes through addressing the needs of children. I've seen the
children, and the children before me for many years, their
hearts and minds, that they had great talents and gifts, and we
tried to help them become healthy, well-functioning,
contributing members of society.
I think it's all our responsibility to do that, and it was
certainly my pleasure when I was on the juvenile court bench to
participate in that. And I thank you for the opportunity to
testify.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Judge Bonfiglio follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Judge Surbeck, if you and Sheila, to the extent
that you haven't already done so, if we can, for our hearing
record, have a detailed outline of the programs you're working
with and some of the things that you outlined. I know you have
a longer statement, but I want, because it's a--kind of an
innovative combination of projects, if you can give us some of
the materials.
Judge Surbeck. Sheila and I will meet next week and we'll
put together a packet of materials for you. I apologize for not
having that all together today for you.
Mr. Souder. Well, that--as you know, this is a very short
presentation, and the way we do this is field questions,
anyway. But the key thing is we're building a hearing book,
too, that we can refer back to and relook----
Judge Surbeck. Yes, sir.
Mr. Souder [continuing]. At in the different places that I
want to commend you on, on pursuing the concept of restorative
justice. I know that this has been a big thing with prison
fellowship and it's a big part of the healing process. And I
think it's encouraging to see that, in the justice system,
we're--we're looking toward a creative solution to that, as
well as mentoring.
Could you outline a little bit for us, because, in trying
to figure out how to make these programs work better, it's
always helpful to understand what stumbling blocks there are.
Just like in the drug court, just because there's stumbling
blocks doesn't mean the problem is within drug courts; the
thing is how can we make them more effective. And have you had
difficulty finding mentors and is it hard to match the people
up? And what is the reaction of the people who have had the
criminal act against them? Many people may be very forgiving.
Are others not?
Could you go through a little bit of some of your being at
the cutting edge of some of this type of thing in a systematic
way.
Judge Surbeck. I can't give you a good final answer on any
of those things. They are all things that we are working on and
working with. I've been very fortunate to have several pastors
who stepped up right away and were willing to create a
mentoring program. As I understand--well, not as I understand.
It is a fact that one of those pastors secured COPS grant
through the COPS program, a Federal program, and has trained
mentors. He was originally assigned to be an acquaintance sort
of thing between pastors and the police department. Apparently,
once he was done with that, his graduate pastors said, Well,
now that we've graduated, what are we going to do? So the next
thing was to move on to this mentoring project. We've launched
that in January. We're still working with it.
One of the things we wanted to be very careful about was
that mentors be safe; and, therefore, we have provided specific
additional training for mentors and we are working along in
that process. We have struggled a bit with communications. We
are not, in the criminal justice system, perhaps we're not used
to working with the lay system and the lay system is not used
to working with us, but we've worked along. As we've had
problems, everyone's been willing to put them on the table and
figure out how to deal with them. And we're working along to
get that done.
I have found that the mentoring is absolutely essential.
During the period of time that we were developing the formal
mentoring program, there was another pastor who stepped up and
said, look, there's a void here and it needs to be filled and I
know you're going to fill it formally soon, but it needs to be
filled now. And, as a result, he's been in my courtroom every
Friday morning with several members of his congregation and he
has started a family support program of his own, which has been
very effective. And those two organizations together have been
phenomenal.
Mr. Souder. You mentioned also about the impediments. One
of the problems I'd like you to elaborate on that a little bit,
when I did a controversial drug testing amendment, more on
implementation, but the substance of it relates to probably
some of the impediments that you're talking about. Because
originally--when the bill was originally drafted, if you
committed a drug crime and lost your loan, we added that if you
went through a drug--if you took a drug test--if you went
through a treatment program with drug testing, you could get it
back. And the question is how do we build in an accountability
and prevention thing? Because many of the--what I assume your
impediments are, we're saying, if this and this happens, you're
not eligible for a government grant. And we want to make sure
that there is a consequence of people's actions, yet that we
also have a forgiveness component and that can't be spiritual
in nature, even though I believe in spiritual changes change
people's lives; that is an effective representative way to do
it.
So what would be some proxies that we could use to remove
impediments? Would drug testing be part of that? Would a period
of time? Would a--that you've gone through a program and then
gone through a period of probation? Because, clearly, what
Congressman Davis and Congressman Cummings are talking about
and we all know we have these and, at the same time, the
general public wants an accountability. And how can we build in
a forgiveness--a measure of forgiveness and accountability
simultaneously?
Judge Surbeck. I cannot, at this point, provide you with
recommendations for specifics. The one thing I did note as you
were speaking, one of the suggestions that you had was
probation. The problem is my folks don't have that luxury of
the population I'm dealing with. They're coming out of the
penitentiary and they need services now. And I understand and--
and don't misunderstand I'm not being critical of the
impediments that were placed there. They were placed there for
good reason and with thoughtfulness. We are finding, however,
at this point, that is counterproductive. For a long time, we
thought that simply putting people in jail would make a
difference. We are learning that it does not. Some people need
to be put in jail for a very long time. The public needs to be
protected from them in that fashion. Most of the other folks
are going to come out sooner or later and, when they come out,
as pointed out by one of the Congressmen, I believe Congressman
Davis, that, frequently, they're coming out in worse shape than
they went in. That's not to condemn the entire prison system,
but rather to acknowledge the fact that, when they come out,
these folks are going to need services and we need to find a
way to provide those services. And we're finding that perhaps
the impediments that we thought were productive at the time
they were imposed are perhaps counterproductive, at least with
this population.
The other issue, I guess, I'm dealing with, and we've begun
working with at the State level with FSSA and have had
progresses from the Federal level from agencies involved in
this re-entry initiative that's been created as a partnership
between, I believe led by the Justice Department and including
Labor, HHS, Education and HUD. And I believe through that
focus, we need to develop some criteria for waivers of these
impediments for this population, whether it be that these folks
are involved specifically in a re-entry program; that, on that
basis, they should be waived or on some other--I'm not sure
what the criteria are yet.
Mr. Souder. And that may be sufficient. And if I could take
1 more minute here, that's a very--I mean, it's like a drug
court, basically.
Judge Surbeck. Yes.
Mr. Souder. As long as you're overseeing an individual and
there's an accountability if they violate. We've been doing a
lot of border hearings and looking at how we can both
facilitate Congress and try to catch terrorists and people
buying drugs from coming across our borders. And we've come up
with that mandate of looking at implementing and
administration's about to announce a fast pass clearance for
people who are regular users of the border, but what we've seen
is some people then take that advantage of not having the
checks to abuse it. The largest drug bust in the Montreal/New
York border was actually somebody that had been pre-cleared.
And, so, we've talked about having an extra punishment or
there needs to be an accountability. And if you abuse the
generosity of the general public and say, look. OK. We'll waive
this because you're in a program, there also has to be a tough
accountability if you abuse the generosity. Almost like you get
a second chance or a third chance or a fourth chance, there
needs to be some kind of accountability.
I look forward to working with you, because this is one of
the big challenges we have because it was one thing to lock
them up 5 or 10 years ago when we went through that wave. Now
what do we do?
Judge Surbeck. Right.
Mr. Souder. And our intentions are correct, but
implementing is difficult.
Judge Surbeck. Getting these people back in a positive way
is a goal. In the meantime, the other goal is to protect the
community and the process. And, therefore, the concerns that
you've indicated are very well placed.
Mr. Cummings. First of all, I want to thank all of you for
being here. And we all have a common desire, and that is to
address this drug problem effectively and efficiently. And I
think this has been some of the most meaningful testimony that
I've heard and I've been in Congress now for 6 years.
I wanted to go to you, Judge Surbeck. I'm going to have
some followup questions I have put in writing. We just don't
have time here today. But I think if anything comes out of
this, it's that you all get it. I mean, it's because you and
I'm not trying to be funny. You all see the life. You all see
it. I mean, a lot of people read about it in the newspaper,
they see clips of it on the six o'clock news, but you see the
tragedies that come across your--you know, I'm a lawyer. I was
a defense lawyer before I came to Congress. So you see it--you
see it every day.
