Woman Given Last Chance Rehab Order
Recently, a judge decided to order a woman who had a quite severe history of thievery to enter into a drug treatment program as her last chance to get clean and avoid jail time. The woman was in her mid-forties and appeared before a judge because of a probation violation. The probation was violated by the woman because she had used heroin. The probation had originally stemmed from a conviction in 2007 for theft, but that arrest was not the first time that the woman had been to court as she had already been arrested and convicted for theft in the past.
Apparently the woman was so apt to engage in thievery that she had over fifty arrests for theft over the years. After being convinced by the lawyer for the woman that it would not be a good idea to give her more jail time, the judge said that the woman would need to choose a Bay Area substance abuse facility and spend time there to try and recover. The lawyer said that the woman had been clean for a few years but she had then become hospitalized and after her time at the hospital became addicted to the medication that was given to her.
Unfortunately she had attempted to get more drugs after she had otherwise run out of medication from the hospital and this meant going to the street to obtain them. The reason that the woman was granted a treatment program instead of jail time was because the judge suggested that the woman had never actually had the benefit of a treatment program.
