Pandemic Thwarts Cook County Drug Court
At least seven people in the Rehabilitative Alternative Probation program (RAP), a specialized drug court, have died of overdoses during the coronavirus pandemic, almost half the participants in a class fail, and about 90 people have graduated since 2018.
Landwebs
The Rehabilitative Alternative Probation program (RAP), a specialized drug court that began in 1998 at the main Cook County courthouse where participants agree to plead guilty to a drug felony and are given probation and must meet stringent requirements to graduate or else go to prison, is facing an overdose spike due to the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing recidivism, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. At least seven people in the program have died of overdoses during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2014 3.8 percent of graduates were charged with new felonies within a year of finishing the program, a figure that rose to 9.6 percent within three years and to 10.4 percent after five years. However, according to the National Association of Drug Court Professionals, “Drug courts that focus their efforts on these individuals — commonly referred to as high-risk/high-need offenders — reduce crime approximately twice as much as those serving less serious offenders and return approximately 50 percent greater cost savings to their communities.”
Judge Charles Burns, who was put in charge of the program in 2010, says the aim is to address their addictions and connect them with housing and jobs and stay out of trouble. But the number of people in the RAP program is small compared with the thousands arrested in Chicago every year on felony drug charges. Almost half the participants in a class fail and about 90 people have graduated from the program since 2018. Meanwhile, when all of the tests are completed on suspected overdose cases in 2021 in Cook County, it’s expected that more than 2,000 people will have died of opioid poisoning last year, up from about 645 in 2015.
