New specialty court shuns punishment
Wellness Court focuses on helping people with mental health, substance abuse issues
Anew program in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court is taking a novel approach to addressing crime — helping people instead of punishing them.
The goal of Wellness Court — a collaboration between the court, Santa Fe County, prosecutors and defense attorneys — is to use care and compassion, not incarceration, to help people who have become ensnared in the criminal justice system because of substance abuse or mental health issues.
“It’s a nonpunitive program,” said Magistrate David Segura, who provides judicial guidance for the program that began in October.
Segura started specialty DWI and Drug Courts more than a decade ago to address underlying issues with defendants who repeatedly reoffended because of substance abuse issues.
But he said Wellness Court is different. “In other specialty court programs, there are sanctions oftentimes that are meant to be punitive when a defendant doesn’t meet the courts desired results,” Segura said. “In Wellness Court, because we expect an addict is going to take some time to fully evolve, there is not an emphasis on being punitive but rather an emphasis on treatment and programming.”
Segura says Wellness Court focuses on helping people whose cases haven’t gone to trial yet, hopefully sparing them from convictions that make it difficult to obtain housing and employment.
Prosecutors and defense attorneys first identify people accused of nonviolent felonies — such as shoplifting or larceny — that are driven by drug addiction or mental illness and who they think could benefit from the program.
Then a panel that includes representatives
“In Wellness Court, because we expect an addict is going to take some time to fully evolve, there is not an emphasis on being punitive but rather an emphasis on treatment and programming.” Magistrate David Segura
from the District Attorney’s Office, the Public Defender’s Office and the private defense bar meet to discuss whether the client should be accepted into the yearlong program.
Defendants who are accepted must agree to waive their speedy trial rights. In turn, the District Attorney’s Office agrees to postpone prosecuting them until they complete the program, with the goal of having them show enough progress toward rehabilitation by the end of the year that their charges can be dismissed.
If they are kicked out of the program or quit before completing it, their case proceeds through the courts like any other.
As in other court supervision programs, Wellness Court participants must attend weekly meetings with a judge and submit to random drug testing, which decreases in frequency as they move through the program.
Other requirements are tailored to each participant’s needs.
“Every person is doing an individualized program because every person has different issues that need to be addressed,” said Joan Morales, a forensic clinical social worker whose company, Equanimity Solutions, was awarded an $87,000 per year contract from Santa Fe County to help participants access the services to reclaim their lives.
“We are more out-of-the-box thinking,” she said. “It becomes their own program in a sense, not directed by an outside source.”
For example, Morales said, one client had a child who was having trouble in school, so Morales went with her to talk to school officials and help her understand and advocate for her child.
“We go in and we learn,” Morales said. “I make her do it with me. I go in with her and teach her how to do it. We become their support system.”
Another client, Morales said, had burned a lot of bridges with family and friends after his drug addiction led him to steal to support his habit.
“What was pivotal with him in his quest to get clean was his relationship with his mother,” Morales said, adding the relationship improved after the man’s mother learned he was actively participating in the program.
Marcus Lucero, who represents the public defender’s office on the panel, said a key aspect of the program is acknowledging that relapse is often part of recovery.
“We are not punishing people by sending them to jail if they relapse,” Lucero said. “We are trying to offer treatment or medication as well as making sure they are safe in the community. The goal is to get them off the streets, off of drugs and back into society.
“We’ve had some people who are up for termination for things that would have gotten them cut from Drug Court, and instead of cutting them we keep them in,” he said. “And those people have made huge strides.”
Community Services Director Rachel O’Connor said Morales is one of about 90 navigators paid by the county to help vulnerable residents — not just those with legal issues — access services ranging from food assistance to transportation.
She said the majority of the money to pay Morales comes from the DWI excise tax.
The initial contract is only for a year, O’Connor said, but it can be renewed for up to four years. If Wellness Court proves to be successful, she said, the county intends to continue funding it.
Organizers say it’s too soon to tell if the program works, but progress made by the first dozen participants is promising.
“I’ve been dreaming about something like this since I was first starting out in my career,” said Morales, who worked for the Public Defender’s Office, the First Judicial District Court and The Life Link before opening her own company in 2018 specializing in helping people who have become caught in the criminal justice system because of substance abuse or mental health issues.
“With this I feel like I’m part of a collaborative. Everybody is on board. We do this as a team, something I haven’t experienced in my career before,” she said.
District Attorney Marco Serna— who campaigned on promises to take a new approach to adjudicating case in which crimes were the result of drug addiction — is also a supporter of Wellness Court.
“This is exactly what I had in mind and I wish we could do more,” Serna said in a phone interview. “This goes well in line with what I ran on. Let’s treat people like people, and address the core issues at hand. I’m very proud of the program and the community.”
More importantly, participants of the program say it has genuinely helped them.
Entheos Bellas, a 31-year-old Santa Fean — who said he started using drugs as a teenager like many others caught up the city’s “party culture” — said he entered the program because he was arrested for stealing a vehicle after becoming addicted to methamphetamine.
He backslid once, he said, but thanks to the program’s flexible structure and the support of the panel, he has recently achieved total sobriety for the first time in years.
“Jailing addicts doesn’t change anything,” he said. “It only makes it worse. … Offering addicts another chance to rehabilitate themselves is a much more 2020 way of looking at the world.”
“I’m so grateful I got the opportunity to do this,” said a 31-year-old mother of six who says she started shoplifting to buy narcotic painkillers on the street after the doctor who prescribed them following her knee surgery cut her off.
The woman — who asked that she not be identified to protect the privacy of her children — said she enjoys meeting with Segura every week because she feels he really cares about her.
“They are really there to help you instead of judging you and putting you down and just trying to put you in jail,” she said.