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Indiana chief justice says courts feeling drug crisis

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RICK CALLAHAN

Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Indiana’s drug crisis is flooding its courts with a growing number of cases and sending a surge of children into its welfare system, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Loretta Rush told a joint session of the Legislature on Wednesday.

During her second State of the Judiciary address, Rush said the court’s five members heard firsthand last year about the legal impact of drug abuse woes during visits with trial court judges in all 92 Indiana counties.

"They shared with us what became a recurring theme: the drug crisis, particularly heroin and methamphetamine, crippling their communities and flooding their courts,” she said.

Rush recalled Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Dave Kolger saying that he sees heroin cases daily in his eastern Indiana courtroom, but had handled only 20 in his previous two-decade career as a prosecutor.

Another eastern Indiana judge, Fayette County Superior Court Judge Paul Freed, had “lamented” that his county of just 23,000 residents had 30 heroin overdoses in only a month, she said.

Rush also said Indiana saw a 30 percent increase last year in children entering its welfare system - cases she said were “primarily because of parental substance abuse.”

But Rush, who became the court’s first female chief justice in 2014, also used her address to trumpet the successes of Indiana’s drug courts, which keep low-level drug offenders out of prison by taking part in court-supervised treatment programs.

She introduced to a standing ovation a southern Indiana woman, 28-year-old Lindsay Endris, who turned her life around and overcame a heroin addiction through her participation in Lawrence County’s drug court.

Rush said Indiana is bringing the same drug court model that’s “about rehabilitation, not punishment” to other parts of the state to help deal with drug abuse problems and return people to productive lives.

“We cannot afford to incarcerate or institutionalize our way out of this drug crisis. Our approach must include helping sons, daughters, husbands and wives return to a life after addiction,” she said.

 

 

 

Posted 1/14/2016

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

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