Jerry comes from a well known family in east Lincoln County. He is the product of an alcoholic family and had numerous alcohol related convictions. He arrived at the BMC with a firm belief that people with criminal convictions could never find meaningful employment. He believed that no one would give him a chance because of his rap sheet and family background. He was exposed to a thorough review of his self-limiting thinking process and given very specific interviewing skills in how to present his status as a probationer to potential employers. He recognized that it was alcohol, rather than his conviction history, that was blocking his path in life. Jerry is currently living his life dream. He is employed as a logger and heavy machine operator for a large logging outfit in this area. He is off supervision and has returned to the Probation office on numerous occasions to visit and keep us informed of his progress. 

'Webber’ 

Webber is a special situation. He is came to the Probation Department as an 18 year old with a juvenile criminal record. He was a car-clouter who liked to drink, use drugs, and fight. He attended the BMC and returned to the streets of Newport totally unchanged. After subsequent arrests he received a jail term long enough to attend the SAIL (in-custody) program. He recognized that the behavior he was exhibiting was not only dangerous to himself and the community, but that he was narrowing any future options with every subsequent arrest. Webber struggled with this information because it ran contrary to everything he heard on the street. All the information he received from the street only served to reinforce the direction he was heading. A direction, he later described to us, as ‘total ruin’. Webber is currently employed as a  VW mechanic. He has spoken at SAIL graduations. He discharged from probation on 1997. 

‘Kristy’ 

Kristy is 21 years old and has an 18 month old baby. She came to us because of assaultive behavior and drug use. Her belief was that drugs create no problems for her and that she had arranged a good life for her and her baby with her boyfriend and her boyfriend’s mother. After 16 hours of looking at her beliefs she returned to the last day of the BMC with her arm in a sling. She told the class that her boyfriend had broken her arm the previous evening when she had returned from her mandated Alcohol and Drug classes. She claimed she had returned home to find the boyfriend and his mother drunk and smoking marijuana together. Her baby was crawling in the gravel parking lot in the dark. When she complained the boyfriend threw her down and twisted her arm until it broke. She fled with the baby and was placed in a woman’s shelter. Nonetheless, she returned to class for the final day and asked to review the exercise about ‘Who was hurt?’. As she plugged the information into the exercise about her baby rather than about herself she broke into tears and asked for help with nearly ever aspect of her life. She remains on probation and has submitted only clean urine tests as of this date, 

‘Robby’ 

Robby has the strongest addition to methamphetamine that I have ever seen. He will struggle with this for the rest of his life. He has been arrested hiding in closets, scrambling out of rear apartment windows, and in the act of injecting drugs. He attended the BMC on three separate occasions. At the time of his last arrest he spent several months in the county jail. He told his supervising probation officer that he spent much of this time thinking about the information he had received, and previously rejected, at the BMC. Subsequently he entered into, and successfully completed, residential drug treatment. He returned to the community and put his BMC ‘action plan’ into, well, action. He gave up his relationships with his drug using friends and, most significantly with  his drug using girlfriend. He got a job more to fill the time during the night than for the money. He pumps gas at a local gas station. He is scared to death that he is going to relapse and so is everyone at the probation department. He attends drug classes 5 times per week and AA meetings 6 times per week. He is on the edge financially and socially. He has been clean and sober for 5 months and is fully participating in his probation conditions. 

‘Heidi’ 

Heidi arrived in our office as the single most angry woman I have ever met. She openly admitted a seething hatred for everything and everyone. Her special hatred was reserved for ‘the system’ which she defined as the ‘courts and the politicians’. She was mandated into the BMC because, as the officer’s referral read, ‘she just doesn’t get it’. Heidi was exposed to a concept that was non-judgmental and yet demanded total accountability. She was given a chance to explore her own belief systems about her relationship with drugs in particular and the world in general. Her own statements to the class were explored in depth and the logical outcomes predicted. Most of her behavior, it was agreed, would eventually led to her death or imprisonment.  She was unimpressed. After the class ended she was referred to drug treatment. She began demanding the same sort of accountability she had learned at the BMC from her fellow drug group attendees. She realized that she was applying information she had rejected only a couple of weeks previously. During subsequent meetings with her Probation Officer she asked for a referral to a women’s group. Months later she disclosed that she had been raped, violently, when she was eight or nine years old. She claims to now understand the source of her fury. She is cooperating with the Probation Department and has been clean and sober for 18 months. 

‘Josh’ 

Josh’s wife called the Probation Department after he had completed the BMC and said ‘I don’t know what you all did in there but I wanted to call and thank you’. She reported that Josh had been drinking heavily and abusing her for the past five years. She said that they had conversations ‘lasting until midnight’ about him, their relationship, and his substance abuse every evening after each session at the BMC . She sent a thank you card to the instructor stating that the most impressive thing was his ability to talk about painful things without becoming enraged. She asked if she would be allowed to volunteer to take the class. She became one of 68 volunteers to graduate from the BMC. The client, himself,  is participating well in his Probation obligations. He has been sober since his graduation. They report they are still together and will be moving to California within six months, after the probation expires, to take a job offer he has received. 

‘Ellie’ 

Ellie was attending BMC class in 1996 and during a session on empathy she began sobbing. She refused to discuss why she was crying but stared straight ahead during the remainder of the session. The next day she was 10 minutes late for class. While lecturing, we saw a pickup truck, driven by an unknown female pull up in front of the building. The pickup bed was piled four feet over the top of the cab. It was covered with a blue tarp as it was raining outside. Ellie was riding as a passenger with her two children. As she ran into class the truck drove off with the two children. Ellie said she was late because she had to wait until her boyfriend left the house at 6 am so she could load all her possessions and her children and ‘escape’. She said the driver was her girlfriend and that she was taking her children and her furniture to her apartment to ‘hide them out’. She said her boyfriend had been abusing the children for the past two years of their relationship and she had realized during the last class session that she had to do something. She had to take responsibility for her own life and the lives of her children. She was smiling. She applied for, and was given permission to move to another state after her completion of the BMC. I never saw her again. 

For every example of a success I can give you 5 examples of abject failures. The BMC is not a golden answer to the societal ills of Lincoln County. It is a place where a dialogue can begin. This dialogue sometimes leads to remarkable changes in behavior. Sometimes it leads nowhere. The question I pose to the criminal justice planners  is ‘Where else in Lincoln County can this type of mandated offender population get this type of information?’  Please tell me the address so I can refer offenders there because, frankly, we are swamped.  

You’ll notice that the most ‘successful’ BMC graduates went on to get more help, training, assistance, or whatever you choose to call it,  at other agencies. These include women’s shelters, A&D counseling, residential treatment, anger management, and job skills enhancement. If we are serious about changing offender behavior and protecting this community, we have to start somewhere and the BMC has been instrumental in this effort. But it a team player together with  all the other valid programming in the community. It is not long enough, it is not intensive enough, and it does little to effect the transition it introduces. It has operated at zero additional cost to the taxpayers and has had some offenders not use some jail beds on some occasions. I think this is a direction a community may want to pursue as a cost effective alternative to the cycle of investigation, prosecution, and incarceration. It is not a solution to any individual’s particular problem. It is a piece of the puzzle in how to make our community safer and healthier.