President’s Corner

From the RID Oak Ridge/Anderson County President, Kelly Dagenhart

Board Status

We wish the retiring RID Board Members well and hope they will be able to support us in future projects.

We now have 13 RID Board Members and the authorized RID Board maximum was expanded from 20 to 25 members at the December 2005 RID Meeting. We have lots of needed unstaffed projects and need to spread the existing work around to more people.

RID Web Site

RID of Oak Ridge/Anderson County has had a website active since Fall 2000 and has slowly been building up material on the site. Our webmaster is Buford Carter. The web address is: www.discoveret.org/ridorac.

The summary of the RID 2006 National Coalition Conference at the Double Tree Hotel on May 27 & 28, 2006 is on the website. Since many of our articles from each newsletter have an enduring usefulness, we will keep the issues on the website for a limited time deter-mined by the space we have and other material we wish to display. There are also several web pointers on the site to other useful material. We invite comments on how to improve the website.

New Court Watchers

We now have about 20 active court watchers. We still need more court watchers to be able to watch all of the court sessions and handle vacations, sickness, schedule conflicts, etc. An estimated 80% of the value of a court watcher is in just being at court when the DUIs are tried. We particularly need watchers who will go to Clinton Court sessions. We have a training program for new watchers and a Court Watcher’s Manual available in PDF format. (Adobe® Reader® is required to view this document. Click to download if needed.) The other estimated 20% of the value comes from the records that the court watchers provide for our trend analysis and the suggestions for changes in the court system and laws to provide increased court performance.

Court Watch Data System

Our newly upgraded Court Watch Data System has been programmed and now is in the process of being implemented into the Court Watch Program. We wish to welcome Mary Alice Woods as our new Court Watch Data Analysis person. Her training and work until retirement was in statistical data analysis. We are in the process of analyzing a lot of old data gathered from past years that had not been analyzed recently. Any court watchers who have old data, please call Kelly Dagenhart at (865) 483-8801 so that we can get that data into the system. We also have on our data analysis team, Dr. Ed Frome, a statistician recently retired from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Anderson County Drug Court

RID sponsored an Anderson County Drug Court Kickoff meeting on October 14, 2003 at Oak Ridge First Methodist Church which was attended by approximately 35 county officials and interested citizens. RID President Dr. William Kelly Dagenhart presented a brief Power-Point show of top reasons why we should have a drug court. Oak Ridge resident Ron Hanaver of RID, who is Drug Court Coordinator of Knox County, presented detailed reasons for Anderson County to adopt the Drug Court System. This was followed by a Q&A session. After two aborted starts for the Drug Court we now have commitments from new office holders Judge Elledge and District Attorney David Clark and their team that the Drug Court will be formed and made operational by this summer. We hope to have two relatively new aspects included into the Drug Court. One is to have a combined DUI/Drug Court and the other is to include Faith-Based Mentoring from the Church Community. The latter was shown to reduce recidivism by 85% in a talk by Cheryl Czuba at our RID 2006 National Coalition Conference in May. This Faith-Based Mentoring Program is being made formally available by the University of Connecticut and will be available for wide use in the fall of 2007.

Roane County Drug Court

RID sponsored a Roane County Drug Court Kickoff meeting in on October 24, 2006 at the Roane Co. District Attorney‛s Conference Room which was attended by approximately 20 county officials and interested citizens. RID President Dr. William Kelly Dagenhart presented a PowerPoint slideshow of top reasons why we should have a drug court in Roane County. Oak Ridge resident Ron Hanaver of RID who is Drug Court Coordinator of Knox County presented a talk and question and answer session detailing how to implement the Roane County Drug Court System. Roane County has a commitment from the drug court team to form a Drug Court soon. As with Anderson County, they have committed to a combined DUI/Drug Court and to include Faith-Based Mentoring from the Church Community.

Governor’s Task Force on DUI Laws in Tennessee

RID of Oak Ridge/ Anderson County President Dr. W. Kelly Dagenhart and Doris Aiken, President of RID National, in their paper at the RID 2006 National Coalition Conference called for DUI Task Forces to be formed from the national down to the local level. Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee establishlished The Governor‛s Task Force on DUI Laws in Tennessee on March 6, 2006 and the Task Force has just released its findings to the Governor. I have just posted a copy of the Task Force Findings at www.discoveret.org/ridorac. This is a big step in the right direction. The direction of this task force should not have been limited to just laws, but should have included Law Enforcement, the Court System, among other things. The first report is very encouraging. The passage of this legislation will require the active support of many of the citizens including all RIDDERs.

Court Watchers Needed

If you know of anyone who might become a court watcher or a RID worker, call Kelly Dagenhart at 865-483-8801, with their agreement or with their name and he will call them. We need your help.