TIFTON, Ga. — Tift County’s Accountability Court is now accepting clients, according to the coordinator, Cherysh Green-Caldwell.

“We have to separate programs but the process for entry is very similar,” said Green-Caldwell.

“Someone is arrested, and for the adult felony drug court its someone with either a possession charge or they have some type of charge that is related to substance abuse, and of course for DUI and drug court its the same kind of thing.”

Anyone who is referred into the program has to acknowledge that they have a substance abuse problem, said Green-Caldwell, and has to be willing to go through treatment. “That is integral,” she said.

After they agree to the terms and review it with their attorney, it is reviewed by the prosecution to make sure they can enter the program legally.

“We don’t take anyone with distribution charges, we don’t take anyone with charges that aren’t centered around substance abuse,” she said.

After they are approved by the defense attorney or public defender and the prosecution, they are referred to Green-Caldwell, who evaluates them for level of risk and level of need to determine why they abuse different substances and commit crimes.

After they are evaluated their application to the program is sent to a committee to determine if the program is or is not appropriate for the individual.

“Sometimes it just wouldn’t work out, and sometimes it would. When we had our first staffing I went in with thirteen potentials and left with two,” she said.

The defense attorney and client are notified and then at the next court date the client is sentenced to drug court, at which point they enter treatment immediately at behavioral health.

“It is completely voluntary, so they can exit the program at any point,” Green-Caldwell said, “but its up to the judge how they want to deal with that participant is they choose not to complete the program. This program is in lieu of incarceration, so if they have an eight year prison sentence that the judge had suspended so they can enter drug court and they only complete six months, they very well may do the other seven years and six months in jail.”

The adult felony drug court is a minimum of 18 months but can take up to three years, and DUI and drug court is a minimum of 12 months but can take up to three years.

Participants have a complete clinical assessment, including seeing a psychiatrist to diagnose any mental health problems that may be the root cause of the substance abuse problems. They attend group treatments and individual treatment, submit to random drug testing, home visits by law enforcement and regular check-ins with a judge.

“This is not a cookie cutter approach,” Green-Caldwell said. “Just because one person gets one thing, that mean you will. It is based on need.”

“The purpose of this is to help them through their addiction,” she said. “We go into this understanding they will relapse.

“Relapse isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Its part of the learning process. To put in into perspective, how many times do you go on or off a diet? How hard is it to pass four McDonald’s and not stop and get that large fry? Now imagine that being some kind of drug that you’re using, and especially when you’re using to mask what’s going on on the inside.”

“Everybody is finally coming to the realization that throwing people in jail doesn’t help anyone. It doesn’t help them, it doesn’t help the finances of the state and federal government and it doesn’t help our community, it doesn’t help their families. It makes things a whole lot worse. It is far more economical and it makes more sense to get people the help they need than to punish them for something that at some point is uncontrollable.”

Eventually this will be a circuit wide program, expanding to cover Turner, Irwin and Worth Counties, but at the moment it is only covering Tift County.

Green-Caldwell hopes that the program will also eventually have a veterans court, to deal only with veterans in the area who don’t adjust well, who may have undiagnosed mental issues that manifest as destructive behavior, and a family court.

“There is definitely a need,” she said. “There are a lot of defendants that are in the jails because they have a mental illness that is undiagnosed or under-diagnosed, and incarceration makes it worse.”

Green-Caldwell said that they definitely need the support of the community both for the program itself and for the participants in the program. “Any support the community can give we will gladly take.”