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This article is reprinted from NAWS Annual
Report, 1 January - 30 June 1999, pages 12 and 13. We suggest
you also look at a letter from NAWS Fellowship Services on the
same topic of attendance or court cards.
Drug Courts: A Public Information Success Story
NA World Services has been focusing its public
information efforts on national and international organizations
for quite some time, though progress has definitely been
inconsistent. A major financial downturn in the mid-eighties led
to the closure of an office we had established primarily for PI
purposes in Cliffside Park, New Jersey-just across the Hudson
River from Manhattan, where many influential agencies concerned
with drug policy are headquartered. In addition, throughout the
eighties and early nineties much of the world-level PI work
dealt with exploring how specific PI efforts could be conducted
within the bounds of our Eleventh Tradition and with developing
service material that would help local PI committees.
Looking back, we can see that it was critical for us to have
those philosophical discussions because we were soon faced with
situations that required our interaction with syndicated
columnists, the United Nations, national governments, and
correctional officials around the world. Sometimes we initiated
the contact, but just as often, we were contacted unexpectedly.
Having a clear and in-depth understanding of our Twelve
Traditions enabled us to respond promptly and with confidence to
these unexpected opportunities.
Meanwhile, some of our most effective PI efforts-those done by
the average member through a chance encounter with someone in a
position to encounter a great many practicing addicts-were
making inroads in the medical community, the judicial system,
the educational system, and so on. We could never have predicted
the results of some of those chance encounters, but we can look
back on them now. One of our favorite "results" stories came to
us through our presence in 1995 at the US Department of Justice
Forum on Volunteers in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Our
representative at the event, a former member of the World
Service Board of Trustees, was approached by US Attorney General
Janet Reno who told him about an encounter that earned her
respect for NA: Before she became the Attorney General, she had
been a state's attorney. One day, she was visited by a man she
had sent to prison. He had come to thank her for sending him to
a prison where he heard the message of Narcotics Anonymous and
subsequently found recovery. Though the anonymous man in this
story was not specifically sentenced to attend NA meetings while
in prison or as a condition of his parole, individual district
and federal court judges have been incorporating mandatory
attendance at twelve-step meetings and/or residential drug
treatment into their sentencing for decades. In most places,
addicts coming to NA because of a "nudge from the judge" have
long been an unremarkable part of the meeting landscape. Most
bring "court cards" that have spaces for the date, the group's
name, and/or location, and the leader's or secretary's initials.
Occasionally, a judge has misunderstood NA and asked a group or
an individual member to do more than this, perhaps monitor and
report on the progress of someone's recovery. In most cases, a
PI presentation or even just a reasonable explanation to the
judge sets things straight. Sadly, there have been some cases
when a member has not been able to differentiate between
cooperation, affiliation, and what constitutes NA's expression
of an opinion on an outside issue, and has therefore acted in
ways that damaged NA's reputation in the judicial, correctional,
and treatment communities.
Thankfully, these incidents have been rare, and they've been
offset by the powerful example of hundreds of thousands of
addicts getting and staying clean in NA, many of those coming to
their first meeting because the judge insisted on it.
The term "drug courts" describes what in the US (see Note 1) is
a marriage between the judicial system, the correctional system,
and drug treatment. People who have been convicted of a
drug-related offense are sent to drug court for sentencing,
which will be some combination of custody, residential or
outpatient drug treatment, and mandated attendance at twelve
step meetings (See Note 2).
Drug courts are multiplying rapidly in the US, as are similar
arrangements in many other places-Europe, South America, the
Middle East, Africa, and throughout the Asia Pacific zone. We
expect (and hope for) the impact on our fellowship to be
enormous. Our challenge is to prepare our groups to handle a
possible influx of newcomers who may have a wide variety of
specific needs. The practical matters are straightforward
enough. Do we have enough members with solid recovery willing to
serve as sponsors? Do our groups have ways of making sure
newcomers are welcomed and introduced to older members or do we
leave that to chance? Do our areas have enough meetings with
newcomer-friendly formats? Are our literature tables stocked
with Introductory Guides and relevant IPs? Is there enough
variety in our area's meetings to accommodate the needs of
different types of newcomers? (See Note 3)
The philosophical matters aren't as straightforward, but they're
every bit as important for our local NA communities to address.
Do our members understand that our traditions are for us to
follow? NA as a whole has no opinion on drug courts, but drug
courts are free to have an opinion about NA. There's nothing in
the traditions that prohibits us from cultivating good
relationships with local drug courts. We can do this by
cooperating with them: welcoming the newcomers they send us and
signing or stamping their court cards, having our PI committee
members meet with drug court professionals and providing those
professionals with material that explains our program to the
non-member.
We don't need to concern ourselves with the judiciary's motives
for sending addicts to us. We don't even need to worry about the
addicts' motives when they come to our meetings. As It Works:
How and Why so aptly says, "The group is not the jury of
desire." Many of us first came to NA to please someone else-a
family member, our employer, the court-but we ended up staying
for ourselves. Our business as a fellowship is to carry the
message, not to decide who should hear it.
For our part, as the World Board, we plan to continue attending
the annual NADCP conferences in the United States and pursuing
contacts with other national and international organizations. We
expect that other needs will arise at the group level as drug
courts impact our fellowship, and we're counting on the
fellowship to let us know what kinds of support you need from us
to help you meet those needs.
A Point of Information:
* Prior to 1996, our PI efforts consisted mostly of the
attendance at approximately four large international events on
an annual basis. With the development of our Public Relations
Statement of Purpose (see page 26 in TWGWSS), we sought to
increase the public's awareness of NA's existence. One of the
avenues we wanted to examine more closely was that of the
correctional programs. Because of this redirected focus, our
sales to the correctional market doubled over the last year.
Did You Know That:
* The first drug court was created in Miami in 1989.
* 1999 figures from the National Association of Drug Court
Professionals (NADCP) cite 345 active drug courts, with an
additional 204 planned.
* Drug courts exist for both adolescent and adult offenders.
* The impact of drug courts on our fellowship has the potential
to be greater than that of treatment centers in the eighties.
* Group opposition to drug courts violates our Tenth Tradition
as much as offering a public endorsement would.
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NOTES:
1. Parallels exist in other countries, though with differences
that addicts from the US find surprising. For instance, addicts
in "custody" in some countries may find themselves given
furlough to attend a nearby NA convention.
2. Most sentences don't specify a particular twelve-step program
and, in fact, this is often left to the discretion of the drug
treatment component.
3. For instance, a large percentage of existing drug courts are
for juvenile offenders. If all of our meetings take place in the
evening and don't end until close to or after the local curfew,
underage addicts will not be able to attend. |
