NEADCP Board interviews

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.”