(Photo by Vicky Wedig)
OWI court marks two years, 18 graduates
By Vicky Wedig
Staff writer
After Joseph Pugh got his second drunken driving ticket in 2002, he no longer drank and drove.
“I did my drinking at home,” said the 45-year-old Lake Geneva man.
But, on a day in May 2012, Pugh “got a wild hair,” said his long-time girlfriend Gale Keener.
“It was Kentucky Derby day,” Pugh said. “I was watching the horses run.”
Instead of picking up a six-pack to watch the race at home, Pugh got a 12-pack. When he’d finished that, he made an alcohol-tainted decision to drive his truck to visit his brother in Pell Lake.
Keener ran barefoot into their driveway to try to stop him. She told him he didn’t need to be driving; he’d had too much to drink already. But, he left in his truck anyway, and Keener went inside “and paced and paced,” she said.
She expected him home by 7 p.m.
“When I didn’t hear from him by 9, I knew it,” she said. “I just knew it in my gut.”
Keener’s gut was right.
After Pugh got to his brother’s, the pair went to a bar where they had a few more. When Pugh headed to his truck to go home, his brother tried to intervene.
“He tried to take the keys from me, and I refused,” Pugh said.
On the way home, Pugh hit a stop-ahead sign with his truck, and a witness called police. Pugh was vaguely aware that he’d swiped something and was honest with police when he got pulled over and was questioned.
Pugh was charged with his third operating-while-intoxicated offense. The charge came about seven months after Walworth County began its OWI court. Pugh had been reading about the program and knew it was the route he wanted to take.
Since then, he has had to pay for more costly insurance due to his conviction. He now forks out almost double a “normal” insurance policy because he is required to hold an sr22 certificate.
“I knew I had to pay my debt to society,” Pugh said. But, he also wanted help with his drinking.
“I wanted the treatment for my alcoholism,” he said.
For a third offense, Pugh was facing nine months to a year in the Walworth County Jail with work-release privileges.
“Five days was long enough for me,” Pugh said.
Pugh requested and was granted admission into the OWI court, which Judge David Reddy began in October 2011.
The OWI court accepts Walworth County residents who have been convicted of third- or fourth-offense OWI, said treatment coordinator Katie Behl.
“We’re dealing with high risk people and the focus is treatment,” she said.
Offenders will not be accepted into the program if they’ve had an accident that involved serious injury or if they’ve been convicted of violent offenses.
By participating in the program, offenders get a reduced sentence – half of the mandatory minimum sentence of 30 days in jail for a third offense and 60 days for a fourth offense.
(Photo by Vicky Wedig)
The program
Behl said the program consists of four segments, each of which requires at least 12 weeks to complete. Offenders who are admitted into the program are placed on probation for 18 months to allow them sufficient time to complete the curriculum. In other parts of the country programs like this are not available as of yet, however, hopefully, it will be as time goes on as this can help many people who are drinking and driving and causing danger on the roads. It is lucky though that people are able to access alcohol treatment programs such as rehab centers in areas like Houston, Florida, Colorado, etc. so they can get the attention that they need.
The 18 graduates of the program as of Nov. 13 completed the program in an average of 63 weeks, Behl said. She said some participants experience setbacks during the program such as drinking relapses or other violations or need additional time to pay off their fines, which must be paid in full to be released from the program.
Throughout the first two segments of the program – for six months – Pugh wore an electronic ankle bracelet and his home landline was outfitted with a “sobrieter.” The bracelet notified the sobrieter every time Pugh entered his home. Each time, Pugh had to pick up his phone, complete a word test to verify his identity through voice recognition, and then blow into the device to record the alcohol content of his breath.
Fourth-offense participants wear a more expensive device called SCRAM – secure continuous remote alcohol monitor. The device continuously monitors an offender’s alcohol level through their skin, Behl said.
Also throughout the first two segments, participants attend OWI court for status hearings every other week to report to Reddy. Participants are called before the judge one at a time to show that they’ve completed their objectives from class, met with their probation agent and remained sober.
