The Gazette-Enterprise

SEGUIN — Guadalupe County has just been awarded a state grant that will enable it to dramatically increase its ability to try to rehabilitate juvenile alcohol and drug abusers.

County-Court-at-Law Judge Linda Z. Jones, who has conducted a pre-adjudication drug court for juveniles for five years, has been notified by Gov. Rick Perry that her program, called STOP for “Specialized Treatment Options Program” has been awarded $146,025 by the state’s Criminal Justice Division to expand the program to include “post-adjudication” monitoring and treatment.

The STOP program seeks to intervene early in an offender’s drug abuse in order to curtail it.

The post-adjudication aspect means that juvenile drug offenders can be kept on probation for a year, if needed, while juvenile probation and helping professionals work to help fight a drug or alcohol problem.

“Our whole team over the last two years has been really wanting to expand the pre-adjudication program, which has been really successful,” Jones said. “This will give us an opportunity for more treatment options. We can go up to a year or even further if necessary. If they have a more severe need than what we realized in the beginning, we can keep them in the process and provide additional services.”

Drug abuse, Jones said, destroys families and ruins lives.

“It’s a bad cycle if we can’t get them off the drugs,” Jones said. “Drugs ruin kids. We need to get them help, get them educated and help them get jobs so they can be productive. This will help us, and we’re really excited.”

Now, Jones said, the county’s juvenile probation department can begin developing its post-adjudication program.

“We’ll be working on criteria for post-adjudication now that we have funding,” Jones said. “We’ll work on ironing out all the details. We want to serve as many people as possible.”

Guadalupe County’s Chief Juvenile Probation Officer, Ron Quiros will be responsible for making the expanded program happen.

Quiros said the grant would enable the county to extend its efforts to help kids who run afoul of the juvenile justice system and are found to have underlying problems with alcohol or drugs — something he’s looked forward to since becoming the county’s top juvenile probation official just over two years ago.

“Since I’ve been here, I’ve wanted to be able to expand the services we provide our families, and this is one of the ways we’ll be able to do that. This enables us to expand to post-adjudication treatment for kids who need longer term intervention,” Quiros said. “Pre-adjudication really means six months or less, and sometimes, we’ve had kids who need more time to address their addiction or dependence on drugs, and we have to sign kids off with unsatisfactory results. This gives the court the option to support them for a year.”

Quiros said about 50 teens and their families would benefit from the program each year.

“It gives Judge Jones a wonderful tool to be able to provide this kind of attention to kids who most need it,” Quiros said. “It really expands our capabilities. We’re very excited about it.”

Drug abuse is a disease process and not just a social or legal problem, Quiros said. The STOP program seeks to address the underlying illness and not just its social symptoms.

“What I like is it really supports the alternative judicial model,” Quiros said. “We have cases that go through our traditional court. This is another option. It’s about treating substance abuse as a disease instead of attempting to try to sanction juveniles for using drugs. We still do both. It’s a disease where we need to try to find an alternative way to deal with it, and drug court gives us a different approach.”

County Judge Mike Wiggins serves on the county’s juvenile board. Wiggins sought support from commissioners two years ago to seek state funding for the drug court. Last year, he supported creating an adult misdemeanor drug court also operated by Jones.

This year, Wiggins sought — and got — unanimous support from commissioners to expand the juvenile drug court program.

“Having visited with Judge Jones and others who are involved in this process, this court has been successful,” Wiggins said. “It has had a very positive impact on some of the people who have gone through the program. Overall, it has been very successful and very positive.”

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