“I was homeless living at an animalistic level,” Freeman said Tuesday during the inaugural women’s therapeutic docket program in Judge Gregory Singer’s courtroom. “If I crossed the street, you would lock your doors.”
Freeman, 43, said she was hooked on crack when she was 16 years old and went to prison four times for a total of 13 years.
“It never hit on the issues that I had,” Freeman said. “Never once. Locked me up. Tick, tick, tick, tick, when the time is done, let her out. So if I didn’t get the treatment while I was in there and nothing changed, when I got out, I went back to the same thing because that’s what I was familiar with.”
Singer, several area judges and a host of others with a stake in the new women’s therapeutic docket listened to Freeman’s story and other speakers during the ceremonial kickoff to the new court.
The new docket will begin June 24 with two alternating groups of 40 women, according to court administrator Jim Dare. Singer said women represent the fastest growing segment of the criminal offender population. Much like Montgomery County’s drug, non-support and veteran dockets, the women’s therapeutic docket seeks to use individualized programs to reduce recidivism.
Singer said that women often enter the criminal justice system for much different reasons and that the court will try to treat addiction, mental health, prostitution, sex trafficking and other women-specific issues. Nationally, 31 percent of women booked into jail and prison have serious mental health disorders and about two-thirds of all those incarcerated have drug addictions, according to Singer.
Freeman said she’s been sober for five years, two months and six days and owes much of that to graduating from Judge Paul Herbert’s Changing Actions to Change Habits, or CATCH Court, in Franklin County Municipal Court.
“Judge Singer, when I heard of the docket and the things that you wanted to do. … We need this to spread everywhere so other people and other women can have chances,” Freeman said.
The audience also heard from Heidi F. Riggs of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, whose daughter, Marin, became hooked on heroin, entered the criminal justice system and ultimately died of an overdose in 2012.
“When Judge Singer called and asked me (to come) and he told me the name of the court, I was very emotional,” Riggs said, fighting back tears. “I thought maybe if there had been a court like that for my daughter, she’d still be here.”
Judge Jeffrey Froelich of Ohio’s Second District Court of Appeals was instrumental in starting the county’s drug court in 1995. “Any attempt we can make to address individuals — because that’s what it’s all about — and protect the community, is a giant step… . It certainly should be going to other counties. It needs to continue to grow.”
Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck Jr. said his office supports specialty courts and that the prisons should have room for violent offenders and not those who can be rehabilitated from lesser crimes. “Different offenders have different dynamics. And it takes different ways of treating because you’re not sending everybody to the penitentiary. You have to be selective.”
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