Special
Interview with
Hon.
Robert P. Ziemian,
President
NEADCP
On his impressive
resume as a longtime judge in Massachusetts, Robert Ziemian can certainly
include the job title of “drug court pioneer.”
The judge traces his involvement in the effort to create a
nationwide network of drug courts to a 1992 meeting at the Massachusetts Bar
Association headquarters in Boston where he heard an Oakland, Calif., court
official speak of his city’s experience with a drug court. Expressing interest
in knowing more, Ziemian was invited to visit the country’s first-ever drug
court in Miami.
“I got trapped,” Ziemian admits now, and his campaign to
bring drug courts to this region was under way. By 1995, Massachusetts had its
first drug court, and eight more would open in the Bay State under his
guidance.
Ziemian
credits Rhode Island Judge Jeremiah Jeremiah for making the New England
Association of Drug Court Professionals, the only regional drug court
association in the country, a reality and for fostering the cooperation among
the six states that enabled joint training sessions for drug court officials.
In
the early 2000’s, Ziemian presided
over the drug court in South Boston when the 2007 HBO award winning documentary
filmed a segment on the South Boston Drug Court. Currently, Ziemian is pleased
to see county sheriffs permitting medically assisted treatment in their houses
of correction – a policy, he says, that paved the way for drug court defendants
to benefit from that course of treatment.
Asked
what he sees as his leadership role now that drug courts have taken their place
as established and well-regarded specialty courts within judicial systems
around the country, Ziemian cites the need for state legislatures to provide
ongoing support for drug courts through funding.
Ziemian
remains convinced that the courts that were but a gleam in his eye more than 20
years ago have a long future before them. He acknowledges that other specialty
courts – those serving veterans and people with mental health issues, for
example – have yet to develop the experience-based findings that the older drug
courts have been successful in doing. “The future for drug courts is good,” he
says, “because the research is good.”
