Linda Jalbert sat in a small conference room packed full of drug treatment professionals and recovering addicts last week. A world away from her former life, she took a deep, quivering breath as she recounted her fight with a heroin addiction and the second chance that saved her.

After repeatedly failing urinalysis tests while on probation and consequently serving one short prison term after another, Jalbert's probation officer made a last ditch effort to get through to her. The officer admitted her into a pilot program for Maine's first drug court.

"It was the first time I can remember actually feeling like somebody cared," said Jalbert.

Jalbert graduated from Maine's drug court, called Project Exodus, in 1999 and began a new life. She said, "I finally am feeling like I have something to offer this world."

And she said, without the help from drug court, "in all honesty, I wouldn't be alive."

Drug court programs, which now exist in all 50 states, give addicts like Jalbert an alternative to incarceration that can help them conquer their disease and reduce the high recidivism rates of offenders with drug and alcohol addictions. Rather than sentencing drug users to jail with little hope of recovery, drug court provides physical and cognitive treatment through close interaction with a judge and counseling from addiction clinicians.

The drug court professionals and graduates who gathered last week for the New England Association of Drug Court Professionals' annual conference in Boston heard speakers advocating for a transformation of how the criminal justice system deals with drug addicts in the face of statistics that show that the vast majority of prison inmates have this problem.

"We know why most people are there: because of a drug and alcohol experience," said William C. Moyers, a keynote speaker at the conference, and the Vice President of External Affairs at the Hazelden Foundation. And it's not right to put them in prison, with no hope for help and a high likelihood of returning again, he told the conference attendees.

"Just to punish them isn't going to solve their problem, because they're going to get out," Moyers said. While he believes that "if you do the crime, you do the time," Moyers added, while in prison "you need to take time to treat them while they're behind bars."

Paul Samuels, president of the Legal Action Center, said, "we need the vocal constituency to stand up and shout." Both he and Moyers spoke about the need for recovered addicts, like Jalbert, to get past the stigma attached to alcoholism and drug addiction, and become "the face of recovery."

Samuels said advocates for treatment instead of incarceration need to pressure elected officials, engage the news media and "put the resources where they need to be." And, according to Samuels and others, the resources need to be in treatment and recovery programs.

Personal Experience Builds Innovative Leaders

In small group sessions at the conference, leaders of various treatment-related programs and services also spoke about ways to help addicts beyond drug court, which is not always an automatic fix.

Maureen Harvey, the mother of a 28-year-old heroin addict from South Boston, Mass., spoke about the difficulty she had dealing with the fact that her son was in trouble.

"I just figured it was a stage he was going through," she said with a soft voice to a hushed crowd jammed into the conference room. "I refused to believe he was a heroin addict."

Harvey now leads a group of parents of drug addicts who work to encourage parental involvement and advocate for long-term treatment. For her son, drug court did not work - conference speakers said nationally only about 50 percent graduate the strenuous program - but the pressure that she confidently exerts on him and the involvement of loved ones have helped.

She said her son spent a year and a half in jail. "Every time he got into trouble [the addiction] got worse," she said. Now he's out of prison and taking life on the outside one day at a time.

"I'm not afraid to question him now," she said. "He knows we're on top of the situation."

Jud Phelps, a recovered alcoholic, who works for a drug court in Cape Cod, said, "all of my three children are in recovery." He also supports family involvement, and advised the crowd, "we have to love them, and give them hope and nurture them until they can do it themselves."

Community Leaders Respond

While recovery and treatment professionals and former addicts called for action, some of New England's most powerful politicians also vocalized their support of drug courts at the conference.

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who accepted an award for his long-time advocacy of drug courts, supported the prospect of a greater focus on treatment.

"Many people have failed to see the human side of the issue," said Menino. "Government isn't paying attention."

He said since the introduction of a drug court to Boston in the Mattapan neighborhood, "we changed the way we dealt with this problem."

"Since it started in 1995, drug court has given hope to many people suffering from substance abuse," he said.

But Menino agreed with other speakers that there is plenty of work yet to be done. He said, "[Politicians] think every one of these kids are bad kids. They're not bad kids."

"Together we all can change society," he said. "We've got to change the attitude people have."

Survivors like Jalbert are evidence that treatment can work, conference speakers said. And Jalbert could not agree more that a second chance renewed her life.

Jalbert told the audience of a discussion she had with her assigned drug court judge just before she graduated from the program. Confident that she had overcome her addiction, and feeling that the one-year probation she had been assigned to serve after graduating was not necessary, Jalbert told the judge her feelings, and got the vindication she needed.

The judge responded to her, "Linda, I think you're right."

Knowing that the judge had confidence in her gave her an overwhelming sense of satisfaction and pride.

"It was better than any high I had from any drug," she said.