Yellowstone County recovery court keeps family together
Shane Clark has a superhero, and it's his son Michael.
The 10-year-old son joined five of his siblings in watching their dad's graduation in August in a Yellowstone County courtroom. That day, Clarke finished a step in a commitment he made to himself, his kids, his wife and the court; he'd stay sober, stay employed and not torture himself with drugs.
Those standards were set while Clark was attending Family Recovery Court, one of several programs within the Yellowstone County District Court that connects those with a history of substance abuse to people ready to assist them in recovery. Without the treatment court program, Clark said, his only alternatives were prison or death.
In the spring of 2022, Clark was talking to a judge from a holding room in Yellowstone County Detention Facility, arrested after relapsing into drug use. Those charges resulted in his entering treatment court, which entailed nearly two years of working on his recovery. And it paid off. Clark spent the summer making weekly visits to Lake Elmo for barbecues with his family.
"Dad's very sigma," Michael said during Clark's graduation ceremony, using internet talk meaning his dad's cool.
The efforts of the participants and the administrators of drug courts over the past three decades have shown real results. Men and women who enter such programs throughout the country see fewer relapses and recidivism. The rub is that with programs requiring such an investment of money and energy, only a fraction of those who need them can enroll.
You can survive, and relapse
Growing up on the South Side of Billings, Shane Clark graduated from Senior High. Now 36, he got a rough start to adulthood. Friends had introduced him to meth, and by his mid-20s, he was in custody at YCDF. It was in jail where a guard told him the news that his son, Michael, had been born. The news amazed Clark, who after getting released spent the next eight years sober.
"With my son, I felt I needed to change my life," Clark told the Gazette.
During those eight years, Clark said, he didn't have time to focus on anything but his family. He met and fell in love with a woman who was also in recovery. Paige already had two kids, and the couple would have three more together over the next decade. Using again never crossed his mind in that time, Clark said, as he left custody with goals. He earned his commercial driver's license, which got him a job that paid well enough to save up for a house big enough for his family.
Despite reaching that goal, Clark left himself vulnerable to relapsing. Other than a Department of Corrections program, Clark didn't attend Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous or any professional treatment program.
"I had it in my head that I had everything figured out," he said. "I never understood the power of addiction."
Addiction is a disease, and just like cancer, you can survive it. But you can also relapse.
When he reached his goal of buying a house, Clark started meeting with old friends that led to old habits. Clark started drinking, and soon after started using meth. What shocked him about the relapse was just how quickly he once again became a regular user. Worse still, his wife Paige also relapsed.
"When I started using again," Clark said, "I'd go to bed, and I'd wake up and realize everything I'd destroyed and was destroying."
Clark's habit put him under the surveillance of law enforcement, and police walked through his home in May 2022. The conditions were described as deplorable by investigators, and police removed Clark's children from the house, and placed him in custody. He was eventually charged with criminal child endangerment.
Clark convinced himself that he was going to prison in the wake of those charges. As his case progressed, drug court coordinators explained what the program could offer. Clark figured he had nothing to lose, and if nothing else could prove to his kids that their dad could stay sober even when looking at prison time. He eventually reached a plea agreement with county prosecutors that had him avoid prison so long as he graduated from Family Recovery court.
"At my sentencing," Clark remembered, "(Judge Donald Harris) said, 'If you really want this, this program will change your life, but you have to really want it.' I took those words seriously."
New approach to criminal justice
In the era of mass incarceration, a new method of responding to defendants with addiction emerged. The first drug treatment court launched in Florida in the 1980s. Within a decade, the model of connecting select people whose offenses stemmed from chemical dependence with social services gained enough positive support that dozens were launched nationwide. The first drug treatment court for Montana was started in Missoula in 1996.
"You can certainly point to the war on drugs for the tremendous rise in the prison population," said Professor Steven Belenko with Temple University's Department of Criminal Justice. Belenko has contributed extensively to the study of the impact of substance abuse on the criminal justice system, and the efficacy of drug treatment courts.
"Without engaging them in a good treatment program, putting someone on probation or incarcerating them does very little in reducing recidivism because addiction is a chronic disease and people relapse," he said in a phone interview.
