By Erin Delmore
Correspondent
It’s an unlikely setting for a graduation, but this courtroom was full of smiles, and a few grateful tears, as 16 people joined the ranks of Camden County’s more than 300 drug court graduates.
“And now she’s working and raising a family, Tracy, you deserve to be up here today and you should be very proud of yourself,” said a program graduate.
This is the third graduation Judge Edward McBride, Jr. has presided over.
“This is right up there with presiding over adoptions, and there’s one going on down the hall. As a judge, you’re generally dealing with a situation where one person walks out of the room not happy, because it’s one versus another. This is not,” he said.
These Camden graduates say this chance to trade jail for treatment is a lifesaver.
“My life has changed. I’m making better decisions. I’m thinking clear-headed. I’m level-headed. I feel better about myself, about my family and the life I’m living,” Dhamiri Pettigrew said.
The statewide program is available to first-time, nonviolent drug offenders. The whole process can take years of drug treatment, court appearances, random drug testing and cooperation with treatment advisers and probation officers. While it’s been offered for 13 years, Governor Christie expanded the once-voluntary program and allowed judges to make it mandatory in 2012.
“And that’s what drug abuse is to me; it is an illness. An illness born of an initial bad choice, yes. No one, whether you have a drug addiction illness or not, can have a fulfilling and good life if they don’t wake up in the morning and go to bed at night happy about the person that they are at their core. The treatment, the assistance, the love that you all have gotten through this program, those are things that begin to make you feel better,” said Christie in December of 2013.
It’s an issue Christie’s been touting on the campaign trail, and one where he finds common ground with President Obama. The federal Department of Justice is set to release nearly 6,000 inmates this month — early. Many of them are low level drug offenders. Under a new policy by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, nearly half of the 100,000 drug offenders in federal prison could qualify for early release.