Chad Dutka, who serves on the communications staff at Grace Polaris, a Grace Brethren congregation on the north side of Columbus, Ohio (Mike Yoder, lead pastor), is the photographer behind an image used in a Christianity Today story this week.
The story details how CATCH Court is helping women who are arrested on the streets of Franklin County, Ohio, and sent to rehabilitation for detox and intensive therapy.
A portion of the story appears below:
…Before, Herbert admits, “I would have said that women engaged in prostitution were involved in the world’s oldest profession.” Now he considers it “the world’s oldest oppression.”
Herbert decided to establish a restorative justice program for these women, launching CATCH Court—”Changing Attitudes to Change Habits”—in September 2009 with the support of his colleagues. Traditional treatment and probation had never been successful with this population, Herbert explains. Prostitutes simply cycled in and out of jail. The other judges told him, “If you want to try this experiment, go right ahead.'”
Through the two-year CATCH Court, women are sent to residential rehabilitation programs to detox and receive intensive therapy. Their movements are monitored electronically, they are subject to random drug tests, and they appear before Judge Herbert weekly in the courtroom to report on the progress. “I wish you could see the way they interact with each other,” he says. “They all have each other’s phone numbers, and they call, and they make meals for each other, and if one’s in the hospital, they all go visit her. It’s an amazing community.” …
Read the complete story here. You’ll see Dutka’s name at the end of the story.
