Ionia-Montcalm (Michigan) Drug Court busier than ever due to opioid crisis

The Ionia County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday voted unanimously to approve a contract with ClearWater Counseling & Wellness in Grand Rapids for Adult Drug Treatment Court, to establish a budget for the Swift & Sure program and to establish a Drug Court budget, all for the fiscal year 2018. The ClearWater contract is a requirement for one current participant of Drug Court.
Kreeger’s fellow 8th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Ronald Schafer oversees Swift & Sure, which originated with the Hawaii Opportunity Probation with Enforcement (HOPE) program. The arrangement takes a “swift and sure” approach to probation and parole and aims to keep repeat fellow offenders at the county level, instead of sending them to prison.
“Both counties have participants that have done exceptionally well in that once they’re in the program they don’t see the court anymore because they don’t have violations,” Schafer said. “They’ve gone months without violations. But then we also have the ones who do something minor and they get in trouble and they do something minor again and they have to do their time. And then we have the ones who just have absconded completely and they’re out of the program. It’s a mixture of participants, which is a snapshot of probation programs in general.”