NJ Drug Court Program: Making the Sentence Fit the Crime

As U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was unveiling policy changes this summer that would cut the amount of time a nonviolent drug offender spends in federal prison, New Jersey was readying its own initiative to fight drug crime -- an expansion of the state’s drug court program, in which drug offenders are sent into treatment rather than jail.

The two initiatives showed that while Democrats and Republicans seem to be world’s apart these days, there’s one thing on which they agree: the war on drugs has been lost.

As Gov. Chris Christie signed the drug court legislation last year, he criticized the draconian drug laws passed in the wake of the crack cocaine epidemic, saying they did nothing more than warehouse people in state prisons.

The legislation made New Jersey’s drug court program eligible to more offenders, like those who have committed second-degree burglary or robbery. The law also made drug court mandatory, for some offenders. A judge can now impose it as a sentence. Until now, it was a voluntary program; defendants had to apply to get in.

But this shift in sentiment on how to treat drug crime shows politicians, particularly Republicans, no longer feel they have to be tough to be effective, said Todd R. Clear, interim chancellor and dean, School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University in Newark.