And you also see that--you also seem to get that you just
don't throw away the key and throw them away, because the key--
somehow it opens--the door's going to get opened and they're
going to come back. And I was just wondering, Judge, when you--
as an active person, I've never heard of this, that you have an
agreement, whether it's formal or whatever, with the Department
of Corrections because there's some savings based on what you
do. And you know how these agencies are; they don't want to
give up a dime. They don't--everybody's got their little turf
and I know that's even how it is in Maryland. And I'm just
wondering how do you get there?
I mean, when, you know, you say to the agency, Look. You're
going to save money. And I think you almost--it seems like you
would have to actually be able to show them, you know, You're
going to save, you know, $1 million. So they say, OK. Fine.
We'll give you a hundred, thousand and that. Because I'm just
wondering how you--how do you all get there. What is--I mean,
is that done in legislation, done by the government, done by--
how does that work?
Judge Surbeck. It's worked on a real personal level. I had
for a very long time a very good relationship with officials at
the Indiana Department of Corrections. Similarly, our at
Community Corrections office, and Sheila Hudson has had an
excellent reputation--excellent relationship, No. 1, and No. 2,
a very excellent relation---or reputation in dealing with the
offenders in this county. And, as a result of those
relationships, we were able to go to them.
Community Corrections is funded by the Department of
Corrections. It's the community-based alternative section. So
they're State-funded in the first place. Between our respective
relationships with the Department of Corrections' officials, we
were able to go to them and present them with a plan to bring
offenders back through an established agency, Community
Corrections, with the supervision of an established judge, both
of whom they apparently respect. They were willing to say, That
sounds like a good idea and we'll go with you for a while.
We'll do a pilot with you.
Mr. Cummings. And, Judge Gull, how much time does that
take? I mean, when you all are supervising these--the people in
the program. Say that you see them, I think you said sometimes
once or twice a week. Seems like that would take quite a bit of
time for a judge.
Judge Gull. It does.
Mr. Cummings. OK.
Judge Gull. Uh----
Mr. Cummings. And is that a part of a docket, like in the
mornings on a Wednesday----
Judge Gull. Yes.
Mr. Cummings [continuing]. Or the mornings on a----
Judge Gull. Yes. It's Tuesday afternoon. All day Tuesday
afternoon. And it's not just the in-court meetings with the
offenders; it's the administrative things that happen behind
the scenes to ensure that the in-court process goes smoothly,
where we had to enter into agreement with treatment providers
on how many of our client they'll accept, on the different
types of treatment that they'll provide.
We realized after a couple of years that we were not giving
people financial counseling or consumer credit counseling, so
we've contracted that type of counseling out. It's--the in-
court time is the easy time. It's the out-court time that can
get a little overwhelming sometimes.
Mr. Cummings. How are you all? Do you all--are you all
assigned to these courts or do you volunteer? In other words,
does the chief judge say, You're going to do this?
Judge Gull. I am the administrative judge of the division.
Mr. Cummings. Oh. OK.
Judge Gull. And we have our A, B and C felonies, which are
our serious felonies--murder, rape and robbery--and I'm in that
division. Judge Surbeck is in the D felony division right now,
which is prostitution and theft. And Judge Shiedberger handles
the drug cases that do not end up in the drug court
intervention program. And we rotate those so that we can get a
little bit of a different caseload every year.
Judge Surbeck began the re-entry initiative and has been
doing such a splendid job with it, that I decided
administratively that he would stay with the re-entry process
and to keep it going.
Mr. Cummings. Well, he certainly looks very excited about
it.
Judge Gull. He is and he's very good at it.
Mr. Cummings. Just one other question. What percentage--I
mean, you may not have this figure--of the folks fail to do
what they're supposed to do to stay in the program?
Judge Gull. In drug court?
Mr. Cummings. Yes.
Judge Gull. About a third.
Mr. Cummings. And is there one common violation?
Judge Gull. Drug use.
Mr. Cummings. OK.
Judge Gull. Drug use or criminal activity.
Mr. Cummings. Uh-huh.
Judge Gull. We've had a couple of people that absconded,
have been AWOL for a while and they finally do get picked up,
they've been AWOL out on a binge. The biggest bulk of the
people, however, choose not to go into the drug court program.
We'll screen an individual who's been charged with possession
of marijuana, they're eligible, they meet all the criteria and
they--we believe they would be a very good risk candidate.
We're excited to be able to offer them that opportunity, and
they turn us down flat. And the reason that they turn us down
is they tell us they'd rather do the time, the program's too
hard, it's too much work. They would rather just take
punishment, go and not have to deal with me on a weekly basis
or the case managers that they report to or the treatment
providers or going to parenting classes, get a job.
I mean, it's not an easy program. The people that graduate,
we're tremendously proud of those people, because it's hard.
It's very hard.
Mr. Souder. OK. Can I ask a followup with that? When we
were in Baltimore 2 weeks ago, had a judge from the drug court,
and I asked her that question, because, in Fort Wayne, I knew
that one of our things is people turn the court down. They
don't--it's not voluntary.
Is that the difference, because we have a limited number of
spots? I mean, I understand why it's more effective if it's
voluntary, but, in their case, they didn't allow the choice.
Judge Gull. I would really rather not give people the
choice, but I don't have the staff and the resources.
Mr. Souder. It's a dollar question.
Judge Gull. Yes. It's totally financial. If I had six more
case managers, two high-risk case managers, I would capture
virtually all of the drug cases coming through. I'd also
attempt to capture people that do crimes to support their
habits. Right now, it's limited to possession. I'd like to get
the prostitute that's committing acts of prostitution to
support her habit. I'd like to get the thief who's stealing
from Walmart to pawn the stuff on the street to support his or
her habit. But, right now, I've only got three caseworkers, and
that's just not enough to handle the population of people
that's out there.
Mr. Cummings. Just one last question, Judge Surbeck. The
faith-based piece that--you know, I think when we talk about
the community trying to help, I think that's a--I think that's
a great idea. And I'm just wondering--I mean, other than the
examples you cited to us, are there other pastors or priests or
whoever coming to you, saying, you know, I think we'd like to
try to do something to help some people?
I mean, it--and I guess the thing that's just so
interesting about it and, as you were talking, I thought about
the drug addicts that I have known. And it's almost like, in
many instances, if they're still on drugs, it seems like you're
talking to a ghost of a person, because it's that you're
getting they're not always honest and all that, and it just
seems like I would assume that a church--for a church to take
that on, some of their parishioners may be saying, well, wait a
minute. I don't know whether we want to get into that. We are--
you know, we're religious and everything.
But I was just wondering, do you see the number of people
in the religious community expressing an interest in trying to
help?
Judge Surbeck. The simple answer to that is yes. I've been
really impressed as these folks step up. I have--you know, I
cited to you, too, one formal program as well as another
volunteer pastor, if you will, but every Friday morning--I run
re-entry court every Friday morning. We run it out of the
police station on Grape Street, where they've provided us some
space and built us a little courtroom and, every morning, I
have a minimum of four to six pastors who are there. And
they're there, they listen and, as they hear from the offender
or sometimes from me a problem arising, they'll step up and
say, Judge, let me talk to this fellow for just a moment, and
it's amazing how they straighten things out.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Mr. Davis.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Judge Gull, what has been the law enforcement community's
reaction to the drug court?
Judge Gull. Financially, as you might imagine, they were
kind of skeptical, but once the program was explained to them,
they've been very supportive. Our chief of police has been very
supportive, our sheriff has been very supportive of the
program.
Mr. Davis. That's good, because I know that there are some
law enforcement people who kind of bemoan the fact that the
same people that they arrested, you know, last month, they see
them on the streets or whatever. And I've heard that just in a
number of times, so I'm very pleased to hear that.
Judge Surbeck, you mentioned that, with the re-entry,
housing might--it is a problem. Do you find in many instances
where you have individuals who don't have a place to go?
