RON WHITENER, ’94, chief judge at the Tulalip Tribal Court, is a citizen of the Squaxin Island Tribe.

Taking a therapeutic approach

“The traditional criminal justice system says, ‘We’re going to punish you, and you’re going to behave differently,’” says Kilgore, who joined the Tulalip Office of the Reservation Attorney in 2015. But reality proves otherwise — studies show that up to 80 percent of drug abusers commit a new crime once they’re released from prison, and 95 percent start using again.

“The tribal drug court says the reason some people commit crimes isn’t because they’re bad people, but because they’re addicts,” Kilgore continues. “Punishment won’t change their behavior, but resources and options and tools will help them develop into people who aren’t going to use drugs or be back in the criminal justice system.”

As a law student in 2010, Kilgore honed his skills at the Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic, where he witnessed firsthand how crucial a tribal court was to the health and well-being of the Tulalip community. After deciding to take back jurisdiction on the reservation from the state of Washington in 2001, the Tulalip Tribes approached the UW School of Law’s Native American Law Center about establishing this partnership to address the tribes’ need for legal representation.

Since 2002, the philanthropy-supported Tribal Court Public Defense Clinic has offered students the chance to get hands-on experience in public defense under faculty supervision, while Tulalip Tribes citizens receive legal counsel. “It’s an incredible opportunity to contribute,” says Brenda Williams, who co-directs the clinic. “I try to instill students with an approach to their practice that centers justice for their clients while supporting tribal sovereignty.”

Turn Audio On / Off BRIAN KILGORE, ’11, serves as a prosecutor at the Tulalip Tribal Court. Read audio transcript Tribes call their drug courts “healing to wellness” courts. States call their drug courts “drug courts.” They are all drug courts. They are all therapeutic courts. They are all based on the same set of best practices. And so that’s where we get into the wellness court model. And one is that we recognize that you can punish, but you can also incentivize. Just looking in that room — and the difference between those folks sitting in there for their court hearings and during their court hearings, and after their court hearings — compared to regular defendants in the criminal court, they are more alive, they are more human, they are more interactive, and I think you can see the benefit of positive reinforcement. Regular court really kind of stops at that. It’s like, “OK, well, you’ve done bad and we’ve punished you.” And that’s our purpose is to punish people who do bad. If you take it a step deeper — like, “OK, well the purpose should be to protect the community or to reduce harms.” We use incentives and sanctions, as opposed to just sanctions — or, as they would be called in the court systems, “mostly punishments.” It’s not that punishment can’t change behavior; it’s just that we’ve learned, maybe slower than we should have, that that’s not really the best way to get behavior change. The big difference between drug courts and regular courts is that we’ve taken that purpose of the courts, which is really a fight about whether or not you are guilty or innocent, and we have put that to the side. We’re not concerned about that anymore. It’s been decided: You are guilty, but, you know, we’re going to maybe tear that up and make that go away if you are able to complete some requirements. And that lets us focus on where we have the shared interest, which is them living a clean and sober life, entering and maintaining recovery — not being involved in the criminal justice system anymore. We should be empowering people to change their lives.

According to the latest information available from the Washington Department of Health, drug- and alcohol-related deaths in Washington state amount to 32.4 per 100,000 people annually. In Tulalip, that number skyrockets to 278.7 per 100,000 people — and as the Tulalip Tribes and Kilgore recognized, years of conventional punishment haven’t proved effective at breaking the cycle.

In search of a more supportive and productive path for nonviolent offenders imprisoned on drug charges, Kilgore worked with Tulalip community members and a team of professionals to kick-start a tribal drug court. In January 2017, the Healing to Wellness Court welcomed its first participants.

Helping people achieve emotional, psychological and social well-being through motivation and behavior change is a core goal of the UW’s Population Health Initiative, which aims to advance the health of communities worldwide.

Setting a holistic path

Each week, stories of addiction come across Kilgore’s desk, slipped inside a packet with a cover sheet from the police department outlining each offender’s history.

If an offender meets the high-risk, high-need requirements for participating in the Wellness Court, they go up for review by the team: judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, coordinator, case manager, chemical dependency counselor, law enforcement officer and tribal community member, who supports cultural reintegration — an element that distinguishes the Tulalip Wellness Court from other state drug court programs. Everyone works together to support the participants during their journey.

Candidates accepted to the five-stage diversion program typically start with 28 days of intensive inpatient treatment, then focus on finding sober housing during the early stages. By the time they reach stage four, participants are working on community service projects and taking part in education and job training.