OUR LONG JOURNEY TOGETHER HAS COME TO AN END

FACDL President Rick Freedman is a guest columnist today:

Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Rosinek, head of the "Drug Court" is leaving the bench. Judge Rosinek has been on the bench since 1986 and he has spent the past ten years in Drug Court as the presiding judge. His last day on the bench as the Drug Court Judge is this Friday, June 27, 2008. He will be at the graduation ceremonies in July and August, and his resignation to Governor Crist will not become official until the end of August. But, he will no longer sit on the 4th floor of the Gerstein Justice Building, and for that, it is a very sad time.

We have so much to thank Judge Rosinek for. Judge Rosinek has been fighting for those in need of substance abuse treatment for so long. It is a fight that he seldom loses. It is a struggle to get the money he needs to make his fight a successful one and he has appeared before anyone who will listen, and many who did not want to hear from him over the years. Every time the budget was cut for Drug Court, Judge Rosinek got the money from somewhere. He went to the Chief Judge, and then to the Miami-Dade County Commission, and then to the State Legislature, and finally, to Washington and the White House.

In 2003, when he had enough of the begging for drug court money, he and attorney Richard Baron formed Friends of the Drug Court, Inc. What happens to drug court graduates? Before 2003, they were on their own. Now, with the help of Friends of Drug Court, they have somewhere to turn to. Further substance abuse treatment at half-way and three-quarter way houses, educational grants, and housing assistance, are just a few of the ways that Friends steps in to help the recovering addict. Take a look at their website at
FRIENDS OF DRUG COURT

And what are the numbers? A look at the recent successes of Drug Court shows the following:

"Drug court programs have a real effect on criminal recidivism. A National Institute of Justice study compared rearrest rates for drug court graduates with those of individuals who were imprisoned for drug offenses and found significant differences. The likelihood that a drug court graduate would be rearrested and charged for a serious offense in the first year after graduation was 16.4 percent, compared to 43.5 percent for non-drug court graduates. By the two-year mark, the recidivism rate had grown to 27.5 percent, compared to 58.6 percent for non-graduates." (2005).

MIAMI'S DRUG COURT: “SAVING LIVES ONE ADDICT AT A TIME”
(Appearing on the White House Drug Policy website,

ARTICLE

states in part:
"For Judge Jeffrey Rosinek, who runs the Miami Drug Court, drug court is so different from a traditional court that they might as well not be called by the same name. “In a traditional court, there is a prosecutor on one side, a defense attorney on the other side, and a judge in the middle,” says Rosinek. “Here, the court is unified and non-adversarial. Everyone is here to get that person off drugs. These people have never seen a judge who does that. They have never had a team of people who are there to help them the way we are.”Rosinek presides over the country's oldest drug court, founded in 1989. The court has roughly 1,600 clients at any given time - whom it keeps for a minimum of 12 months. Many stay for 18 months, and some for more than two years. The drug court’s mix of supportive cheerleading and persistent confrontation is what it takes to get many dependent individuals to start down the road to recovery, although the confrontation usually comes first. “Our job is to use every way including coercion to get them off those drugs, because most people simply do not want help,” says Rosinek. “The judge and their attorney might tell them, ‘Try it and see how you feel when you have been clean for a few weeks,’ at which point they are starting to feel that maybe it’s working. And at the drug court, they have a whole team of people pulling for them.” When clients come in for their monthly hearing, the judge receives a two-page report that spells out whether they are employed, what they are doing in treatment, and the results of the all-important drug tests. “If it’s not a good report, I’ll drug test them again right there,” says Rosinek. “We try graduated sanctions. The final sanction is jail—but we always take them back.”


So, if you happen to be in the Gerstein Justice Building this week, drop by courtroom 4-4 and say hello to Judge Rosinek. Thank him for the job he has done. And, you can do more. Make a donation to Friends of Drug Court, Inc. You can drop a check by Judge Rosinek's chambers or mail it in if you like.

On behalf of the Officers, Directors and nearly 400 members of the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers - Miami Chapter, we want to thank you Judge Rosinek, We will miss you!

RICK FREEDMANPresident, FACDL-Miami

Rumpole says: Quite simply, for the caring and concern he has shown in 20 plus years on the bench, Judge Rosinek is one of the finest human beings we have ever met. A "saint" is not over emphasizing the number of lives he has saved. He can look back on a career sparkling with saved lives and second and third chances. Thousands of people in our community went to jail with nowhere to turn, until a man named Rosinek stepped in and showed them the way. How many now have jobs? How many now have families? How many children now have a parent instead of an absent addict?

May the good lord bless you Judge Rosinek for all you have done. Godspeed.