The basic design of the convention hall barn roof guarantees terrible acoustics and lighting, with its exposed beams and utilities. (Compare the video simulation presentation to what is actually in place, the reality is much worse than the artist’s rendering).

To make matters worse, only 2/3 of the convention hall will be in the barn, the rest will have a low ceiling underneath Ballroom “A”. This in effect creates two separate rooms, whether the dividers are open or not. There will be movable dividers attached to the columns which support Ballroom “A”, allowing two separate conventions to be held at the same time.

Since Interstate Hotels has come into the picture, Josh Nowak (a really nice young gentleman) and Mark Moosic (a true professional) have repeatedly mentioned to the LCCCA board the possibility of scheduling sporting events and public performances, neither of which are practical given the design of the convention hall barn.

I believe these comments are nothing more than fiction designed to make the LCCCA board feel better about the extremely limited facility that they are stuck with.

If ever there would be a Drug Court that would be successful, a visit last Tuesday to the Court of Judge David L. Ashworth convinced an activist in the field of drug policy reform and harm reduction that the program is located here in Lancaster.

Judge David L. Ashworth has the clean cut look of a 1950’s movie star, and his commitment to helping those before his court takes second place to no social worker. Married thirty years and the father of three daughters, Ashworth exhibits both compassion and a toughness of both mind and body, as witness his second degree black belt standing in Tang Soo Do Karate.

His routine Tuesday afternoon court session started with the announcement of the birth of a healthy baby to a couple participating in the program, along with the date of the annual picnic for court personnel and clients. Participants were called before the judge in groups of three and addressed by their first names in a caring manner.

Each was asked about his or her progress. The judge, well versed by his “team” of drug court offices, asked about regular attendance at support group meetings, about progress in receiving reimbursement when a car was rear ended (and proffering a helpful suggestion), checked on progress of faltering relationship with a volunteer sponsor with whom clients are encouraged to share their concerns and successes, responded to a request for advice about a possible job change by reminding that the prime consideration is “recovery comes first”, and admonishing a recalcitrant male for excessive dirty urine samples “if you aren’t serious about recovery, don’t take up the space” as the offender was hand cuffed and taken back to jail.

He was also told how “48 hours in prison woke me up” from a male, and was saddened when a bright young lady, soon to graduate from the program, explained that she “can’t go to nursing school due to an earlier misdemeanor” even though her current charges were being expunged.

Yet, in Judge Ashworth’s own words as part of a posting at http://www.co.lancaster.pa.us/courts/cwp/view.asp?a=3&q=604908:

“How do you measure success? Is it the number of graduates? Is it the methodically collected information outlined in the Process Evaluation Report prepared by a well respected PH.D. from Millersville University? Perhaps it’s the number of letters received by the “Team” thanking them for saving a life or reuniting a family. Or maybe success is measured best by the four “totally clean” babies born since the program was started. Whatever the measure, those of us involved in the Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas Adult Drug Court have seen tremendous changes in the lives of those Drug Court participants (and their families) with whom we have worked over the last two and a half years.

“Is Drug Court a success? Only time will tell. For me, serving as the Drug Court Judge has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. I’ll leave the final analysis of whether it is a ‘success’ to those more learned in evaluating statistics…”

According to the Sixth Edition of Drug War Facts (www.drugwarfacts.org/drugcour.htm), Drug Courts have been much applauded, however some concerns about their fairness and effectiveness have been expressed.

These include:

1. Providing coerced treatment at a time when the needs for voluntary treatment are not being met creates the strange circumstance of someone needing to get arrested to get treatment.
2. People who are forced into treatment may not actually need it. They may just be people who use drugs in a non-problematic way who happened to get arrested. Arrest may not be the best way to determine who should get treatment services.
3. Drug Courts are a much less expensive way of handling drug cases in the criminal justice system, thus they may result in more people being arrested and processed, many of whom would not have been arrested or would have been diverted. And it is true that the number of drug arrests has grown dramatically since the early 1990s. Thus, drug courts may be expanding the number of people hurt by the drug war.
4. Drug Courts are creating a separate system of justice for drug offenders, a system that does not rely on the key traditions of an adversary system of justice and due process, a system where the defense, prosecution and judge work as a team to force the offender into a treatment program.
5. Drug Courts typically rely on abstinence-based treatment. For example, methadone is sometimes not available to heroin addicts.
6. In addition, Drug Courts rely heavily on urine testing rather than focusing on whether the person is succeeding in employment, education or family relationships, and in avoiding re-arrest.
7. Drug Courts also sometimes mandate twelve-step treatment programs which some believe to be an infringement on religious freedom.