Judge Surbeck. Yes, sir. There's a significant number of my
offenders who come out who are homeless. They're homeless for a
couple of different reasons. No. 1, they may have been homeless
when they committed a crime and were sentenced to the
penitentiary.
There's another large group, a group that I didn't
appreciate was going to be there. Now, Ms. Hudson from
Community Corrections and Terry Donahue from the Department of
Corrections continued to tell me as we were brainstorming
designing this thing that they're going to need housing. I kept
saying, No. They can go home. They'll go home to their family.
They come out of the prison, you know, we see all this stuff on
TV and that kind of stuff that makes us feel warm and good that
they're going to go home. A lot of families don't want them
back. They've victimized their families just as they victimized
the community and the family doesn't want them back for that
reason.
Some of them, the families, even if they're marginal about
letting them home, they will not accept them. Well, we put
everybody for the first 6 months, we put them on electric
monitoring, and they are willing--family members who are
willing to accept that clear inconvenience. There is a
significant inconvenience to electronic monitoring about use of
phones, use of computers, so on and so forth; and, therefore,
families are reluctant to have them back. So we have a large
number of homeless.
Mr. Davis. And you would agree that a place to stay is
actually a stabilizing factor in terms of trying to get people
back and reacclimated.
Judge Surbeck. Oh, absolutely. Well, I think any one of us
know. I don't know what I would do if I didn't have a place to
live, let alone, you know, have--I don't have a criminal
history. I can't think of what I'd do if I didn't have a home.
And then, when you add that to all the other problems these
folks have.
Mr. Davis. I'm going to try and make sure that I send you a
copy of the legislation that Representative Souder mentioned
earlier and that I introduced 3 weeks ago, which attempts to
get at that problem in terms of creating what we would call
living situations where individuals would, in fact--and we
actually hope that, once passed, we'd be able to build about
20,000 units over this year over a 5-year period and create
stable situations where individuals would know. And we have a
unique way we hope of doing it by using a model of low-income--
low-income housing tax credits so as not to be talking about
another program where we're talking about big grant moneys
necessarily, but getting private developers to become a part of
it.
And, so, I will make sure that I----
Judge Surbeck. I would very much appreciate that. Thank
you.
Mr. Davis [continuing]. Get you a copy. The only other
question I have is we just had our primary elections on Tuesday
and, of course, a number of new judges were, in fact, for all
practical purposes, elected, and I wish that we could send them
here for a judges training. And, so, I thank you very much for
your testimony.
Judge Surbeck. Thank you very much.
Mr. Souder. Thanks. I want to mention a couple of things.
One is that one of the things that we ran into these housing
questions is we had an innovative program down near the police
station where it basically went under because one of the
clients stole all the equipment and financially sunk the
project. And we may even want to look at some kind of--you
mentioned full housing--some kind of insurance for those of who
are willing to come into this type of program, because it's
devastating when they lose any income or their ability and
they're dealing with high-risk clients. And it--and, often,
very uncapitalized in the effort.
The other thing is is we have to address very difficult
problems of community reaction, but it has to be done. I mean,
that--in Fort Wayne, I've talked to many people who are on the
street or moving around, and we have many volunteer shelters,
but not enough and particularly in the areas where people are
moving back to. And it is a tremendous burden if we can't
figure out how to address these problems.
Also wanted to ask one last question of Judge Bonfiglio.
What--the Wraparound concept is obviously the ideal way to go.
It's also very expensive. Do you get a lot of private sector
donations? Elkhart is an incredible giving community, a very
interactive community. How much of the program you were talking
about comes from private sector versus public sector funds?
Judge Bonfiglio. When we started Wraparound, our United Way
of Elkhart County, as well as the Community Foundation helped
get it off the ground to bring in the trainers to train our
probation staff office, our family and children staff, our
court-appointed special advocates, but the real key in getting
it continuing and actually making it work on a day-to-day basis
is our community mental health center.
And, actually, many of our kids are from families that are
eligible for Medicaid. And, so, we're able to use local dollars
and Medicaid dollars to really help fund the resources of the
facilitators and the people that actually go out and meet the
families, create the family and child teams. But what we found
is that if you really were concentrating on kids and
therapeutic care and high-cost residential, because that's
where we had to begin because we had enormous deficits in our
budget for that kind of care, if you can effectively wrap
around service around a child, and it may not be their birth
family--it may be a foster home or a therapeutic foster home--
if you can take them out of that $200 or $300-a-day treatment
facility, meet their needs in a better fashion with a
Wraparound plan, that may cost you some money, but certainly
not $200 or $300 a day. So we see a real saving in our
residential care budget.
But, for the most part, the money comes from Medicaid,
rehab and our community mental health center to provide the
program. And we did have contributions from the private sector
to get it started. And one of the pieces of a Wraparound
organization is to have a contingency fund where, when you
can't go to any other source in government to get something a
family needs, you can go to a fund for small kinds of things
that a family may need to get started on the Wraparound plan,
and that's the community money from United Way and the
community foundation.
Mr. Cummings. Just wanted to thank all of you for being
here today. And I just--as I listened to your testimony, I
could not help but say to myself, you know, it's just so
important. I'm just so glad you took the time to come to be
here today. We need to hear these kinds of things. We need to
talk to people on the front lines of dealing with these kinds
of issues, and we really do appreciate you being here.
I know, as judges, you're used to asking the questions and
not having the people asking you questions and I know that, but
we do appreciate it.
The other thing that I hope is that--you all are truly the
witnesses, because you are so--you're close to the situation,
and there are a lot of people who I would imagine may not agree
with what you're saying. And I've often said that if I, an
African American, sat where you sit and said the same thing
that you're saying, some people would say, Oh. Here they go
again. And I'm serious about that. And I think that it takes
all of us--all of us, black and white, who see the problems,
because it's not a black problem, it's not a white problem.
It's--it has no borders. The drug has no borders and I think
that these are human problems, and I think that you all have
pointed that out very clearly here today. And, as I've often
said, we're all walking wounded, every single one of us. And it
comes out clearly that you're trying to rehabilitate--truly
rehabilitate some lives so that the people can go back out into
their communities and support their children and support their
communities and not be a burden on our society. And, so, as I
said, I thank you very much.
And to the others who will testify coming up,
unfortunately, I have to get back to Baltimore. I've got a 4:05
flight, but I'm sorry to miss your testimony.
And I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman, because I think this
is one of the best hearings that I've participated in, and I
really appreciate it. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much. And thanks to the second
panel and thank you for coming.
If the third panel could now come forward, Mr. Deary, the
President and Executive of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater
Goshen; Ms. Alisa Stovall, the Education Coordinator of Deer
Run Academy; the Honorable Matt Schomburg, the Wayne Township
Trustee; Mr. Mark Terrell, CEO of Lifeline Youth and Family
Services; and the Honorable Glynn Hines, who's the Fort Wayne
City Councilman.
And if you could all stand, we need to do the oath.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. I want to thank all of you for coming and
appreciate your staff. I'm looking forward to hearing your
testimony and we'll insert all the full testimony into the
record. And, as I said at the beginning, each of you, too, also
may have additional information you want to submit after you
hear the questions and we may do some followup written
questions to make sure that our--our record is comprehensive.
Mr. Deary, we'll begin with you.
STATEMENTS OF KEVIN DEARY, PRESIDENT AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,
BOYS AND GIRLS CLUB OF GREATER GOSHEN; ALISA STOVALL, EDUCATION
COORDINATOR, DEER RUN ACADEMY; MATTHEW P. SCHOMBURG, WAYNE
TOWNSHIP TRUSTEE; MARK TERRELL, CEO, LIFELINE YOUTH AND FAMILY
SERVICES, INC.; AND GLYNN HINES, FORT WAYNE CITY COUNCILMAN
Mr. Deary. It is, indeed, an honor and a pleasure to be
here to discuss what's very near and dear to my heart, and
that's the children of our country. I appreciate Congress's
concern for the welfare of our children and your interest in
hearing from a diverse set of practitioners here in northeast
Indiana.
