DWI Drug Court Intervention & Treatment Graduation!
December 29, 2016
This month members of the court and Mountain Star Rehabilitation Foundation will celebrate the graduation of five participants! The DWI Drug Court Intervention and Treatment Program was the first of its kind both in El Paso County and in the state of Texas. Judge Robert Anchondo started the program on November 3, 2004 and has presided over it ever since. It is a specialized problem-solving court designed to treat adults convicted of misdemeanor, felony, or Federal DWI offenses. A problem-solving court is unique in that there is an entire team of people with different areas of expertise working to help participants. In addition to the judge and his staff, there is a prosecutor from the District Attorney’s office, a defense attorney from the public defender’s, a sheriff’s deputy, an El Paso police officer, two probation officers, and various treatment providers on the team. The team works to achieve the program’s mission of enhancing public safety while reducing the recidivism of this population suffering from addiction.
These goals are achieved through a cost-effective and judicially-supervised regime of evidence-based care treatment and innovative case management. Over 400 participants have graduated from El Paso’s DWI Drug Court program in the last twelve years. Only ten percent of these graduates have committed a new alcohol-related offense. This kind of success is not entirely unique to El Paso’s DWI Drug Court program in that there are now 28 similar courts throughout Texas and more than 600 nationwide. That being said, Judge Anchondo’s DWI Drug Court program was recently selected to be one of only four DWI Academy Courts in the United States. The National Center for DWI Courts in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chooses among the hundreds of courts each year and selects a group of Academy courts. Groups from throughout the nation travel to these Academy Courts to learn how to properly implement a program or, frequently, how to improve their existing program.
El Paso’s DWI Drug Court Program is proud to be recognized and even prouder of the hundreds of participants that have been able to turn in a different direction. The court values this opportunity to help protect society while simultaneously creating more productive, law-abiding, and better El Pasoans. The court looks forward to helping more participants and, in the process, all of El Paso in the future.
These goals are achieved through a cost-effective and judicially-supervised regime of evidence-based care treatment and innovative case management. Over 400 participants have graduated from El Paso’s DWI Drug Court program in the last twelve years. Only ten percent of these graduates have committed a new alcohol-related offense. This kind of success is not entirely unique to El Paso’s DWI Drug Court program in that there are now 28 similar courts throughout Texas and more than 600 nationwide. That being said, Judge Anchondo’s DWI Drug Court program was recently selected to be one of only four DWI Academy Courts in the United States. The National Center for DWI Courts in partnership with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration chooses among the hundreds of courts each year and selects a group of Academy courts. Groups from throughout the nation travel to these Academy Courts to learn how to properly implement a program or, frequently, how to improve their existing program.
El Paso’s DWI Drug Court Program is proud to be recognized and even prouder of the hundreds of participants that have been able to turn in a different direction. The court values this opportunity to help protect society while simultaneously creating more productive, law-abiding, and better El Pasoans. The court looks forward to helping more participants and, in the process, all of El Paso in the future.
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