Hartwell Dowling
Coordinator of Specialty Dockets and Grants
State of Maine Judicial Branch
In his first job
just out of Boston University with a master’s degree in social work, Hartwell
Dowling, while doing both juveniles and adults clinical work in two Maine state prisons, discovered very
quickly that there was a very high rate of substance abuse.
“People
there [in prison] had drug abuse problems, and there wasn’t much help there for
them,” Dowling remembers. In a subsequent position, in a Maine family court, he
learned about the drug court model, “and it resonated with me. The outcomes
were so much superior to what I saw in the business-as-usual setting.”
Even with
those encouraging results, Dowling, who now holds the title of coordinator of
Specialty Dockets and Grants soon learned that funding for drug courts would be
hard to come by in Maine where resources for the judicial system have been
lacking.
Another
challenge has been the labor-intensive quality of drug cases, Dowling reports,
noting that judges do not always have the time needed to devote to those cases.
Compounding the problem is the small number of judges, relative to a
geographical area as large as Maine’s.
And as in
other rural states in New England, a lack of adequate transportation has posed
a challenge. “It’s hard to get people to [drug] court and to treatment,” he says.
Nonetheless,
the challenges are being met, with the result that Maine’s drug courts are
“very well researched” and the outcomes “demonstrably good,” Dowling says. The
federal mandate for medication-assisted treatment has also been of great assistance,
he adds, with “the federal government putting its money where its mouth is.”
More
recently, the openness with which opioid addiction is being discussed – by
public officials and private citizens – is, as Dowling says, “raising the
profile of the issue and putting resources into the reduction of supply and
demand.”
Still,
much work remains for leaders in the field of drug courts, including improving
the infrastructure around drug courts by way of enabling legislation. “That
would institutionalize drug courts,” Dowling says, “rather than have them be
boutique programs off in the margins.” And the continued involvement of the
drug court judges will be a boon. “Some of the judges where we have drug courts
have been very dynamic in the community,” says Dowling.
So has
Dowling, judging from his accomplishments to date.
Update:
Hartwell Dowling left his job last month for another job
in a drug court system in the southwest. This blog interview is a tribute to
Hartwell (written a few months before he left). The NEADCP Board will miss him
as will his other colleagues in New England.
