Every week, in 11 courtrooms in Puerto Rico, what, in fairness, should happen in the rest of those precincts happens: when a person accused of a crime is brought in, we do not only look at the crime he is charged with, but the circumstances that led him to commit such acts and we work with the causes that led to it, instead of, as happens in all other courts, reducing the totality of a life and a person to the moment in which he violated a law.
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Lee este artículo en español.
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Looking at the whole person, and not just in relation to a crime, is the philosophy of the Specialized Court for Drug and Alcohol Use Disorder Cases, which the Office of Court Administration (OAT) established in 1996 and which, according to its directors, has rehabilitated close to 8,000 defendants who, after going through this process, are now good citizens.
Only persons are referred to this courtroom who, after exhaustive analysis, are understood to have committed the non-violent (this is very important, non-violent) crimes for which they were charged because of their dependence on controlled substances or alcohol. This is done on the premise that problematic use of such substances is a disease and that, therefore, the sufferer cannot be treated like any other person who violates the law.
The person is referred to treatment according to the level of his or her problem. If he complies with the treatment, complies with his court appointments, maintains contact with the social work professional in charge of his case, and commits no further crimes, the charges are dismissed at the end of the process. For many purposes, including obtaining the all-important criminal record certificate, it is as if the participant has never committed a crime.
In a society like ours, fond of the iron fist, and trigger-happy when it comes to branding people it considers “problematic,” what is happening in these specialized chambers, which exist in 11 of Puerto Rico’s 13 judicial regions, is truly extraordinary. We firmly believe that this rational, humane, holistic approach to the problem of crime is the key to ridding ourselves of this scourge that has tormented our country for so long.
The Specialized Court for Drug and Alcohol Use Disorder Cases is one of the manifestations of the concept known as restorative justice, which proposes a very different approach to the old problem of violence and, beyond mere punishment, which in itself rarely solves anything, proposes other approaches to the elusive concept of justice.
In the case of the participants in this program, there were two paths: one, to put them in prison for non-violent crimes such as burglary or illegal appropriation, with all the costly and terrible things they know happen inside prisons, only to release them shortly thereafter with worse problems than they had when they entered. Or, two, understand that without dependency there would be no crime and assist him, then, in overcoming the dependency, which, it has been proven, drastically reduces the chances of his returning to criminal activity.
The choice should not have been difficult. At the end of the day, that is what we all want, fewer people committing crimes. The Specialized Court for Drug and Alcohol Use Disorder Cases achieves this every day and, for that, deserves the applause of all of society. Ours certainly does.
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This content was translated from Spanish to English using artificial intelligence and was reviewed by an editor before being published.
