By Barbara Brown

For the past several years, Chisago County judges a, attorneys and law enforcement officers have been working with federal authorities to start a drug court.

During a casual lunch meeting that included a presentation of statistics of drug and alcohol use in the county as well as a panel of students who used to use some type of drug, District Court Judge Robert Rancourt introduced the juvenile drug court.

The lunch, hosted by Community Partnership with Youth and Families, was meant to introduce the public to some of the people involved in the effort to cut youth alcohol and drug use in Chisago County and the programs that are established for them.

In 2002, Rancourt gathered a group of social services, corrections and court professionals to follow up on ideas launched during a conference the team had attended in St. Cloud.

During the fall and winter of 2002, the team worked expanding the scope of those ideas and the number of members on the committee until they included community and agency groups and subcommittees had to be formed to handle the work.

Most of the ideas the group tried to expand dealt with adolescent and juvenile substance abuse.

In 2003, the group applied for a federal grant to help implement the ideas they had developed into programs.

Two of the goals of the Innovative Judicial Interventions group were to modify existing court policies for addressing and punishing teen drug use and develop options that would be more personalized ways of dealing with individual problems.

Rancourt said one of his goals is to change the ways teens are dealt with in the court system. He said one of the best ways to keep teens from becoming adult users is to not simply throw them in jail, but try to find the issue or personal problem at the root of their drug use.

Pulling out juvenile drug and alcohol offenders and trying to address their concerns early in their usage could help them get past an addiction or prevent their use from becoming addiction.

The group that developed the juvenile drug court program wanted to focus on ways to really make an impact with punishments for first-time and repeat offenders, but also wanted to be a resource for rehabilitation, counseling and information.

Along with judges and attorneys, the court system would have a process for offenders of all ages and levels of use.

For example, some youths might be placed in treatment if they are determined to be dependent, but the people making that determination also would work with parents to get insurance companies to pay for that treatment.

Other parts of the process include expanding current programs in place for adjudicating offenders like increasing the juvenile community service work crew from one weekend a month to all weekends each month.

Groups of attorneys, health and human services workers and others involved in the project recently went to California for a two-week training session to prepare for the court to open in the county.

The court is expected to come into Chisago County this fall with the first cases expected in early October.

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