Hartwell Dowling

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.