How drug treatment court rescued her from the streets
Restorative justice advocates say alternative to incarceration is more effective for addicts
Most of Kathy Middleton’s interactions with police have taken place in cheap motels and crack houses.
At the height of her addiction, Middleton, 57, spent days on end scoring and smoking crack in the Kingston Rd. area of Scarborough. In the process, she racked up at least17 charges for prostitution, theft and other crimes she committed to feed her habit.
“The police did not like me at all,” says Middleton from a Starbucks, in Queen West where she now resides. It’s all the more remarkable then, when she pulls a glowing reference letter from Toronto Police Service from her pocket and smoothes it out on the table.
“It is a pleasure to work with Kathy,” it reads. “She is dedicated to educating officers and continues to give back to the program that helped her to change her life.”
They’re referring to the Toronto Drug Treatment Court. Since completing the program in 2011, Middleton has become one of its public faces, raising awareness about addiction among law enforcement and the public. A partnership between the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the Ontario Court of Justice and a number of other agencies, drug treatment court gives drug users who are non-violent offenders an alternative to incarceration. It operates on the principle of harm reduction; participants are required to honestly report their drug use and must be abstinent for a three-month period to graduate.
“Typically these clients are people who are going in and out of the system quite frequently. Part of what we try to do is break that cycle,” says Robin Cuff, manager of the drug treatment court.
But Cuff and other restorative-justice advocates fear the federal government’s mandatory-minimum sentencing laws, which call for a one-year minimum jail term for some possession offences, could keep addicts without access to drug treatment courts trapped in the criminal justice system.
The Supreme Court recently struck down mandatory-minimum sentencing laws relating to gun crimes, upholding an Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that declared them cruel and unusual.
Mandatory minimums target people with mental illness and marginalized and racialized communities, says Cuff, and jail is less likely to result in long-term sobriety.
“There are people we can divert out of that system and actually have better outcomes for society.”
Studies by the federal Department of Justice show drug treatment courts are about 14 per cent more effective in reducing or eliminating relapse than either the judiciary system or addictions treatment alone.
Even for those who don’t complete the program, around 60 per cent say their quality of life improves.
It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card, though. The process requires regular court appearances, random drug tests and addictions therapy.
“I know people who decide they don’t want to come in because they feel it’s easier just to go and serve their time,” says Justice Mary Hogan, who administers drug treatment court.
As part of the program, clients get help finding jobs and housing, which can often be a turning point, says Hogan.
“You need all of those components to deal with issues.”
Hogan says judges need to be able to use discretion when sentencing, particularly when it comes to addicts who have often experienced trauma.
“The worst place to put somebody like that is in the horrible jail cell.”
Sitting at Starbucks in a bubblegumpurple jacket with a pink scrunchy tied around her half ponytail, her neatly groomed fingernails clipped short, it’s hard to believe there was a time Middleton wouldn’t hesitate to run an 8-ball of coke for a dealer, turn a trick or steal to satiate her $300-a-day crack habit.
As a child, she says she endured regular emotional and physical abuse from a family member, who, “just didn’t like me.” She began experimenting with marijuana and acid in her teens, and moved out of the house at age 16.
She dated a series of abusive men in her 20s, giving birth to a boy and a girl, and marrying her daughter’s father. For years, she stayed clean, landing a job at TD Bank. When she split up from her husband, she started dating a man who introduced her to crack, a drug she didn’t even realize existed. “He told me it was beige hash,” she says. “I loved that drug. It made all my problems go away.” That love soured as she fell into an underworld filled with dealers, guns and hooking. “You just think, ‘I hope this time when I get my drugs I die,’ because you’re sick of living like this.”
During her first attempt at drug treatment court in 2002, Middleton says she was completely non-compliant, skipping court dates and urine tests. In the fall of 2009, she was arrested by an undercover officer for trafficking cocaine and possession of proceeds of a crime. She went to jail but decided to give the drug treatment court another chance, successfully graduating in 2011.
Middleton now shares her story at restorative justice conferences and police colleges. Riding to a speaking event in the passenger seat of Staff Sgt. Dave Rydzik’s car, she couldn’t help but think of the irony.
“She was saying ‘Isn’t this funny? Five or six years ago, I’d be riding in the back seat and here I am getting chauffeured around by the police,’ ” says Rydzik.
Amember of 42 Division, he’s spent a lot of time in the Kingston Rd. area. Middleton’s story, he says, is a reminder to have compassion when policing the streets.
“Prostitutes for us, back then, we used them as a very good source of information,” he tells the Star. But “you see them as prostitutes . . . You don’t know that’s somebody’s daughter.”
From a deterrence standpoint, he says, Middleton’s transition from a middle class life down “a very dark” path is eyeopening for both kids and adults.
“Stuff that you don’t realize you would do just becomes your everyday routine.”