Further Excerpts:

Drug Courts invade the confidentiality of patient and health-care provider. The health-care provider’s client is really the court, prosecutor and probation officer, rather than the person who is getting drug treatment. Pertinent accompanying factoids are: “The last decade has seen the rapid growth of specialized court forums in the states. The first drug court was created in Dade County, Florida in 1989; all but ten states followed that example within the next decade.”

Source: Rottman, David, et al., Bureau of Justice Statistics, State Court Organization, 1998 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, June 2000), p. 207.

“Even offenders who do not succeed in drug court appear to be less criminally active than they were previously. This may be due to the benefits of treatment or the supervision, sanctions, intensive surveillance, and specific deterrence of the drug court.”

Source: Gebelein, Richard S., National Institute of Justice, “The Rebirth of Rehabilitation: Promise and Perils of Drug Courts” (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, May 2000), p. 5.

In a law review article, Colorado Judge Morris B. Hoffman writes, “Reductions in recidivism are so small that if they exist at all they are statistically meaningless. Net-widening is so large that, even if drug courts truly were effective in reducing recidivism, more drug defendants would continue to jam our prisons than ever before.”

Source: District Judge Morris B. Hoffman, Second Judicial District (Denver), State of Colorado, “The Drug Court Scandal”, North Carolina Law Review (Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina Law Review Association, June 2000), Vol. 78, No. 5, p. 1533-4.

In a law review article, Colorado Judge Morris B. Hoffman writes, “By existing simply to appease two so diametric and irreconcilable sets of principles, drug courts are fundamentally unprincipled. By simultaneously treating drug use as a crime and as a disease, without coming to grips with the inherent contradictions of those two approaches, drug courts are not satisfying either the legitimate and compassionate interests of the treatment community or the legitimate and rational interests of the law enforcement community. They are, instead, simply enabling our continued national schizophrenia about drugs.”

Source: District Judge Morris B. Hoffman, Second Judicial District (Denver), State of Colorado, “The Drug Court Scandal”, North Carolina Law Review (Chapel Hill, NC: North Carolina Law Review Association, June 2000), Vol. 78, No. 5, p. 1477

The visiting activist hesitantly offered the Judge two copies of Drug War Facts and suggested that he might be interested in reading the section on Drug Courts. The judge replied: “I intend to read the entire book!” No one would doubt that he will.

Among my early observations was that the Convention Center should NEVER be built adjoining a residential neighborhood, particularly (in the case of Lancaster) in an area which contributes greatly to the crime stats.

Ah, the Stockyard site would have been so much better.

Editor’s note: Best of all would have been to have upgraded the Brunswick, thus accomplishing for $30 million that for which we are spending almost $200 million, and putting Lancaster Square to good use.

I unexpectedly stumbled onto some extremely significant information regarding a past Sunday News propaganda piece supporting the hotel and convention center project.

On Sunday, July 22, 2006, the Lancaster Sunday News printed an article titled “Sun shines bright on KY city” and sub-titled “Lancaster’s effort for a convention center mirrored in Covington”. This article went on to describe a successful convention center in Covington, KY, a city about the size of Lancaster that just happens to be directly across the Ohio River from downtown Cincinnati, Ohio.

As was noted at the time the article was published, Covington’s convention center is an easy walk across a bridge from downtown Cincinnati….

Cincinnati does have a convention center. In 2001, vicious race riots broke out in the area immediately surrounding the Cincinnati convention center as a result of a number of black residents being killed by white police officers. According to Wikipedia, to this day the level of violence in Cincinnati remains high.

The race riots were followed by an organized boycott of Cincinnati downtown businesses, which is still in effect. This boycott specifically includes the convention center.

As a result, many of the conventions which would otherwise have scheduled an event in Cincinnati have relocated to the Northern Kentucky Convention Center in Covington, which is less than a mile and a half from the Cincinnati convention center.

I was also told there is grossly insufficient parking in the immediate area of the Cincinnati convention center. But the Covington convention center has a large parking garage immediately adjacent to the facility, along with hundreds of parking spaces on surface lots surrounding the convention center.

This information paints the Sunday News propaganda story in an entirely different light.

NEW ERA, May 24, published a letter stating “…we learned that the (Lancaster) school district had approved a lucrative contract with the new school superintendent that includes $800,000 in wages…”

WATCHDOG: We admire the Lancaster Newspapers’ willingness to include letters representing a wide variety of opinions, but the New Era editor errs by not at least adding a foot note to explain that the $800,000 is over a five year period. That amounts to $160,000 annually.

