Excuses no option with sheriff

EAST BROOKFIELD - Excuses. Western Worcester District Court staff, including Judge Maura McCarthy, probation officers and the clerk magistrate, were hearing plenty of them from probationers about why they couldn't meet the terms of their sentences or pretrial requirements.

Mostly they heard that transportation was a problem. People needed help to get to services to help them stay off drugs, or they couldn't find a ride to the area where they could do community service to pay their debt to society.

From the bench, Judge McCarthy can usually tell whether someone is invested in bettering their situation. She believes district courts have a responsibility to serve the community and she was seeing places where things in East Brookfield could be improved and the excuses could be eliminated.

The court staff knew the Worcester Regional Transit Authority had buses that passed by the courthouse, but none stopped there and so those traveling to the facility would have to get off at another stop and walk along busy Route 9 where there are no sidewalks.

Judge McCarthy and others from the court worked with State Rep. Donald R. Berthiaume Jr., R-Spencer, to encourage the WRTA to add a stop, and now a bus picks up and drops off at the Cumberland Farms store next door to the court.

But more needed to be done, and so she and Worcester County Sheriff Lewis G. Evangelidis started talking. He had similar ideas and the resources to help. There were no protocols or chain of command, just some phone calls and meetings and brainstorming to solve the problems.

"One thing I wanted to do was to make resources available to everybody who needs them, to supplement what Judge McCarthy and the clerk’s office and probation and everybody’s trying to do," he said. He has community corrections programs in Worcester and Fitchburg and saw the improvements clients there were making.

He and Judge McCarthy also knew about the "drug court" Judge Timothy Bibaud was running at Dudley District Court, and they wanted to continue the partnership the court had with Harrington Hospital in Southbridge, where many of the folks they deal with can get mental health services.

Together the court and the sheriff put together an intensive probation program using the once-closed Community Corrections Center in Webster. Mr. Evangelidis had the resources to provide a van to drive probationers from East Brookfield to Webster and he brought Kim Barnaby, a licensed social worker from the Webster office, to East Brookfield first once, and then when the court demonstrated a need, twice, each week.

The program costs about $375,000 annually to run and funding comes from the sheriff's budget, Chief Deputy Sheriff David H. Tuttle said.

"Our budget is small but this is something we know is worth investing in," he said.

The court serves Barre, Brookfield, East Brookfield, Hardwick, Leicester, New Braintree, North Brookfield, Oakham, Paxton, Rutland, Spencer, Warren and West Brookfield, so if people can find a way from those towns to the courthouse, they can get help.

Jillian Keans, 20, is one of the people who boards that van religiously every week. Last year, addicted to heroin and homeless, the high school graduate got herself into a heap of trouble that landed her in court. Now, she realizes, it might have been the best thing that could have happened because she's still alive and learning to live as a sober woman who contributes to society.

"I don’t think I would be here if I hadn’t gotten in trouble," she said. "I didn’t have a lot of responsibility in my life."

These days she has to show up, pass drug tests, work on finding a job and attend meetings and programming to help her stay clean.

"Going there gave me some structure and some responsibility," she said.

Across the table from Miss Keans sits 60-year-old Mike. He doesn't have a substance-abuse issue and his crime wasn't violent, but he needs to do community service. He, too, gets on the van to Webster twice a week. When he first met Miss Keans, she was worried. She's come to understand that people judge her by the act that got her in trouble even when they know nothing else about her or how hard she's working on reinventing herself.

"He asked me what my charges were and I was like, 'Oh boy, here we go,' " she recalled. "But I told him and he was like, 'Oh, well, we all make mistakes.' "

Mike and Miss Keans agreed when Mr. Evangelidis said the program "doesn't coddle" participants but they're not judged, either. A lot is expected. The sheriff said he's on the front lines of the opioid battle and feels responsible to help.

"There are a lot of good people who got caught up in this," he said. "We realized we have an explosion of addictions which is leading to a crime spree and we realized we’ve got to tackle it. The Legislature and the governor have an opiate task force, everyone’s trying to solve this problem but we’re on the ground ... I’m the sheriff and I pledged to try to help solve the problem."

Byron Titus, the program manager, said he won't tolerate those who don't meet expectations and has asked people to go back to the court to figure out another way to meet their obligations. In return, the clients get help finding health insurance, they are assisted in writing résumés and can work toward their GED if they need it.

Probation officers in East Brookfield have noticed a change. April Messenger said some of the probationers she works with "look a thousand times better" after they spend some time in intensive probation. They've also found the program is providing them with more resources for the people they're trying to keep on the straight and narrow.

Learning some life skills helps cut down on recidivism and sets a stronger foundation for when probation ends, the probation officers said.

Mr. Evangelidis said other courts and judges are looking at the program and considering using the model and he'll be happy to help with that because he believes it's working.

For Miss Keans, the program has helped. She's set goals, was accepted into college and is looking for a job. She's learning that each stumbling block along the way isn't an excuse to use drugs, rather she has coping skills she didn't have before and she has support from good people now. Even Mike can rattle off how many days Miss Keans has been sober and mentoring her and other young people in the program has brought him some positivity and pride, too. He hopes to stay in touch and watch her grow up and meet her goals.

"There are a lot of people there and you can tell they really care about you," she said.