Justice Speaks Podcast Episode #53 

Justice Speaks continues its series of interviews with State Treatment Court Associations leaders and State Treatment Court Coordinators, interviewing Tammy Westcott the Director of the Criminal Justice Division for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health & Substance Abuse. This episode is sponsored by Reconnect.  As part of Ms. Westcott’s role, she works with all of Oklahoma’s Treatment Courts.   She also oversees the state’s prison re-entry program, its diversion programs, and the Office of Crisis Intervention team training.   

About Tammy Westcott

Ms. Westcott began her career as a minister before going to law school. After graduation, Ms. Westcott joined the Tulsa County District Attorney’s Office as a trial attorney.  During her last five years at the district attorney’s office she served as the Director for Alternative Courts which was the start of her involvement in Treatment Courts. She left the prosecutor’s office to become Program Director for the Tulsa County Courts before accepting a position with the National Association of Drug Court professionals (NADCP).  (NADCP has now renamed itself to All Rise.) There she worked for Justice for Vets.  Following that Ms. Westcott was asked by the State of Oklahoma to consider applying for a position in the Substance Abuse Services Department.  She decided to return home and become the Criminal Justice director in 2021.

As the Director, Ms. Westcott overseas a staff that is involved in all operational aspects of Oklahoma Treatment Courts.  Four of her team members are designated as field representatives who work with individual Treatment Court teams across the state. These representatives provide training, technical assistance and evaluations for the courts. 

Oklahoma’s Treatment Court Training Conference

Her division is also in charge of the annual Treatment Court training conference.  Ms. Westcott explains that this year the conference is changing.  The division provides educational tracks in two state wide conferences, one a children’s behavioral health conference held in April 2023, and an adult behavioral health conference scheduled for December 2023.  These expanded conferences will allow Treatment Court practitioners access to additional tracks on such topics as Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) and mental health issues. She is uncertain how many people will be attending these revamped conferences, but the Treatment Court conference in 2022 had over 400 attendees.

In addition to the annual training, her division offers webinars at least once a month, and they are working with All Rise on a “Train the Trainer” project that just trained fifteen Treatment Court professionals in Oklahoma. This will expand the state’s training opportunities. 

Funding for Oklahoma Treatment Courts 

According to Ms. Westcott Oklahoma Treatment Courts are funded in several ways, including state appropriations, grants, and some additional counties appropriations. She tells us that there is an exciting new funding approach that the state has just passed. In a series of bills that reduced all drug possession crimes to misdemeanors, one of the new laws requires that the resulting correctional savings is transferred to treatment services, including Treatment Courts.  

Challenges and Successes 

She describes her division’s greatest accomplishment is the dedication of her staff.  Beyond the problems posed by COVID she talks about the impact of the US Supreme Court decision in  McGirt v. Oklahoma.   This decision limited state prosecutions of crimes committed on tribal lands, causing an initial reduction in the number of individuals entering Oklahoma’s Treatment Courts. However, her staff’s efforts have reversed the decline with a net increase in the number of people entering into Treatment Courts.

Ms. Westcott then discusses the effort to revamp the focus onto misdemeanor drug offenders.  As she discussed earlier, a change in state laws reduced all drug possession cases to misdemeanors.  As a result, the State created a pilot program in city of Tulsa that is a “wrap around” and intensive case management program. This includes access to treatment, housing  and employment services. The initial outcome statistics from this pilot program are very positive. 

Ms. Wescott believes that Treatment Courts can be improved by reducing the staff turnover within the programs and improving how new team members are recruited and trained. 

Finally, she believes, over the next ten years, there will be a huge increase in the number of Veterans’ Treatment Courts, an expansion of the Tulsa Misdemeanor Diversion Program across the state, and an overhaul of the Juvenile Treatment Court model.

We wish to thank Ms. Westcott for joining us on Justice Speaks.  We also wish to thank Reconnect for sponsoring this podcast episode.

Additional Resource

You can watch this interview by going to the Justice Speakers Institutes’ YouTube Channel or by clicking here.