Little Rock 1 of 10 with sobriety court; with 6 participants, program aids hard-core DWI offenders

For the past seven months, Wardell Robinson Jr. has become a regular at the Pulaski County District Court. Two or three times a week he goes in, high-fiving security guards on his way to Judge Wayne Gruber's chambers.

Robinson is one of the first batch of participants to enter into Gruber's sobriety court, a yearlong intensive treatment program for certain people charged with driving while intoxicated who opt into the program in lieu of jail time, heavy fines and community service hours.

Last summer, after a few drinks, Robinson was on his way home when he got into a collision while driving the wrong way on a one-way road. He was arrested that night for his second DWI in as many years.

When he met with Gruber for the first time, he was offered an ultimatum: seven days in jail, community service hours, and more than $1,000 in fines and court costs, or a slot in Gruber's month-old sobriety court program.

Choosing the latter, he is one of six people who now participate in the program.

"I have kids, and I didn't want to jeopardize my time with my kids on the weekends," Robinson, a 42 year-old father of three, said of why he chose sobriety court.

[EMAIL UPDATES: Get free breaking news alerts, daily newsletters with top headlines delivered to your inbox]

Now, he takes drug tests and blows into a breathalyzer twice a week, attends informal "review hearings" every other week, attends regular treatment sessions through the Recovery Centers of Arkansas and -- for the first three months of the program -- attended daily Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Doing all that while keeping his full-time job and a having a suspended driver's license made for a stretched schedule, Robinson said, and a lot of sacrifice.

"At some point, some of these folks decide that it would be easier to do 90 days in jail than it would be to do 90 [Alcoholics Anonymous] meetings in 90 days and have to report here every week," Gruber said.

The intensity is not intended to be strictly punitive, Gruber said, but also to help defendants have a real shot at achieving sobriety and ultimately improve safety on the roads.

Following a nationwide trend, Gruber's program is the first of its kind in Little Rock and one of 10 in the state, according to data from the Administrative Office of the Courts. The programs target what the National Center for DWI Courts calls "hardcore DWI offenders."

Judge Chaney Taylor of Batesville started the first program in Arkansas in 2009. Under his court's previous model, Taylor would sentence such DWI offenders to jail, "then I wouldn't see them again," he said.

"But now we put them into our program and they stay with us for a year at least. ... We get them into treatment, we get them attending court sessions, and they have to be drug and alcohol tested regularly."

For the biweekly "review hearings," Taylor removes his robe and steps down from the bench, breaking down the authoritarian dynamic between judge and defendant. He sits down with each of his participants individually.

"Just a three minute visit, just a back-and-forth conversation -- 'How ya doing? How's your work going? How's the family? Are you making progress?' Three minutes per session can really make a difference. That's what gets these folks turned around," Taylor said. "You really get to know these people in just about every aspect of their lives."

The program also assembles a team of criminal justice representatives and addiction therapists who make collective decisions for each participant. If someone fails a drug test or misses a meeting, the team considers a consequence; if someone picks up another criminal charge, the team determines an appropriate sanction.

In 2011, after visiting and being thoroughly impressed by Taylor's operation, Judge Milas "Butch" Hale duplicated the program in Sherwood District Court.

"I look forward to this court every time I hold it. It's just wonderful seeing these people thrive, their lives change dramatically," Hale said of the Sherwood program.

Without it, Hale said, "The model would be: They get a DWI, you throw them in jail, they don't get any treatment or any programs, and as soon as they get out they start drinking again. The recidivism rate is dramatically high."

Hale estimated defendants in his program recommit a DWI offense at a rate of 20 percent versus 60 percent to 75 percent for those who could participate but instead choose jail time and fines. Of the roughly 70 defendants who have participated in his Sherwood program, 38 have graduated, 23 have voluntarily dropped out, and 8 have reoffended.

Similar programs have continued cropping up across the state: in Jonesboro, Arkadelphia, Pine Bluff, Hot Springs, Bentonville, Benton, Conway and, now, Little Rock.

Between them, more than 149 defendants participate in the program in a 12-month period, with at least 36 graduating every year, according to data collected by the state's drug court coordinator. About 17 participants a year are disqualified from the program, typically for committing serious offenses, such as another DWI or other felonies.

Costing about $16 dollars per participant per day, the program is much cheaper than the state's expenditure of $60 per inmate per day, according to figures supplied by Taylor. The state spends $1.5 million imprisoning felony DWI offenders every year.

Not all DWI offenders, however, are eligible to participate. The National Center for DWI Courts -- a national group that has written the playbook for how the more than 700 sobriety courts in the nation operate -- creates standards that target only "hardcore" offenders.

The majority of participants enter the program after receiving a second or third DWI charge. In Little Rock, Gruber also accepts first-time DWI offenders if their blood-alcohol content was 0.38 or above at the time of the offense. The legal limit is 0.08.

"We're not going to take somebody with a DWI 1 or who blew a 0.08, because it could just be a college student who just had too much to drink at a football game or somebody who doesn't have a drinking problem -- they just made one bad decision to drink and drive," Gruber said.

Moreover, figures released by the National Center for DWI Courts show 65 percent to 80 percent of people arrested for a DWI for the first time do not repeat the offense.

For most first-time offenders, a report says, "the humiliation and stigma of a criminal record, court appearances and possibly time in jail are sufficient to deter future impaired driving. Therefore, the intensive regimen of a DWI court will often be an unnecessary expenditure."

Gruber's court has a caseload of more than 500 DWIs annually, with a majority of them being first-count offenses. Only a slim minority of those defendants are invited to participate in the sobriety court program.

For the "hardcore" offenders, however, experts say it can take such a program for them to begin to recognize the seriousness of their alcohol-related problems.

Carol Baxter, executive director of Recovery Centers of Arkansas, said participants in the sobriety court program typically begin treatment in the "precontemplation stage," when they do not recognize their behavior as atypical -- either because of denial or because they hadn't previously experienced any really negative consequences from their habits.

Such was the case for Robinson.

With a steady job as an inventory manager at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Robinson's behavior hadn't yet landed him at rock bottom. A patient-assessment by the Recovery Center deemed him fit for out-patient treatment, and in those meetings he hesitated to call his behavior truly problematic.

"When I first came to the program I was thinking, 'I'm not like all those other guys.' I didn't think I was an alcoholic, I just thought I made a mistake," he said. "As I went through this program it kinda started to open my eyes and my mind. I started thinking about some past things, and then thought, 'you know, maybe I do have a problem.' It took me getting [into the program] to really realize that."

With only six participants, Gruber's Little Rock program is still in its infancy. He's hired no additional staff for the sobriety court, leaving much of the program's management to himself, his chief clerk and his case manager. He wants to build it gradually, but with his current resources he doesn't think he could manage more than 20 participants.

Any further growth would necessitate an expanded budget approved by the Pulaski County Quorum Court.

"This is exactly the kind of stuff we need to be doing," County Judge Barry Hyde said of the sobriety court.

Hyde said he hopes to see Gruber apply for funding for new staff positions during the county's next budget cycle in September.

"I've been a judge for 16 years, and nothing has been as rewarding to me as seeing these people progress in the program," Gruber said. "It's a real personal journey, not just for the participants, but for the judge and some of the team members as well."

Robinson was equally reflective.

"It doesn't just deal with alcohol, it kinda deals with a lot of things in life," he said.

A Section on 03/27/2017

Upcoming Events