If you hear a eastern accent, I'm originally from Boston,
Massachusetts, which may throw you off a little bit. I've been
out in Indiana for about 8 years, and it's truly a wonderful
place to work and to work with children. Most of my time has
been spent in Boston, Massachusetts and New England, and we've
had tremendous growth. We've been blessed with the boys and
girls over the last 8 years. We've gone from serving 211
children to serving over 1,500. It was a privilege to be able
to have Congressman Souder come up and take a tour of our
facility, and I wholeheartedly agree that children are
definitely our future.
It was important to us, as we began to look around at our
community and began to identify some of the turf issues that
were impacting how we outreach to the children and the fact
that we wouldn't let go of those turf issues. One of the things
that we made and we were bound and determined to do was to
outreach and break down some of those fences and invite other
services to join with Boys and Girls Clubs so we could both co-
program. So some of the programs that we have at our Boys and
Girls Club, we have a Boy Scout Troop, a Girl Scout Troop, 4-H
program, we have an alternative program for middle school
children who are academically and socially falling through the
cracks. We work actively with probation, with court services,
mental health, we have that Wraparound process that is--that
many times has meetings in our facility based on our children.
I was privileged to be able to work with the Honorable
Judge Bonfiglio and on being one of the first people to sit on
that committee to establish some of the guidelines of the
Wraparound process. It was an honor and privilege to work with
the case studies and to work with the children to be able to
see an active difference. And if you take one thing--two things
away today, Boys and Girls Clubs make a difference. Reaching
out to children of youth service agencies, reaching out to
children in a preventative force makes a difference, and that
Wraparound concept changes kids' lives.
It was important for us and to be able to continue to do
our outreach to measure the impact by seeing how many of our
children were actually graduating from high school, staying out
of gangs. Gang prevention has really taken hold, particularly
in northern Indiana. When I first came here, there was a sense
of denial that we didn't have a gang problem. Coming from the
New England area and coming from Boston and from southern New
Hampshire and being able to recognize that we, indeed, had a
gang problem and we needed to do something; we needed to put
some prevention programs in place; we needed to make sure that
we did gang prevention, as well as intervention. And the most
effective and cost-effective way to prevent children from
falling through the cracks of drug and gang prevention is to
keep them off the streets.
Time Magazine had an article several years ago--3 or 4
years ago that said, ``Do you know where your children are?
It's 4 o'clock--4 p.m.'' More and more of our families--single-
parent families are working one and two jobs, and children
after school between the hours of 3 and 9 o'clock are the most
at risk of falling through the cracks. And making sure that we
have positive alternatives for children, but most importantly
making sure that we have trained, loving, caring staff to
inspire and enable all children, particularly those from
disadvantaged circumstances, how to become responsible citizens
and leaders, which is our mission statement for Boys and Girls
Clubs.
Boys and Girls Clubs across the country, there are 2,000
clubs across the country serving 3 million children, and I'm
blessed to be able to work with just one of them. And, in
Elkhart County, our services have grown from one facility. We
now have a second club in Nappanee, Indiana, we're opening a
third one in Middlebury, Indiana and we just were blessed to be
able to continue our outreach to children. The key, though, is
one of my favorite sayings when we do prevention, ``They'll
come in if it's new. They'll come back if it's you.'' And so
many times we want to have new and innovative things that
really don't make a difference. We need to find and sustain
funding for the programs that really make a difference, the
ones that stand out and change kids' lives, and that's through
positive relationships between staff and children, and being
there day-in and day-out where the children are, looking at all
of the child, looking at all of the family. The family court
concept that Judge Bonfiglio has put forward needs to take
place. We have to look at all of the child, including their
family, their environment and how much part of that impacts the
life of a child throughout everything.
And, if I had to say there was one thing that hurts or
holds back a child, many of our children do not have hope. They
just don't have hope. They don't see a tomorrow, and drugs and
gangs and alcohol are just the symptomatic things that they use
to mask all that. They just don't think they have any value and
they think that they have no hope. That is what prevention
services should be addressing; not entertaining children, not
recreating the children, but reaching down and developing
positive relationships with kids and then giving them the life
skills that they need, making sure they understand that
education is a priority; that you need to be educated. You need
to have that to survive in life, and making sure that we
continue to have and sustain the programs that work.
So I thank you very much for the opportunity to be able to
share this, and I'm done. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Deary follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Thank you very much, too, for helping mentor
other clubs that aren't even in your jurisdiction. I know that
Rockford and Bluffton and the group over in Huntington have
come up and observed your efforts in Goshen, and it's a
tremendous example.
Mr. Deary. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Ms. Stovall.
Ms. Stovall. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you
this afternoon. It's a passion of mine to talk about young
people I work with; however, I will tell you I'm much more
comfortable with a group of adjudicated youths than I am in
your presence. So please forgive me for that.
Deer Run is an alternative education program that was
developed through the collaboration of East Allen County
Schools and the Allen County Superior Court, Family Relations
Division, specifically Juvenile Probation. And we're currently
in our 4th year of programming. The students from our
corporation--five high schools, actually--have--under
supervision of court and on formal probation, are actually
eligible for attendance at the Deer Run Academy, and both
organizations, the school and the court, need to agree on
placement before they actually enroll the student.
In the past, students that were expelled from the high
school did not have options; they were out on the street, out
in the community until the time of their expulsion was over,
but then they had options to return to schools. This program
actually fills a large gap, because what happens is these
students are automatically placed at risk once they're not
returning to school; and, two, for staying in the court system
and attached to it long-term. So, by serving as an alternative
to expulsion, we keep these students specifically attached to
school, in school and then give them an opportunity to develop
some skills that will hopefully become life skills, skills like
communicating, thinking, problem-solving, persevering, working
toward a common goal with other people; the skills for life.
Skills that will be beneficial to them when they return to a
classroom, if they return to a classroom, but, more
importantly, skills for life. And that is truly our focus.
The Deer Run program has four component pieces to it. We
have small group instruction, and the instruction is based on
core academics. English, math, science, social studies are
standard instruction. We have a Timberline Challenge Ropes
course that we utilize onsite. We also have the adventure/
outdoor education programming component. And then one of the
strongest pieces is actually working with outside community
partnerships outside of the classroom and giving students an
opportunity to go and work and learn someplace outside of the
school or the traditional idea of school and also bring back
some skills that we can generalize and use again and help them
to use again in a more productive manner.
We truly want to provide them a nontraditional means of
getting an educational experience, and what we consider to be
nontraditional, actually, is--if you're looking at research, is
best practices for how students learn and how kids learn. Small
is good. Students learning with small groups, students getting
individualized attention or small group instruction, students
that are able to have meaningful relationships with appropriate
adults, instruction that's relevant--observably relevant to
their lives, those are best practices. That's what we--that's
what we do. That's what we attempt to do with students.
I actually asked several of my students before I left
social studies class today what they would want you to know
about Deer Run and what we do and what we are. And it's always
interesting to hear their response, but this is what they said:
``You help us go from Ds and Fs to As and Bs.'' And the
questions was ``How come?''.
``Well, because you guys are here and you work with us
right now. It's smaller here. There are fewer students in my
class, and I don't feel lost. The teachers are right here to
help you, and you get to work at your own pace. You get to ask
questions and not feel stupid. You try to get us to think about
the choices we make.''
And these are words from those young people that we spend
our days with that are considered juvenile delinquents or
adjudicated youth. Their perceptions of Deer Run are our truest
measure of effectiveness, and I truly believe that when a
student transitions back from our program--typically, they stay
with us from when they enter to the end of the school year. We
followup with contacts, we work with them through their next
year away from Deer Run, supporting them. Of the 95 students
that have come through the Deer Run program, at this time, 81
students have either completed their course of instruction and
graduated or they've returned to some type of educational
program and remain there. That's encouraging.
