It’s a typical afternoon in Colorado. The sun is shining, yet dark clouds are in the distance, foreshadowing a storm on the way. However, the atmosphere inside Courtroom B at the Westminster Municipal Courthouse is bright and cheery. Dark clouds won’t dampen the mood for everyone who is there. It’s a day Paula Frazier thought she’d never see. The Westminster resident thought overcoming her personal demons would be too hard, she didn’t think her life was worth the fight. She was wrong. Today is the day she graduates from Westminster’s Wellness Court.
Frazier, a grandmother to 17 grandchildren, is very open about her struggle with alcohol abuse. She said she started drinking alcohol when she was only seven years old.
"I grew up in North Carolina. My uncle made moonshine, and we drank it,” she explained, adding there wasn’t much else to do in her small town.
Now, at 63 years old, she stopped drinking thanks to support from the City’s Wellness Court, an innovative type of court the City started in 2019. As our population grows and shifts, the City’s judicial system is adapting to meet the needs of our community. Some might think of the courtroom as an impersonal place focused on punishment, but this is a perspective Judge Jason Lantagne hopes to change for individuals participating in the wellness court program.
“The traditional nature of the criminal justice system is very adversarial and focused on the punishment of crime,” Judge Lantagne explained. In an effort to lead with empathy and compassion, Judge Lantagne sees the City’s wellness court as a means of reducing recidivism, while protecting the community and improving the lives of its participants. “The wellness court takes a different approach. It's a positive, incentive-based model and can create very meaningful changes, but it requires an investment of time and resources.”
Westminster court staff and prosecutors evaluate offenders for the program on a case-by-case basis, typically focusing on people with charges like trespassing or theft. There are several criteria that an offender must meet, including no history of violent crimes. If the offender is deemed a good fit, then the judge will ask them if they want to join wellness court. If they do, they must take accountability and plead guilty to their crime and agree to participate in all of the program’s terms and conditions. While many participants could receive a jail sentence and close their cases, participants enter the program knowing that their time in wellness court will often be more challenging than what their jail stint may have been. However, the opportunity to have support in turning their lives around makes the commitment worth it.
According to their mission statement, the Westminster Wellness Court aims “to help high-risk, high-needs individuals who are charged with municipal criminal offenses achieve success through navigator support, peer accountability, regular court participation, and connection to community resources.”
Once an offender agrees to join the program, Westminster’s Wellness Court Navigator Hannah Friskney steps in and helps get them acclimated. She offers resources and support to guide them to a better mental and physical state so they avoid becoming repeat offenders.
“As they advance through the wellness court phases, we offer them incentives along the way, which are gift cards, hygiene kits, or bus passes,” Friskney said.
According to Frazier, those incentives work. She remembers watching her peers in the program get one, but the judge said she couldn’t have one yet because she hadn’t earned it. She said not getting that Subway gift card made her want to prove to everyone that she could do it, that she could be better.
If participants do not meet the program requirements, there are consequences called “sanctions,” with losing an incentive being only one option. If a participant repeatedly fails to meet their commitments, they can be sentenced to community service, coming to court early, maintaining a journal, or even jail. “It's likely going to be more work than what they would have done had they just gone straight to sentencing and taken a 30-day jail sentence," said Judge Lantagne.
The wellness court concept is part of a growing trend of specialty courts that is gaining popularity in cities across Colorado and nationwide. Although some people might think such courts are soft on crime, Friskney argues that is not true at all. “In fact, I think wellness court involves a quite a bit more accountability than just being sentenced to traditional probation or going to jail,” Friskney explained. “Jail has a time limit, but then there's not necessarily accountability on the other side of that and it costs more to our taxpayers.”
When it comes to accountability, participants must do more than just admit their wrongdoing and plead guilty. They are required to attend regular court hearings where they have to be honest with the judge about any slipups they might have experienced during the week. Although the judge leads with compassion, participants know they have to accept whatever course correction the judge orders.
Changing bad habits and getting out of rough circumstances is not easy and doesn’t happen overnight. “It's a lot of time and emotional investment by the participant in the program,” Friskney explained. “Change comes with growing pains, they're experiencing these active growing pains of becoming sober and the active growing pains of improving your mental health and addressing your trauma,” but it’s more than that, Friskney added. “They’re dealing with the active growing pains of contributing to the community that you're just learning how to build, so we are requiring a lot of our participants.”
In Frazier’s case, she said she wouldn’t have been able to get sober and turn her life around without support from Judge Lantagne and Friskney. Even when Frazier slipped up in her sobriety, she said Judge Lantagne never lost faith in her and did his best to help her get on board with the program. “He had faith in me, he believed in me.” She said honesty throughout the program is what truly helps. When she was going through a dark time, she wasn’t afraid to let the judge know, because she knew he genuinely cared for everyone who comes through the program. After binge drinking, “I went to him and I told him, I wanted to kill myself. He thought about what I said, and you could tell he was trying to decide if he should lock me up to save my life, so it was hard for him, too,” Frazier remembered.
Ultimately, he did not send her to jail, choosing instead to have a hard conversation with her. “He said, ‘you have to really lean into this program or I’m going to have no choice but to do what I have to do.’ So, I told him alright.” Frazier knew she did not want to go to jail, so she decided to start hearing what Friskney had to say.
