Hattiesburg American
'A lot of lives have been changed: The judge behind drug court, reentry program
By Lici Beveridge
U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett has been a trailblazer most of his judicial career without even trying.
He started the state's first drug court in 1999. He also instituted one of the earliest federal reentry programs — at the same time the pilot programs were launching in major metropolitan areas of the country.
The programs were in cities like Milwaukee, Los Angeles, St. Louis — and Hattiesburg.
"We started it about the same time as the five federal pilots," Starrett said. "We just did it under the radar."
The Pike County native, who is moving to senior judge status May 1, said he has enjoyed seeing the transformation of someone getting out of prison and rebuilding their lives.
"They change before your eyes," Starrett said.
The judge, whose district covers south Mississippi, got to work on the program almost immediately after his 2004 appointment by then-President George W. Bush to the federal bench, and molded his reentry program along the same lines as the drug court program, with cognitive behavior programs, workforce development and other support systems for those newly released from prison.
Starrett said a suggestion by the program's employment specialist Amanda Pierce led to a once-a-month program featuring employers and community college officials who help those newly released improve their chances of getting a job.
"We've even had people leave there with jobs," he said. "There's a good job market in Hattiesburg. Lot of employers don't make any bones about it. They will hire people with criminal records."
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It's a requirement for those in halfway houses and former inmates who are unemployed, Starrett said. It helps improve their self-esteem and gives them the ability to support their families, he said, and hopefully reduce the recidivism rate.
"Jobs are extremely important," he said.
Starrett is proud of the success of his court's reentry program.
"I don't care where you go, (other) programs may be larger but they don't have any better programs than what we have available here," he said.
From lawyer to judge — it wasn't in the plan
Starrett never set out to be a judge. He graduated from Mississippi State University before earning law degree from the University of Mississippi School of Law.
He was a lawyer in private practice for 17½ years before he was encouraged in the early '90s to apply for a judicial position by former 14th District Attorney Dunn Lampton who later became U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi.
"I never really thought that much about being a judge," he said. "I just was trying to make it day by day making a living and practicing law and doing the best I could there.
"It's hard work, especially in state court. I started out with the state judge with the highest civil case load and one of the highest for criminal case load."
At the time the district included four counties with only one judge.
"It was hard keeping up," Starrett said.
'I was determined to help turn their lives around'
Amidst the heavy caseload, Starrett began to realize he was seeing many of the same people return to his court, mostly for drug-related offenses.
"It was in the middle of the crack cocaine explosion," he said. "People were selling a lot to smoke a lot. The addicts were coming out of the woodwork."
Starrett was at a loss for what to do about it, but wanted to find a way to stop the revolving door of addiction. He would order treatment and programming for detainees, but once they got out of prison it wasn't long before they'd be going right back in.
"I was determined to help turn their lives around," he said.
It was around that time Starrett met another judge at a conference for Mississippi and Louisiana judges who told him about drug courts that were just getting started across the country.
"I didn't know anything about them at the time," he said.
Starrett learned more about the program and trained himself to implement it in his district. But there were other challenges to overcome.
"There was no law and no funding (for drug courts)," he said. "And it was at a time when the judicial philosophy was to lock them up and throw away the key."
Lampton gave $20,000 from his district's bad check fund to start the program. Starrett found other resources to supplement it and on Feb. 1, 1999, the district had its first enrollee.
Then-state Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith would attend some of the drug court proceedings and was impressed by what she saw, Starrett said.
"She became a huge supporter of drug courts," he said. "She wrote legislation to fund drug courts in a meaningful way. And the year before Mississippi had adopted what was one of the best drug court laws in the nation."
12th District Circuit Judge Bob Helfrich said Starrett was a pioneer for establishing a drug court in Mississippi just 10 years after the first was started in Miami.
When Helfrich became a judge, he knew a drug court was something he wanted in his district, too, which covers Forrest and Perry counties.
"As soon as I was elected, before I took the bench, I went over and visited his drug court and observed it, talked to participants and everything else," Helfrich said. "I knew we needed something to try and stop the revolving door (of recidivism). And drug courts helped significantly in that respect."
Helfrich's drug court was started in 2003, and has grown to include hundreds of participants each year.
“(Drug courts) are the best thing that happened in the criminal justice system — in forever,” Helfrich said.
Today, each county has its own drug court, funded through legislation.
"That was because of Cindy's efforts," Starrett said.
And the results are awe-inspiring.
"A lot of lives have been changed," Starrett said. "A lot of families have been changed. The recidivism rate is much less than people who don't (go through drug court).
"If there is anything negative about drug court, I don't know what that is. Drug courts are the most effective widest used criminal justice reform there is."