I have a colleague that sent me a quote that I wanted to
share with you today. It comes from a book called Inviting
School Success, and it says, ``People in environments are never
neutral. They either summon or shun the development of human
potential.'' And our ultimate goal at Deer Run Academy is to
provide people an environment that can summon the human
potential in these students who have come from a variety of
times and places and situations. We're not the be-all, end-all
to every student; we're a part of a continuum, hopefully a much
larger continuum of options for that person that has some very
real needs, and we gratefully step forward and accept that
challenge for our piece in this.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much for your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Stovall follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Almost said Matt. The Honorable Matthew
Schomburg. Appreciate your testimony.
Judge Schomburg. Like I say, it's an honor and a privilege
to be here today to provide a voice to people that--I guess
you'd have to be a township trustee to understand--people that
typically don't have a voice that's represented, and that's the
indigent community, different things that I get invited to. In
other words, the people from this group that never have a
representative there, other than someone like a trustee, and
it's very frustrating for me, being a trustee, and you'd have
to live my life to understand that a lot of the issues that are
so important to this group of indigent people never seem to get
much in the way of publicity because those are usually the
issues communities don't like to face a lot of the time. So the
opportunity to be here to talk about the Twenty-first Century
Scholars program, a program to help get education for the
people from this group, is just really and truly a great honor.
The Wayne Township Trustee's office is the only government
office in the State of Indiana that does host--and there's 16
regional sites, and it's one of the 16 sites, and that's the
only one with a government office. We try very hard to get
support from everyone within the community and we're honored to
have our mayor, Grant Richards, be very supportive, as well as
Congressman Souder. They've both been essential projects to
support this program to help get students signed up for this
program. I have a brochure here that really sums up everything
tremendously well about the Scholars program and I'd like to
pretty well glean my testimony from this.
Post-secondary education is expensive and a major financial
burden for many Indiana families. Every student deserves the
opportunity to earn an education--a higher education. Twenty-
first Century Scholars program makes college a reality for
eligible Indiana students and their families. In 1990, Indiana
General Assembly created the Twenty-first Century Scholars
program to raise an education, the educational aspirations of
below- and moderate-income families.
Indiana, to create this program, used three sources of
funding. They use GEAR UP funding, which I thank Congressman
Souder for being so involved with, a State fund and also
Americorps fund. During the past 11 years, the Scholars program
has enrolled nearly 70,000 Indiana eighth graders. Since 1995,
more than 20,000 scholars have returned their pledges of good
citizenship, and Twenty-first Century Scholarships have been
awarded to 16,050 scholars today. That's, approximately, 80
percent of all people that enroll in this program get awarded
scholarships.
Today, thousands of scholars are enrolled in colleges and,
for 1998/1999 program year, the first scholar year in the
scholars to graduate from college, there were 450 graduates. In
2000 and 2001, there were nearly 1,700 scholars from each
college.
The Twenty-first Century Scholars program is excited and
encouraged by the accomplishments of the program and it's seen
a steady increase in enrollment over the last 2 years. In fact,
the Scholars program reached a high point in the 2000/2001
program year by enrolling 11,035 students. Seventy percent of
the State's eligible eighth graders were included in that
group, and that was an increase of more than 1,100 students
from the 1999/2000 year.
The program works by enrolling income-eligible students in
the Scholars program of who fulfill a pledge of good
citizenship. And these students are guaranteed the cost of
eight semesters of college tuition at any participating Indiana
college or university. The scholars take an actual pledge and
the pledge is that they will graduate from an Indiana high
school with a college--or, a high school diploma, will achieve
a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.0 on a four-
point scale, and they will take a pledge not to use illegal
drugs, alcohol or commit any crime, they will apply for
admission to an Indiana college or university or technical
school as a high school senior and they will apply on time for
State and Federal financial aid.
The benefit to the students and families are that the
Scholars program supports the parents and secondary schools in
preparing students to seek a higher education, offering 16
support sites statewide, and on our site is that in northeast
Indiana; special Scholars publications, which include career
and educational information specific to the scholar's year in
school; a toll free hot line to answer questions related to the
Scholars program for higher education training careers,
colleges and financial aid; the Scholars--a Scholars Web site,
www.scholars.indiana.edu, that offers information for guidance
counselors, regional support programs for both parents and
students.
All Scholars publications and the Twenty-first Century
Scholars applications are in English and in Spanish and are
available on this Web site. There's a regional newsletter,
there's monitoring support programs available at the
participating Indiana colleges and universities. And the first
year Scholars program will accept applications from eligible
seventh and eighth graders, and that just started this year. In
the past, you had to be an eighth grader to enroll and, this
year, we took seventh and eighth grade students.
To qualify for the 2001/2002 year, students must be an
Indiana resident, an applicant and a scholarship recipient to
be an Indiana--excuse me--an Indiana resident as an applicant
and a scholarship recipient in terms of our residency as a
parent/legal guardian; as a child, a US citizen or a legal
resident, be involved in seventh or eighth grade at an Indiana
school accredited through a performance-based accreditation and
meet the following guidelines: You have to be income-eligible,
and it's close to the free or reduced school lunch program,
which is for a household size between 21,479 up to a family of
six for 43,827. And once a student becomes a Scholar, an
increase in family income will not affect the student's
enrollment. They have to fulfill the Twenty-first Century
Scholars pledge.
And it's an honor to have this program. We've seen a
dramatic increase involving students and we are working very
hard at all the different agencies and groups in the community
to provide a well-rounded atmosphere for the students that
maybe don't get all
of the advantages of other people that have--that don't have
the limitations of income--an income-disadvantaged family would
have.
Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you for your testimony.
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Mr. Souder. The next witness is Mr. Mark Terrell of
Lifeline Youth and Family Services.
Mr. Terrell. Thank you very much for inviting me to speak
today. Lifeline has been fulfilling its mission of changing
hearts and bringing hope to a generation at risk since 1968. I
was actually six at that point, so I wasn't much involved with
it at that time, but, nonetheless, with the continuum care, it
really consists of three things: Prevention, intervention and
active care, and we really believe that's a special and unique
thing that we have. Not only do we work in prevention, which
our goal is to keep people out of the justice system, but,
unfortunately, we also work with the kids that actually are in
the justice system that are referred to us for probation,
welfare, the Department of Corrections, and then aftercare.
We're also following kids when they go home.
The thing that I wanted to highlight today is the fact that
we are a faith-based organization. We believe that's extremely
important in what we do, but we also believe it's important
that we aren't--we do not believe it's important that we impose
our belief system on anyone; however, the people that work for
us and the things that we do are based on biblical principles.
We think that's extremely important.
One of the--a program that I'd like to highlight today,
because we have a lot of different programs, but probably the
one that is probably the most near and dear to my heart really
centers on things that have happened in the last 4 or 5 years,
the carnage that we've seen in our public schools. Not only
teachers and students have been killed, but the things in
Paducah, Kentucky, the things that have happened in Columbine.
Those have touched all of us. They've not touched just the
inner city. In fact, they've touched urban America, suburban
America and it's an incredible thing. What's happened, though,
is that most of those cases that I've read is that they--the
solutions have been How many metal detectors do we put in? What
kinds of additional staff or security do we add? The other
thing is what dress code do we put on? Are you allowed to wear
a hat? Are you allowed to wear a backpack?
Those things are important and I don't want to undermine
those things, but we really believe the critical issue comes
down to what is going on in the minds of the youth today. The
definition of insanity says to do the same thing again and
again and again and expect a different result. We talk about
something even simpler than that; that is nothing changes,
nothing changes. And we really believe that, and the a
combination of working with the things that we've done in
intervention in our group homes have really spurned a lot of
the things that we're doing in the school system. We started a
program called the Center for Responsible Thinking in our group
homes, working with those that are from the Department of
Corrections and probation. It's been very, very successful and
it's out of materials that were developed by a gentleman named
Samuel Yochelson who really thought about and did research with
adult offenders. And his philosophy was that typical adult
offenders or adult criminals have one, two or more thinking
errors. And his belief was if we can help them recognize their
thinking errors, we have an opportunity to change their
behavior. We've adapted that material over the last 10 years
and it's been exciting, but we--what we really--the purpose was
to do things in our group home and expand it from there.