Prisoners of the war on drugs, a campaign that began in the latter half of the 20th century ostensibly in the interest of public safety, ranged from those who occasionally smoked marijuana to major traffickers of heroin. Many who filled state and federal prisons were those selling drugs in order to feed their own addictions.
Five decades into local and federal policies that prioritized long stretches of incarceration with any offense connected to drugs, the results have been bleak. In 2021, the 50th anniversary of the start of the war on drugs, University of Pennsylvania experts declared the approach a failure in terms of lives destroyed and funds squandered. From between 1975 and 2019, according to reporting from the Associated Press, the U.S. prison population went from 240,593 people to 1.43 million.
In the most recent report to the state Legislature, the Montana Judicial Branch reported there were roughly 1,600 people who participated in drug treatment courts from 2018 through 2022. Within that same 48-month period, drug court participants had a graduation rate of nearly 60%. Since taking office, Gov. Greg Gianforte has consistently set aside funds for treatment courts in his executive budgets submitted to the Legislature.
"The problem with prisons and jails is that most, even though treatment is available, most inmates don't get treatment," Belenko said. "So, they're spending time in prison, losing their jobs, losing their families sometimes. Then, coming out of prison, they're expected to all of a sudden become upstanding citizens and overcome their addiction. That's just not so likely to happen."
What makes the drug court model effective, Belenko said, is that they don't strictly address substance abuse. Programs will also implement plans centered on getting attendees employed and housed as well. In 2022, according to an estimate from the non-profit Prison Policy Initiative, more than 578,000 had a substance use disorder in the year prior to entering state and federal prisons.
Native Americans, who made up nearly 20% of the state's prison population according to the Montana Department of Correction s' report to the Legislature in 2023, constituted about a quarter of participants in the state's drug courts from 2018 through 2022. Their overrepresentation within both institutions when compared to other demographics dovetails with another consequence of the war on drugs. People of color already vulnerable to generational trauma were incarcerated at rates exponentially higher than white people, per the analysis from the Associated Press.
"Even though we have a lot of drug courts in the country: juvenile, mental health and veterans court," Belenko said, "most of the courts are kind of small, so in terms of the larger population of people arrested with drug problems, we need to do more to think about ways to link people to treatment to serve a larger chunk of the substance abusing population."
Even with all of the resources available, Belenko said, a candidate has to be ready for treatment.
The judge
Yellowstone County District Judge Jessica Fehr heads Family Recovery Court. What makes family court unique from other drug courts, she said, is that the children's wellbeing is the priority. Nobody enters Family Recovery Court without the approval of Child Protective Services. Case workers who include CPS, the court's coordinator, probation and parole officers and counselors have to act in the best interest of the children involved in each case. Because of that priority, Clark had to spend seven months in the program before he was allowed to move back in with his kids.
Judge Fehr had a blessed life growing up, she told the Gazette, but most of the parents she sees in the program did not. She said a major component to Family Treatment Court is stopping a cycle of trauma. As a district court judge since 2018, Fehr said she's presided over criminal cases for generations of families. In Family Treatment Court, she said she's often "asking parents to parent in a way that they were never parented."
A better dad
The tasks given to entrants into the program depend on what the court determines that person's needs are. On top of weekly meetings in court and drug tests to ensure his sobriety, Clark was assigned to attend marriage counseling and classes on managing his finances. He landed a truck driving job two weeks into the program.
"I needed those seven months," Clark said. "The toughest part was forgiving myself... I had so much hate for myself at the beginning."
The difference between Clark's approach to recovery now, he said, was shifting his focus from long-term goals to enjoying where he's at in life. Along with his kids attending his graduation, Clark heard from his mother-in-law that he was great dad before treatment, but now he's even better. His friends in recovery lauded him for his support in their own journeys in recovery. His wife Paige, sober and enrolled in the program as well, said she loved him and looked forward to their new life together. Judge Fehr told Clark he's the reason treatment courts exist.
"Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional," Clark said at his graduation. "I had to learn to work through the pain instead of around it."
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