Drug courts fail women, but there’s a solution

When Susan Burton lost her 5-year-old son after he was struck by a police vehicle in Los Angeles, her grief drove her into addiction. Crack cocaine became her way to cope, and California’s response was to lock her up again and again. Over two decades, she was incarcerated six times, released each time without treatment, housing or support. Exceptionally, she transformed her pain into purpose, founding A New Way of Life in South L.A., a re-entry program for formerly incarcerated women. Burton’s story reflects a system that can end up punishing survivors rather than helping them through trauma.

As of 2020, 32% of unhoused people in L.A. County were women. Nearly half reported having experienced domestic violence, and many struggled with substance abuse and binge drinking. These intersecting vulnerabilities — trauma, addiction, poverty — create a dangerous feedback loop. All too often, this loop leads to petty crimes, what one might call crimes of survival — probation violations, petty theft, vagrancy, possession.

Some of these women end up in L.A.’s drug courts, which were created to offer alternatives to incarceration. These courts can reduce recidivism, lower substance abuse and save taxpayer money. Drug courts are on the right track but fail women in particular.

Women are more likely to have co-occurring psychiatric disorders, economic dependence on abusive partners and the added weight of caregiving responsibilities. Yet most drug courts are not tailored to gendered differences, operating on models built around male patterns of addiction and accountability. As a result, women are often set up to fail: Treatment schedules ignore parenting duties, sanctions punish relationships rather than address trauma and programs rarely offer trauma-informed care.

Los Angeles can do better. Other places have amassed experience to inform how.

A randomized trial in San Diego County found that women assigned to gender-responsive drug court programs performed better in treatment, had lower rates of PTSD symptoms and were more likely to complete their programs than women in mixed-gender treatment.

The Big Island in Hawaii has created a women’s court informed by such considerations, known as Na Hulu Wehi. As an intern last summer, I worked alongside judges, probation officers, treatment providers and national partners such as All Rise and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to design trauma-informed judicial training and program models. What I witnessed was transformative — a court system that recognized women’s unique experiences and provided cognitive behavioral therapy, behavioral health beds, culturally grounded healing, specialized substance use treatment, and therapists trained in trauma and abuse.

A small island state with one-tenth of California’s population and a fraction of California’s resources has piloted an approach that could be a transformative public safety investment for the Golden State as well.

And L.A. is a great place to start. A women’s court could save the county money because it would reduce the number of offenders who cycle through jails for crimes born of trauma and addiction. The approach pioneered in Hawaii avoids punishment and looks upstream, addressing addiction and mental health before they lead to exorbitant incarceration costs. Innovation, compassion and fiscal sense can coexist.

California has long prided itself on being a national leader in justice reform. Legislators representing L.A. County should introduce a bill to create a women’s court modeled after Hawaii’s success. Women’s healing is not a luxury but a necessity.

Elijah Williams is a political science and sociology student at Stanford University.