Right now, we have--in the last 5 years, have been asked to
work in middle schools and high schools working with the most
challenging students that they have. It's very typical for us
to go into a school and they say, here are our 20 worst kids.
Go work with them. I'm not sure I'd want to be the facilitator
in that class, but, nonetheless, it's been extremely exciting
to see the results and the outcomes. What happens after that is
that the schools came to us and said, can you work with our
parents? What we're seeing is that kids will learn this,
they'll go home, but the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
So we've developed a program that works with the parents of
these students. The next thing that came out of that is, can
you work with our young kids, and when we say, Young kids?
Yeah. With our 5-year-olds and our 6-year-olds that are 5 and
6-year-olds in our elementary schools. So we developed a
program to work with them. And last year, we worked with a
young--a child who was 5 years old who was in the school system
already and had 60 referrals by the middle of the year. That's
one of the things that we're doing.
The other thing that we do is we're also working with--we
have an office in Gary, where we're actually taking this
material and working with the providers to help welfare
recipients not only to get a job, but to keep jobs and be
responsible. We think that the program that we have, Center for
Responsible Thinking, is a phenomenal thing that combines the
best of education, but also changes the minds and the behavior
of students. Samuel had what I call an outstanding comment, and
he said, that ``Unless we change the thinking of criminals, we
simply produce more educated criminals.'' And, to me, that's an
extremely part--important part of education and we're excited
about the collaboration we have with the public school systems
all over the State. We're in 10 counties now and have been
asked to go beyond that.
The question was how should the Federal Government
encourage and promote effective grassroots programs, and my
statement, which is in the material that was provided--and I'll
just read this--is, ``Being a faith-based organization
shouldn't necessarily determine my inclusion or being included
in Federal programs, or my exclusion. My ability to provide
services of excellence with quantifiable outcomes should be my
basis for inclusion or, in some cases, my exclusion from being
a part of the solution.''
My philosophy is that we are producing results, which I
know that we are, and we want to be a part of the solution. If
we're not, take us out of the process. We--one of our core
values of Lifeline is to strive for excellence in everything
and mediocrity in nothing, and that is what we try to bring to
the table every day.
And we're excited that we could come here today and
testify. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Terrell follows:]
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Mr. Souder. And our last witness for the day. Everybody
voted and, so, nobody wanted to follow Congressman Hines. He is
our clean-up batter for today, has been a leader in Stop the
Madness for much of the time and is developing the southeast
neighborhood. It's a very creative faith-based initiative in
government projects and trying to rehab arguably the toughest
area. Two of our three lowest income census tracks in Indiana
are in the central and southeast areas.
And appreciate your leadership and look forward to your
testimony.
Mr. Hines. Thank you for inviting me and, before Honorable
Elijah Cummings left, I wanted to congratulate him and Maryland
for making it to his sweet 16, as well as Honorable Danny Davis
of Illinois making the sweet 16 and obviously Indiana beating
Duke last night made us very proud to be here this afternoon.
But, not having said that, on behalf of the Board of Directors
and the many youth/adults served by Stop the Madness, Inc. Here
in Fort Wayne, it's my distinct pleasure as a city father to
welcome you to our fair city. We are extremely pleased to
have--that you have taken the time to come and solicit input
from the grassroots organizations, such as Stop the Madness,
Inc. And the many others.
Stop the Madness was established in 1992 as a faith-based
organization By Pastor Ternae T. Jordan, the senior pastor of
the Greater Progressive Baptist Church, after his son, TJ, was
shot in the head by a stray bullet while innocently sitting in
the YMCA after taking piano lessons. TJ lived and graduated
from Ball State University last year with a degree in music and
that bullet still lodged in his head.
Pastor Jordan became totally committed to stopping the
needless madness of young people being shot and some even
murdered due to senseless acts of violence. The mission
statement for Stop the Madness is: ``To reduce the madness of
violent behavior for at-risk youth through the development of
programs designed to create discipline, self-awareness and
personal empowerment.''
We have four programs currently that are positively
impacting the lives of our youth and targeted adult
populations.
First of all, there's the PACE program, Parents and
Children Excelling. It's geared toward at-risk elementary and
secondary school-aged kids. We started off with secondary first
and we found out, as you did, that, actually, the problem is
starting at a much earlier age, and we've expanded it to the
high schools now. But the mentoring program that we use is Dr.
Harold Davis's book, ``Talks My Father Never Had With Me'',
which is a guide for selected mentors working with school-aged,
at-risk male youth. Then his wife wrote a book called ``Talks
My Mother Never Had With Me'', Dr. Ollie Watts Davis, which is
a guide for mentors working with school-aged, at-risk female
youth.
This is the 6th year of the male initiative and the 2nd
year for the female initiative. And, with the cooperation of
the local public school systems, we were able to establish in-
school mentoring programming that seeks personal empowerment as
an option to expulsion and suspension. Our mentors are our paid
staff and faith-based volunteers, who utilize the lunch hour or
after-school time to have open discussions, allowing for youth
perspectives. Parents are involved with a number of items,
including field trips, academic monitoring and support and
child--parent/child relationship seminars.
The success of the program is measured by the amount of
parental involvement with the child's curriculum--curricular
and extra-curricular activities, the decrease in school
disciplinary action and the student's academic progress.
Our recommendation to you is to contact Mr. Harold Davis--I
called him and told him I'd make the plug for him--at 217-356-
6239, because he has a structured mentoring program, which
utilizes both the books of his wife and himself, and it works
if properly followed. That program is funded by local
foundation and corporate grants.
Then we have a Fathers and Families Initiative, which is
primarily an outcome based on having fathers being more
involved with the child. We want to improve their parenting
skills, the co-parenting skills, and we have set up a number of
workshops and seminars that are convenient for the father and
the child for training on relevant topics. The fathers are
brought into the program with the assistance of the court
system through your--youth sports activities and church
outreach ministries. This program helps with crime prevention
by having fathers involved in the lives of their child at an
early age before the gang becomes the father figure in their
lives. We measure our success by increased number of quality
contacts by the father with his child on a weekly basis. Also,
we tally the planned functions, workshops and seminars attended
by both parents. This program is funded by the State of Indiana
grant.
And then, finally, the last two programs is the Value-Based
Initative, which is funded by the COPS program, and we have two
components to the Value-Based Initiative. One is the Value-
Based Intiative Academy, which is a 12-week classroom setting
held at the police station that has targeted adult, ministers
and community leaders, and the goal is to improve police and
community relations. We have, to date, had three academies with
120 enrollees. And for 12 Monday nights from 6:30 to 9 p.m.,
the community leaders are allowed to meet with the police
department and discuss and share perspectives relating to
either police work or community concerns. And there's a pre-
measurement--or, the measurement is that there's a pre- and a
post-survey related to the perceptions of policing policies.
And, finally, we had mentioned earlier by Judge Surbeck the
Value-Based Mentoring program where graduates of the academy
have stepped to the plate and said, We want to do more. So we
have ministers and lay people who are now volunteering on the--
with the courts with the re-entry courts to come and sit and
talk and work with the re---returning offenders. And we
currently have 40 men and women who are volunteering to work
with those returning offenders. And that program, as I said
earlier, is funded by the COPS program and we're seeing success
at least in increasing
the relationship between the re-entry individual and the
community.
And, with that, I thank you for inviting me to be here
today.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Hines follows:]
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Mr. Davis. Sure. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Let me just thank each one of you for your testimony. As a
matter of fact, much of what you have experienced mirrors my
own experiences, especially working with young people. My
parents always told me that an ounce of prevention was worth
much more than a pound of cure, and it seems to me that's
exactly the modalities that all of you are using, which also, I
suspect, contributes to the fact that the problems you
experience are not nearly as mammoth as those that people who
live in areas where I live experience. I'm saying the numbers
are very different and you've obviously had more success.
I have a cousin who is a member of your group, Doja Alan,
who's the dean, I think. He's been around that long.
Mr. Deary. One of my mentors.