Frazier’s transformation didn’t happen overnight, and Friskney didn’t give up.
“All of it was time, it was really showing her we care, that people care about her, about her doing well,” Friskney said. “The longer she didn't drink because she didn't want to go to jail, I think the better she saw her health and her life.”
Getting sober and changing a life is about more than just putting down the drink. Wellness court helps participants get to the root of their problems. At first, Friskney set Frazier up with traditional talk therapy, but when that didn’t work, she switched gears. “Our team wants to find resources that make sense for people that they’re actually going to benefit from,” Friskney said.
She introduced Frazier to peer support where participants meet with people who have been in similar situations and have come out on the other side. They have either gone through recovery or are in active recovery and have become certified peer coaches. “Peer support now comes every time we have court. They also run a peer support group right after court, so all of our folks now join that peer support group. It’s another way of knitting community together,” Friskney said.
Once Frazier connected with a peer support counselor she could relate to, Friskney said it just clicked. Frazier worked with counselors and underwent regular drug and alcohol testing to show she was on the right path. Even though the path sometimes curved and wasn’t a straight line to graduation, she made it.
Now that Frazier is done with the program, she said she will never go back to drinking. She wants to stress how important this program is and that it’s not the City being soft on crime. “We need this program, and we need a lot more of them,” Frazier said. “We need honest people to work the program. If you’re not honest, you’re not ready, you’re not hungry, don’t do the program—do the time.”
On the day of Frazier’s graduation, she put on a cap and gown and proudly strutted through the courtroom while Pomp and Circumstance played over the speakers. Wellness Court participants cheered her on, imagining themselves following her footsteps in a year’s time.
The ceremony was emotional. People who know Frazier shared stories of how much she had overcome to complete the program and become a functioning member of society. Judge Lantagne spoke first.
“Where you were in a mindset, where you were in terms of decision-making and your ability to handle problems and handle your state of being several months ago as to where you are now, the transformation is unreal. You have become a role model in the program and other participants talk about what they’ve seen you accomplish and the hope that it gives them,” Judge Lantagne said. He used the moment to stress how one person’s success betters the whole community. “During your journey, you’ve created a wake of good things behind you. The path that you have built for yourself, I’m just so excited for the good things that are going to come for you, but also the good things that are going to happen to the people you interact with because you’ve changed your outlook on the world and become such a positive, can-do person. You’ve brought joy to so many people in the court. I’m going to miss seeing you every couple of weeks here.”
Several others spoke, including a prosecutor who commended Frazier on being a positive person with a positive attitude and wanted to congratulate her on a well-deserved graduation.
When it was Friskney’s turn to speak, she admitted she wouldn’t be able to get through her speech without crying, and those words were true. “You and I have been together for months and months now, and we worked really hard together.” She wasn’t exaggerating—the work was hard. Getting Frazier on the path to success wasn’t easy. “Paula has a lot of medical needs, but didn’t have many of the medical supplies she needed,” Friskney remembered. Because it would be hard to stay sober and avoid reoffending without those supplies, Friskney put in hours and hours of work to get her what she needed. They called various agencies to get her medicines, to pick up her leg braces, to get transportation so she could attend her therapy appointments. “We spent a lot of time together on the phone and walking through the different processes so that if those needs come up again, she now knows how to do it herself. All of these processes are so complicated and tedious.”
Friskney puts in the same effort with all of the people in the program. “I see them more than I see any people in my regular life even, we’re spending a long time together working through tedious processes together. I think so highly of everyone in the program.”
Back in the courtroom, Friskney continued praising Frazier in front of her peers. “I think you underestimate just how much light you bring into a space. I remember you telling me that when you started this program, you thought, ‘I might as well kill myself, I don’t need to be here.’ But think about how much you’ve impacted people by being here and all the work you’ve done and all the positivity you’ve brought to us. I can’t wait to see what you’re going to do. I’m really proud of you and grateful to you for the gift you’ve given us of allowing us on this journey alongside you.”
Then it was Frazier’s turn to take the mic. “I want to say thank you. I was a handful. Many times, I wanted to tell the judge to put me in jail. But my team said, ‘Paula you can do it.’ It feels good to be sober, you saved my life because I tried to kill myself because of the struggles I’ve been through, but now I’m alive and it feels good.”
Frazier is paying that good feeling forward. She still attends wellness court to show support for people moving forward in their own journeys, and she also joins the peer support group to help show it is possible to change, and that the program is worth it.
“Paula is a really good example of what we’re hoping to create with this program,” Friskney said. “This thriving community in this small setting of wellness court ripples out to the larger community of Westminster and then the larger community of the metro area.”
When asked if people really can change, Friskney responded with confidence. “It's a really special experience to actively see people change,” she said. “I get to see it in tiny, tiny increments every day. And then at the end, when you're looking back at the beginning, you're like, wow, this huge change has happened. And I just think that's a real gift that the City provides to the participants in the wellness court program.”
During her time as a participant, Frazier would ring a little bell every time she entered the courthouse. It became one of her rituals. As part of her graduation present, the wellness court team gifted her with two bells, which she continues to ring every day when she gets up in the morning. It’s more than a symbolic gesture — “It lets me know that I’m here and I’m ready.”