An excerpt from the Guardian -
'He's trying to save lives': the ex-addict judge on the frontline of the opiate crisis
Everyone in Judge Craig Hannah’s opiate-specific court is offered a deal: complete addiction treatment and the charges against them may be reduced
By Edward Helmore
“You have to want to get help, and you have to want to help yourself,” counsels Judge Craig Hannah from his bench in Buffalo city court 11. “You can’t just keep running away from the treatment bus.”
Hannah, a pioneering jurist who oversees the nation’s first Opiate Crisis Intervention Court in northern New York, is speaking to a man who has flunked out of rehab a second time. A bed in a third facility may not be so easy to find. The addict – a “participant” in the parlance of the court – looks doubtful, and Hannah continues his pitch: “If you get on the bus, I’m going to take off my robe and come down there and shake you by the hand.
“But I also need you to hold yourself accountable,” adds Hannah, who has his own firsthand experience of drugs from earlier in his life.
Everyone who comes through the court is essentially offered a deal: complete addiction treatment, and prosecutors may look favorably at reducing the charges against them.
~~~~~~~~~~
Smith found a judge in Hannah, who knows what he’s dealing with. He is, he says, a grateful recovering addict 17 years clean from a dependence on marijuana and cocaine. It takes one to know one, and Hannah’s underlying message to participants in opiate court is of identification: “I tell them the only difference between them and me is time.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/20/opioid-crisis-america-buffalo-new-york-trump-national-emergency
No comments:
Post a Comment