The New Era owes its readers and the School District of Lancaster an apology and a clarification in Monday’s “Letters to the Editor” section.

WATCHDOG: Kudos to the editors of The Lancaster Post for their May 23rd edition. It is an example of constructive, responsible journalism. May this set a precedent for future editions.

The Post can be read in its entirety at www.LancasterPost.com. Once one gets the hang of how the web site works, it is as easy to read all the pages as if the tabloid were sitting in one’s lap.

The Post is also available for free at Turkey Hills and other retail outlets throughout the county.

By George Sheldon

Barnabas House, the faith-based halfway house in Conestoga, is planning to move. Just established within the past month, the transitional housing facility provides a temporary home for four men, three of whom are on Megan’s List.

“We’ve already been offered another property that is on a bus route,” Tom Armstrong said.

For the past two weeks, emotions have run high in the usually quaint, peaceful town of Conestoga. The community uproar started when former State Rep. Tom Armstrong rented an apartment on Main Street to house the offenders that have been recently released from prison.

On Monday, May 17, a crowd of over 300 jammed the Conestoga Fire Department to attend a citizen’s informational meeting. The majority of the boisterous and often unruly residents clearly did not want the halfway house in their community.

The ‘Not in My Back Yard attitude’ was clearly on display from those that expressed themselves with vulgarities and shouts.

Ben Vonderheide, who has been involved in an ongoing custody battle that is chronicled on his Web site, http://www.daddyjustice.com/, owns the property where the Barnabas House is located. On the Web site, Armstrong is shown in a video saying, “We learned that you (Vonderheide) may have some issues with your son’s custody, and we did not want to do anything to create a difficult situation in the custody issue.”

Because of the recent controversy in Conestoga, the planned new location of Barnabas House has not been released, nor has the date of the intended move. Armstrong, who provided an extensive and exclusive interview with NewLanc.com on Thursday, believes moving his ministry has become more complicated because of the reaction of the Conestoga residents.

“No one wants this kind of attention,” Armstrong says.

For the past days, hushed vigilante threats of “burn them out” have been circulating throughout the town. The property owner across the street from Barnabas House has posted several “No Trespassing” signs on the lawn, and has sent a letter to the residents demanding they stay off the property.

The May 23rd editorial “Second Chances” asks “…where should society house former sex offenders who have served their time in jail?”

After carefully tip toeing down both sides of the issue of where former sex offenders should be housed, the Intell concludes: “The first order of business must be to protect our children. But there also is a need for a rational dialogue on this matter by residents, organizations and state and municipal officials. To do anything less makes those just released from prison victims of their past and heightens the odds of recidivism.”

WATCHDOG: The Intell deserves credit for their responsible reflections on the complex and emotion fraught matter. And we agree that protecting our children does take priority and indeed is the first rule of nature.

So what are the most important things from which we must protect children?

Though not meaning to belittle the seriousness of involving children in premature sexual experiences, we believe far greater and lasting damages results from psychological abuse, assault, reckless driving, criminal neglect, and murder. We need to ask ourselves why we stress dangers that are neither fatal or, in most case, likely to have lasting results, over circumstances that are far more threatening? After objectivity gains control over emotions our emotions surrounding fear and sex, we will be ready to have that “rational dialogue.”

As first reported on NewsLanc.com on Tuesday, May 20, Monica Mosely, Assistant District Attorney, told the Lancaster County Commissioners that there was a real need for three more Youth Aid Panels in the city and township, while the rest of the county was adequately covered.

Mosely today told NewLanc that by noon on Thursday, May 22, she had received over 150 inquiries from residents expressing interest in volunteering for the program. (The Intelligencer Journal carried the story on its front page on Thursday.)

“The response has been overwhelming,” Mosely said. She added that it will take some time to process all the requests for information and participation.

Because juvenile offenders make a contract with the community to make amends for the offense they committed, volunteers must be from the local community, and not just county residents. In Lancaster City and Township, Mosely is seeking to establish five youth aid panels, one for each of the five magisterial districts.

WATCHDOG: Kudos to the New Era for publishing on May 19th a lengthy letter by Rev. Jim Kalish entitled “Megan’s Law has little or no impact on recidivism.” After quoting from Human Rights Watch and other studies, Kalish concludes:

“Sexual assault is a horrific act, but the Megan Law is no solution. Rather, it is diverting us from finding real answers and it makes very poor use of existing limited resources.

“Efforts are under way here to adopt the Human Right Watch study to Lancaster County’s situation, suggesting alternative policies and programs to reduce sexual crime and increase the reintegration of sexual offenders back into the community in such a way as they do no harm to themselves or to others.”