Fulton DUI court small, yet effective

He has been sober 17 months.

"It is something you wish they would implement after the first DUI," Smith said Thursday after he and seven other men were graduated from the program.

Despite such triumphs, the voluntary program remains small because of choices by state court judges, scarce funding, offenders' unwillingness to participate and skepticism about its value.

Fulton judges decided to direct only three-time DUI offenders who volunteer to the court-run treatment program on the belief that those offenders were more likely addicts than two-time offenders, said State Court Judge Susan Forsling. She oversees the program, which currently has 33 defendants after starting with four defendants when it was established in 2007.

"Some counties make it mandatory after the second DUI," she said. "This program does not have the resources to take every person after a second DUI."

She said the program is "hampered" because it lacks funding to pay for the monitoring of participants.

County Manager Zach Williams said the county allocated $750,000 for the program when it was started in 2007, but he said he recommended the county stopped giving it any direct funds this year because it had served such a small number of defendants. He said the program kept its staff, which also has other county duties.

"When I had looked at its performance, it had maybe served 40 clients," he said. "That is not a workload."

The program also had its $45,000 state grant cut in half this year because of budget cuts, said State Court Administrator Stefani Lacour.

Forsling said the numbers show that the DUI program works to reduce drunken driving. The state, which now has 13 of the treatment programs, first funded them in 2002. A study of the first three DUI Courts started in Chatham, Hall and Clarke counties showed that participants who successfully completed the 24-month program were three times less likely to have another DUI arrest a year later than those simply sentenced to probation or jail, according to court numbers.

But prosecutors often lack the hammer to push more defendants into the program because drunken driving is almost always a misdemeanor in Georgia —- usually punished by a fine and probation, with possibly some jail time, said James "Skip" Sullivan, a lawyer who specializes in drunken-driving cases.

Many defendants have to be facing months in prison before they'll consider a program like DUI court because the program is tough-minded and they would prefer just to take the conviction, which is often pleaded down to a lesser offense, Sullivan said.

The program requires extensive monitoring, extensive participation in a treatment program and Alcoholics Anonymous, and weekly searches of defendants' homes by law officers.

The judge can also jail people who continue to test positive for alcohol or break the rules.

"The program doesn't work for everybody," Smith said. "She will jail you."