Mr. Davis. Well, I discovered that Doja and I were cousins
about 5 years ago and it's been a wonderful experience. I met
him at a family reunion and we both wanted to know why we were
there, and it turned out that members of our families were
connected, and we've just had a great relationship since then.
The question that I've asked in each instance, what can the
Federal Government do? I mean, you're obviously already doing
things and you're doing them successfully to a real degree.
What is it that we can do as the Federal Government that would
make what you do more effective or more successful?
Mr. Hines. I'll start, because you said something about
legislation that you're proposing for housing, and one of the
things that excited me in hearing that you're taking a lead--
And I've watched you numerous times on C-Span. I appreciate the
leadership that you have in the house--is that, locally, as a
city councilman, we're in a different act. We're looking at
legislation for tax credits as relates to the businesses who
will want to higher individuals who have previous records.
And then, second, we're looking at the housing issue, and
that is how can we provide tax credits for in-field housing. As
Congressman Souder has said, and my disagree, we have a lot of
low income and we have a lot of vacant lots and we want to take
and put in-field housing as an inducement in order to get
living standards up, as well as places for some of these
returning offenders. And I appreciate whatever you're doing to
continue and to--if we need letters from us, we would love to
get a letter-writing support going, because we need whatever
legislation can come to the communities that will support
additional housing.
Mr. Davis. A man after my own heart. Because--and
oftentimes, people think that when you propose things, you're
just kind of looking, but they're actually born out of
experiences. And one of the experiences we're always looking at
is the question of resources and whether or not the resources
can be made available. So, yeah, we think this is sort of a
creative way of doing it so as to not scare anybody off and
don't get the thinking that, you know, we're going to break the
bank.
But, also, we know that, unless we can help people to
become productive, then they're costing us. For example, we
spend far more money in Illinois to incarcerate people than we
do to educate them. It costs us around $30,000 to keep a person
in prison for a year. We could send them to the University of
Illinois for 10,000 or less, and that would make a great deal
of difference. They may never win the sweet 16, but they do
some other things.
Mr. Deary. When I heard your question, Congressman Davis,
the first thing I thought of was what I would say accomplish--
was to accomplish when I was listening to a gentleman who was
running a program at the University of Dallas--Fort Worth/
Dallas, Texas, and they wanted to do a gang prevention program.
And what they did is decided that they would partner with the
Boys and Girls Club, and the Boys and Girls Club traditionally
went from 3 to 9 p.m. at night. These are kids who
traditionally are not bad. Some of them are and some aren't,
but most aren't, particularly addressing prevention, although
they were very young, just on the fences of maybe falling into
a gap.
And there was a tremendous amount of Federal money put in
place to offer intervention programs at that same facility, and
they decided to bring the gang--active gang members in at 9:30,
because they ran programs from 9:30 to midnight. There was a
tremendous amount of money put in place from 9:30 to midnight.
Well, sure enough, the kids quit the Boys and Girls Club and
joined the gangs, because there was more stuff to do at 9:30
then there was to do between 3 and 9, because they didn't have
arts and crafts supplies, they didn't have enough staff on
place, they didn't have enough to do recreationally and they
couldn't afford the staffing. And I think, if there was
anything, I think we all learned a valuable lesson from that
said there is much to be said with your grandmother's initial
pound of prevention--or cure. An ounce of prevention is much
worth it. And they had to make some changes there and put that
money back into being the gatekeepers of fences and keeping
kids away from the gangs and still providing resources to get
kids out of the gangs and change their lives around and get the
prevention that the schools and they needed.
Mr. Davis. Let me ask one last question, if I could, Mr.
Chairman.
How do we convince people that this type of intervention--
I'm saying it's always been amazing to me during the time that
I've been involved in the public office and public life the
difficulty of convincing the general public that, if we make
certain kinds of investments up front, that we get all of this
return on the other end. And that is far more cost-effective to
help shape and create during the early stages of one's life
than to be able to intervene successfully at the later stages.
And, yet, we seem to have serious difficulty.
I mean, I see so many instances, for example, where the
faith-based organization just got a little money. They wouldn't
need as much, because there's some other things that work there
in terms of people being driven by a certain sense of mission
and will, in fact, do things without as much resource, but they
need enough to coordinate and facilitate and keep things
moving.
How can we convince the public more effectively?
Mr. Terrell. I come from the business--a business
background before I joined the not-for-profit ranks, so I take
a little different perspective. I come with a business
perspective and I think it's very, very important that we think
like business people and communicate to them in business terms.
And, so often--I was with a couple of businessmen the other
day. They said, thank you very much for talking in our terms.
And, so often, we--I think, in social services, we talk in a
whole different language. I think, from the political
standpoint, we talk with a different language. I think it's
very important that, as I have been in the social services,
when I've seen again the cost that it is for me to have a kid
in one of my group homes, it's very, very expensive. It's an
expensive program that's $240 a day. Extremely expensive. And I
see what it would cost for us to do it the other way, and we
need to somehow literally put it in a fashion for business
people to see the value. I mean, because I'll be honest. Before
I came, I didn't see the value. I thought, It's another
program, another handout, and you know what? My tax dollars are
already paying for it, and I'm not going to help.
My challenges that I have been trying to do for my agency
is communicating to them what the value is to them personally
and for them as a community. So that's a suggestion.
Mr. Davis. Oh. Thank you.
Mr. Hines. I, too, came from the business background with
banking and 20 years with Xerox Corp. marketing and sales. And,
so, I appreciate that view, but also from the faith-based
initiative, which is what we're doing, with the Value-Based
Initiative, we had to get ministers who were saying, We didn't
want those people back in our community for the re-entry. We
don't want those people. We had to get them in the Value-Based
Academy and walk through what the reality is; that these people
came from your community and they're going to return to your
community. You have a responsibility.
So I think there's multi-level initiatives that we need to
look at from a business perspective from the traditional social
services making that paradigm shift to where now it's outcome-
based and being accountable and having measurements. I mean,
also to the faith-based, where we have, quite frankly,
ministers step up to the plate and say that their congregation
has to be more responsible. And what we're finding with the
faith-based people with the value is that those volunteers that
Judge Surbeck had a little difficulty--he was sworn to
testimony, but he had difficulty explaining, because the courts
are having problems relinquishing control and the ministers are
having problems relinquishing control. So they're trying to
work through that, but everyone agrees that we need to come
together for commonality, so there's more discussion and
communication the more that we do of that in our respective
entities.
One last comment. I promote the Twenty-first Century
program, so I think the other thing that we need to also be
concerned with, those of us that are in the field, is we can't
have that tunnel vision and only look out for my program. If,
in fact, the Boys and Girls Club is an option that's best for
the youth, we've got to refer to those agencies and we've got
to communicate with one another what's being provided--what
services, so that we can again broaden the base of support that
our young people need.
Mr. Davis. If I could just--Ms. Stovall, I'm sure that Deer
Run is fairly expensive, but it's a mandated program, right, by
the courts?
Ms. Stovall. Yes.
Mr. Davis. And that the individuals are sent to--in
transition, back to another place once they're ready.
Ms. Stovall. Yes. That's correct.
Mr. Davis. Part of the overall community.
Ms. Stovall. Well, it--it's kind of two-fold. In one way,
the option is that we don't have kids on the street with time
on their hands doing nothing, and it's very practical to say,
You know, we've got these students in school. These kids are in
school. They're attached to a program. They're being monitored.
They're learning skills to hopefully help change behavior, and
that's a strong piece.
The other side is the cost of incarcerating a young person,
as you were saying. You know, they could be in detention for a
year for, you know, $35,000 a year or they can be in school,
where your tax dollars are already providing the teachers'
salaries and probation officers', you know, salaries, and
that's a better return on the investment and it's longer-term.
Mr. Davis. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. This has been
most rewarding and enlightening for me. I thank you so much.
