Topic: criminal courts

In many communities, the push to get the drinker or user “off the street” has turned the jail into an unwilling detox facility.

I suspect that the methodology for measuring success was far too narrow. Focused entirely on crime, they missed a host of other gains from participation in treatment.

Be sure to tell them to focus more on the positive things their loved one is doing versus what s/he has done wrong in the past.

Closure is a great aid to the process of recovery, as it allows you to shut the door to that part of your life and move forward to newer, better things.

The behavior of antisocial persons is a challenge to traditional substance abuse counseling. Offender populations are packed with antisocial clients. It helps to address these behaviors directly, beginning with the treatment plan.

A big fine, for instance, isn’t necessarily a better deterrent than a lesser one that is administered quickly and effectively.

It’s not just what you present to your client — it’s how you present it. By following a few simple rules, you get better results. It’s not a perfect system, by any means. But it should improve outcomes.

Having a judge or a parole officer holding the big stick on them may be enough to get them into treatment, but it’s usually not enough motivation to get them beyond the minimum of compliance.

If estimates are correct that a typical offender has driven under the influence between 60 and 100 times prior to first arrest, it’s clear the actual problem is far, far greater than arrests alone can document.

It seems to me that a successful approach to DWI must be based on the assumption that drunk drivers are a diverse population.