At the hearing, participants give any updates that have happened since their last appearance, receive sanctions for program violations and are moved from one phase to the next if they qualify, Behl said.
Those who have met their objectives are rewarded with gift cards or gas cards that they draw from a fish bowl.
“It’s the use of positive reinforcement,” Behl said.
The participants must meet specific criteria that are outlined for them between court sessions to be rewarded. The gas cards or gift cards also provide some aid to program participants, who are often getting rides to court from friends or family members, she said.
For the first three segments – nine months – Pugh and other OWI court participants met once a week for 1 hours for cognitive behavior therapy. The therapy is the alcohol treatment portion of the program in which participants set short- and long-term goals.
“My long-term goal is to quit drinking for the rest of my life,” Pugh said.
Pugh estimated about 60 percent of his peers in the program had the same mentality – to quit drinking entirely. Others aimed to quit driving after drinking.
“They don’t tell you you have to quit drinking, but stress not driving,” he said.
Also throughout the first three phases of the program, participants meet once a week with their probation officer and take a urine analysis to test for drugs. Pugh, a 30-year marijuana user, stopped smoking pot the night he got pulled over and hasn’t slipped, he said.
In Phases 3 and 4, participants’ attendance at status hearings is reduced to once every four weeks. For the last two phases of the program, Pugh’s bracelet was removed, and he was no longer subject to a curfew.
Participants finish the traditional OWI court program after the third phase and move into a relapse prevention treatment group for the fourth phase, Behl said. In the final phase, they meet with their probation officer and attended treatment class every other week.
Participants also are subject to unannounced home visits throughout the program.
“They were very random,” Pugh said.
Some participants got caught drinking during the visits. One person was sanctioned an additional 150 days in the program for such an offense, but few were removed from the program entirely.
Since its inception in October 2011, the court has terminated participation for four of its 55 participants – one for medical reasons, two for program violations and one for a death.
Pugh said as long as participants were honest about their mistakes, Reddy was willing to give them another chance.
“He wouldn’t throw them out of the program for one slip,” Pugh said. “I think it’s one of the best programs Walworth County or the State of Wisconsin has ever come up with.”
Pugh said he believes people who are sentenced to jail for OWI offenses are more likely to drink and drive again.
“If you just take the jail time, you’re going to come out of jail with an attitude and go back to drinking and probably re-offend,” he said.
Behl said reducing recidivism – the number of offenders who commit the crime again – is the program’s goal. But, she said, any decreases in recidivism that result from the program can’t be measured until three years of data have been collected.
According to state Department of Transportation data, 34.4 percent of OWI-related convictions in Walworth County in 2012 were to repeat offenders. From 2004 to 2102, the recidivism rate ranged from 31.3 percent in 2009 to 40.7 percent in 2007, according to DOT data.
‘Blessing in disguise’
Pugh graduated from OWI court Oct. 2 and is among 14 people to complete the program as of October. The cognitive behavior therapy was the crux of the program for Pugh.
He said the program’s treatment facilitators, Sheri Skomski and Kristi Reynolds, gave participants a lot of work to do but helped people complete the work at their own pace.
Pugh said among the objectives they taught are “thought-stopping” – pick a word to stop the thought, “I worked hard today. I deserve a drink;” “thought-changing” – “Maybe I’ll have a soda or lemonade instead of a drink;” visualization – picture yourself getting in trouble again; and correcting errors in thinking such as, “I ought to have a drink.”
Pugh said the program also stressed having a good social support network, which he had with Keener, his girlfriend of 11 years.
“She was a big part of getting me through this program,” Pugh said.
Keener quit drinking herself about six months before Pugh’s arrest, attended every court session with him and wrote a letter to the court to complete program requirements about the changes Pugh made as a result of OWI court.
“Maybe it was a blessing in disguise,” Keener said. “Otherwise, we might not be together.”