Mr. Souder. Thanks. And I want to reiterate to each of the
witnesses. I want to make sure that our hearing book has not
only what you talked about today about the diversity of
services from Lifeline and if you have more from Deer Run and
some of the other things that you do in each of your
organizations. Part of the goal is to have increased awareness
of the holistic approach to these different things and that
what I'd like to just say here is we've got to figure out how
we can promote these in our community. And I want to get this
on the record so we can use this in our congressional work in
Washington, as well, and, hopefully, we can see this in other
areas.
To give you a little bit of an idea why we did the mix here
that we did today, that's what's been apparent to me for a long
time is that, yes, you need to protect citizens by locking up
people who are endangering their lives, but that's a short-term
solution. And the question is how do we do the interaction
thing and provide what Mr. Deary referred to as hope? Well,
part of that's the scholarship. We say, Look. You try to keep
it straight. You have a hope here, because many kids simply do
not believe, by the time they get to junior high, particularly
lower income and minorities, that they're going to have a
chance. And what we're saying is, we'll give you a chance, but
here's your responsibility.
And we have to--but we have to follow it up, and that's why
I chose, along with a couple of other Republicans, to back the
bill on GEAR UP to publicize this. And it was not a pleasant
battle in the Education Committee, but, with different people
like Mr. Davis, Mr. Cummings, Mr. Ford, Mr. Meades and Mr.
LaTourette, we've been able to work together on a number of
these type of initiatives, because they aren't partisan anymore
than they are the city's. That--that's what we know in Fort
Wayne, is is that--and Reverend George and others have been
leading the effort--is it's not just a matter of, OK. We put
the police station in there. Now, you need to gain control of
the crime. You need to do neighborhood policing. You need to
get control of the crack houses, but rather, hey, what new
homes need to be built? Where is the housing going to come
from? How are we going to do the transition?
Working on this campaign, we know if the tax rates go too
high, nobody can afford to live there. We need to have a
holistic concept as much as possible in approaching this.
That--that's one of the--and there are inner-reactions in the
Federal dollars in many of these different programs. Lifeline
was part of one of the earliest of the community block grants.
Our subcommittee not only does oversight, but we also provide
the drug intervention in the community and the drug initiative,
where Judge Kramer was alluded to earlier today. He's been
active up in Noble County, but Allen County was the second
group and Lifeline was a part of those communities' anti-drug
efforts and there's amazing little footnotes in some of what's
happening in our judicial system here in Allen County that
Judge Simms, Judge Pratt, Judge Schiedberger and I were all
introduced to within a 2-year period. And the three of us are
Republicans. Judge Pratt, Judge Simms and I were all very
active conservative Republicans. Judge Simms has been the
leader in the creation of Deer Run Academy. Judge Pratt is the
character-building of it that was referred to here today with
some of the Elkhart programs. Judge Schiedberger was my vice
Presidential candidate as a Democrat when I was running as a
Republican, and we ran a team together out of IPFW.
This isn't a partisan question. The question is what we're
dealing with here, kids and families. We have to try to work
together to try to address it and we need to look at it
holistically, and part of that is in the education system for
those higher-risk kids, like those out of Deer Run, where
volunteers have gave the money and the land to create the area,
where you meet the kids and you have committed teachers who
give up some of their regular career tracks because they're
passionate about how to help the high-risk kids, whether it's
with the future of college or it's with the Wraparound after
school, and I think it's exciting to see that.
The question is how can we educate the general community?
And, in return, you all have to keep track of how to keep it
effective. It's very easy to kind of become soft in some of the
social areas by saying, Oh. Anytime you talk to somebody,
that's helpful. And that's one of the biggest battles we face,
I think. With Congressman Davis's question, what we are trying
to relate to you today is two-fold; one is the discouragement
among people that say, Well, drug and alcohol problems are
still great. The poor are always going to be with us. We still
have child abuse problems. We still have rape. We still have
murder. The bottom line of that, the question is how much can
you manage and how many individual kids can we reach to give
them a fighting chance? Nobody can guarantee the results, but
you all are working to give each family and kid a fighting
chance to have a different life. That's No. 1.
And, second, we have false expectations in our society that
if you said, let's do this program, life is going to change. We
have to be responsible, whether it's drug court or whether it's
a different court program or whether it's SAMHSA. It's time to
say, look, do you know that 6 percent of the people on drugs
and alcohol have some other kind of mental health problem? They
are not going to be done just like that in a 3-week program.
And then there's the kids in gangs. There's kids that have
younger brothers and sisters and none of them want to see them
join. It's something we don't want to see them get involved in
and, yet, they do, unless we can keep them from it.
So I want to thank you--each one of you, because our goal
today is to illustrate these interactions and I appreciate all
the time you took today and, most importantly, the work you're
doing. And you can tell the volunteers in your program, the
people who work for you that often go unpaid, that don't have
health care that sacrifice they're time--And even if they are
paid, they don't get the same benefits--thank them, too, on our
behalf.
Judge Schomburg. Before you close, I'd like to add one
thing. One of the pastors was talking about bringing people to
the Lord and he said, you know, for all of you that are here
today that feel like we need to be telling you get in there. We
need to have more caring people and less people that need to be
cared for, I want to share with you a moment that changed my
life.
There was a young man that was in my office. And I used to
do hiring of all the inner-city kids in Fort Wayne. And the
group of people that I typically got were the people that no
one wanted, because the jobs I hired for paid less than any
other employer paid and they were just really difficult, dirty,
nasty jobs.
And, one day, I had a young man come in my office who had a
criminal record, and I don't think I've ever come across anyone
that needed a job worse than this gentleman. And he was
probably the least prepared person I've ever seen come in for
an interview, and he broke my heart. I sat there and I looked
at this man and thought, Where is this man going to be--he was
a very young man--if someone doesn't take the time? And I told
him. I said, young man, I want you to just relax because it's
my intention to give you a job. I didn't care if I got fired by
my boss that day, because I was going to make sure this man got
the job because of how bad he needed it. And I decided to take
the time to provide what this man needed to make a transition
in his life.
He had three kids. He was ready to be locked up for lack of
support because he had no income. And, so, I helped him out. I
talked to him about the job that I had. He didn't have any kind
of a resume or anything together, and I explained to him, you
know, that I know this is going to be the last job you ever
wanted, but, if you don't mind, the one thing I'd like to do
for you is, if you don't mind, I'd like to share with you the
things you're going to need to get a better job, because I know
that this job isn't going to do for you what you need.
So I helped him put a resume together, I explained how he
could go about getting a better job, and we took the time. And
that man got a really good full-time job and ended up at the
firm that employed him because one of the people he met with
was a caregiver.
About a year ago, he looked me up and told me, You know,
the moment that you took for me made the biggest difference in
my life. He said, I'm not one of these people that has been
with the system. I'm paying my taxes, I'm supporting my kids
and doing all those things. And, you know, I just--it was that
moment when he was in my office, I wanted to find out who his
parents were and grab them and wring their necks, because I've
never seen a child in my life less prepared for life than this
man.
And I think the most important thing about all these
programs and the things that were said here today that
impressed me the most were the things that talk about the time,
and that's one of the things about the Twenty-first Century
Scholars program that has always really touched my heart, is
that people involved in our program take the time to hear
whatever it is that kids are struggling with. And that's the
thing that's needed to make the difference in these kids'
lives, because, you know, the simplest thing is if one takes
the time to take this pledge, it's whatever it is and it's the
barrier for that particular child. That's the barrier that
you're addressing. And these programs that are going to be the
most successful are the ones that give time more than anything
else.
So I just wanted to add that. I really appreciate being
here. I'm a Dodger fan today because of the White Sox.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. Thank you, Matt.
Thank you very much for all your testimony. Also wanted to
thank Amy Adair, of course, who put much of this together,
who's a Fort Wayne native and the deputy staff director of the
committee, our staff director, Chris Donesa, who's also from
Fort Wayne, Conn and Tony and all the other staff who worked
with this hearing, as well.
Thank you again, Congressman Davis, for his generosity in
coming down here to Fort Wayne and each of you, the time you
spent and we look forward to some additional materials and
followup questions.
With that, the hearing stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:50 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional information submitted for the hearing record
follows:]
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