"A Headful of Recovery: Judge Shackley Raffetto and Maui Drug Court"

In its April 29, 2004 issue, Maui Time Weekly profiled Judge Raffetto and Maui Drug Court:

Shackley Raffetto is a gray-haired man with an easy smile and a soft voice who looks every bit like the tax attorney he used to be. That he'll soon be entering his second 10-year term as a Maui Circuit Court judge is also pretty easy to believe. Same with his prior service as a U.S. Naval Reserve member of the Judge Advocate General Corps, or his current work as an instructor in the Defense Institute for Legal Studies, which offers training and advisement to jurists in emerging democracies.

The judge and his books

About the only thing not immediately believable about Shackley Raffetto is his view of how the courts should deal with drug offenders.

"I think a lot of [why people do drugs] is self-medication," he said in a recent interview. "We've had lots of people who've had extraordinary traumas in their youth. I really think a lot of it is self-medication. The first thing an addict knows is that the drug works. It blocks out the pain. There are side effects, like it leads to crime. We ask people who enter the program to write an essay about why they're here. They mention abuse, violence, terrible things. Because they get into drug use and criminality they get marginalized in our society. And we've got to bring them back. Even when you send someone to prison, they're coming back. And we have to address that--make them a county asset again."