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Treatment program celebrates 20th year of stopping addiction
Albany Times Union - 04/06/03
By Anne Miller - Staff writer
Eight years ago, Gwendolyn Gibbs faced her last chance at redemption.
For more than two decades, alcohol and heroin addictions consumed her. She lived on the streets and ignored her son.
Then Gibbs, convicted on a fourth felony charge, was given 90 days in a drug rehabilitation program through the Honor Court. If the rehab didn't take, the alternative was a minimum of 25 years in prison.
As she summarized her life story Sunday, Gibbs gestured with her manicured gold nails, shifted in her knee-high black boots and grinned. The Honor Court that helped her now employs her as a substance abuse counselor and role model for women in the Albany County jail.
"It's so awesome that I'm standing in front of the judge saying, 'This girl needs help,' " Gibbs said. "I won't trade anything in the world for what I have now."
Stories such as Gibbs' circulated through Albany City Court on Saturday morning as the Honor Court celebrated 20 years of service.
Court founders, supporters, employees and graduates celebrated the program, which oversees drug and alcohol addicts sentenced to rehabilitation by courts throughout the Capital Region. The state Division of Probation and Correctional Alternatives funds the program.
"The whole purpose was, and still is, to keep someone dry with the threat of jail over their head until they want to stay clean," said Sandra Koss, an Honor Court founder who now is executive director of the Adolescent Employability Skills Plus Program Inc.
"This is one of the tools in our toolbox that allow us to fairly handle a case," said City Court Judge John Egan.
The Honor Court mandate has remained the same although some services have altered as society has changed, said Koss and others. In 1983, alcohol topped the list of concerns. Now drugs and gangs do, as the average age of offenders drops.
"There's more drugs, and it's harder to keep people abstaining before you can get them into treatment," Sister Phyllis Herbert said. The Sisters of Mercy loaned her to the program for the first two years, she said. She never left.
State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Keegan oversaw the beginning of Honor Court when he served as a City Court judge.
"I would get letters," he said. " 'Thank you for kicking my butt and making me go to college.' That's the sort of thing that makes everything worth it."