The women streamed into the Dallas County courtroom in a single-file line. Fourteen in all, they fanned out across the gallery’s wooden pews just after 2 p.m. and burst into conversations. Most women here knew one another, and they knew how the next hour would go. That mid-August day, they knew the face staring back at them, too.
“Where you been?” one woman called out.
“In trial,” Judge Nancy Mulder replied from the bench. “I know, I know. All the auxiliary court judges were all busy, so I couldn’t find somebody to take over for me.”
“I haven’t seen you in so long,” the woman said. “I thought you retired.”
Unlike usual court proceedings, this session is for celebration, not judgment. But in the last year and a half, these biweekly 60 minutes haven’t been guaranteed because of how often court has been canceled.
This is STAR (Strengthening, Transition, and Recovery), a diversion program for women with felony prostitution charges. It is one of 14 Dallas County courts that steer adults away from incarceration and toward supervision and treatment. People who volunteer to enroll prior to their trials are eligible to have their charges dismissed. The others can receive services during probation and reduce their fines or community service requirements. It takes 18 to 24 months for most to complete the programs.
Studies show these courts can lessen the likelihood of someone committing another crime and guide them to self-sufficiency so long as the judge ensures they are receiving required drug tests, counseling, and probation check-ins. Judges usually schedule two to four court hearings a month to encourage participants and admonish any who have veered off track.
But in Dallas, problems abound.
The Lab Report obtained specialty court grant applications, benchmark reports, and peer reviews; observed court proceedings; and interviewed nine people either enrolled or involved in operating the Dallas programs. State adjudicators subjected seven of the 14 courts to rigorous peer reviews last year, which are requested if they spot inconsistencies in court paperwork or have questions about how the courts are operating.
Records from the third-party reviews included the following shortcomings:
- Some courts were overly punitive with jail sanctions for participants who did not follow all the program’s requirements.
- Eligibility criteria was subjective or warranted a review because of low participation.
- Court staff needed better understanding of how past trauma can impact participant behavior.
- Participants struggled to keep their jobs while enrolled in the programs.
- Judges didn’t always hold court consistently or spent less than the minimum of three minutes recommended per person.
Three of the Dallas specialty courts — Felony DWI, a drug program called STAC, and the STAR prostitution court — shared multiple findings. But judicial experts say the judges have autonomy as to how their courtrooms run, even when their decisions undercut the goals of the specialty programs.
The national nonprofit All Rise established and maintains guidelines for specialty courts. If these programs stray from its guidance, research indicates that they can actually harm the vulnerable people they seek to help, from those in the throes of addiction to young adults facing first-time felonies. Many of these courts, including STAR, are funded by state grants that can be discontinued if problems arise. But each judge alone is responsible for addressing any concerns in their courtrooms.
“Nobody has the authority to tell a judge here in the state of Texas that they will do this, that, or the other as far as these programs are concerned,” said Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot.
Staff turnover can result in personality clashes and a lack of experience among program leadership, he said. A judge might launch a specialty program but is voted out or leaves the bench. Another might inherit the court but not prioritize its operation. Creuzot said his hands are tied to address concerns like poor attendance.
“I mean, if the judge doesn’t show up, what am I going to do?” the district attorney said.
In STAR Court, 15 of 31 sessions and a graduation have been canceled since July 2025, records show. Another four were overseen by different visiting judges instead of Mulder. At one point, the women did not see Mulder for more than three months.
National standards detail the importance of the same judge overseeing these programs, citing the risk of “inconsistent messages, competing demands, or inadvertent interference.” Unstable staffing can “exacerbate the disorganization in participants’ lives,” the research states. One study found an additional 30% reduction in recidivism when the same judge presided as opposed to two or more.
Mulder, a Dallas criminal court judge since 2015, expressed surprise when The Lab Report shared her attendance record. “That would equal seven months of not having court, which I just can’t believe that it was that much,” she said, adding it had been a “hell of a year” personally. She detailed medical issues, a family death, helping a relative move, purchasing a new house, and taking her son to college. She said visiting judges sat in for her regular docket and she didn’t realize STAR’s former probation officer canceled at least four sessions. She said she was in trial during at least two other cancellations.
“It is my responsibility to make sure that the STAR Court meetings take place, so I take full responsibility for not ensuring those meetings were taking place back then,” Mulder later wrote in an email after reviewing records obtained by The Lab Report. “I can say that we’ve remedied this issue.”
If out of office, she said, an auxiliary court judge will preside “unless they are in trial and I can’t find anyone else.”
Dallas County pioneered diversion programs in Texas. In 1998, as a district judge, Creuzot launched what he calls the first “structured” specialty court in the state: DIVERT, or the Dallas Initiative for Expedited Rehabilitation and Treatment. In lieu of prosecution, people facing their first alcohol- or drug-related felony can get help for their substance use disorders as they work to get their cases dismissed or punishments reduced.
The first specialty courts in the U.S. were adult drug programs like DIVERT, promoted as a rehabilitative way to relieve jail overcrowding and reduce case backlogs during the Reagan-era war on drugs. A Southern Methodist University study into DIVERT in the early 2000s found a 68% reduction in recidivism. “That just blew me away,” Creuzot said. The weekly hearings convinced him he’d been making “a lot of poor decisions in court.” It became clear to him that some defendants would benefit more from help than incarceration.
These courts proliferated nationwide over the following three decades. More than 4,200 treatment courts now exist across the country, serving everyone from veterans to sex workers to people with alcohol or mental health disorders.
Texas has 214 registered specialty courts in 56 counties. In 2021, a state law known as the Judge Ruben Reyes Act carved out a stable funding source: 1% of all tax revenue from mixed beverage gross receipts and sales, which grew funding for these programs from about $2 million to $12 million annually. Counties can apply for a share, usually awarded based on program capacity and total participants.
Dallas County judges often volunteer to oversee the specialty courts alongside their regular dockets. Outcomes can vary widely. To Creuzot’s knowledge, DIVERT and AIM are Dallas’ only adult programs that have had in-depth, independent recidivism studies. (AIM helps young adults facing first-time nonviolent felonies; a 2021 study found a 74% recidivism reduction.)
Some programs, like STAR, are required by state statute. Since 2013, Texas law has mandated counties with more than 200,000 residents pursue state or federal funding to operate a commercially sexually exploited persons court. STAR Court was already running, created in 2008 by Creuzot and then-District Judge Lana Myers as one of the first specialized prostitution courts in the country. Within two years, 35 women were enrolled.
“For a judge to say, ‘You’re going to jail’ just doesn’t work,” Myers told a Dallas Observer reporter in 2010. “They can do jail time standing on their heads. What they really need is someone to lift them up, to give them a bus pass.”
“I mean, if the judge doesn’t show up, what am I going to do?”
Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot
Women are routed to the program from the DA’s office or a court, but their participation is voluntary. Once enrolled, they can be referred to services such as healthcare and job training. They “phase up,” or advance, if they record clean drug tests, maintain consistent counseling and check-ins, and reach employment milestones. Those who fail to comply or quit usually return to the criminal court system for prosecution or sentencing.
Myers was appointed to a state appeals court in 2009, leaving STAR to be overseen by different judges. Mulder inherited the court in 2023. She said she saw STAR as a way to help since many of the crimes she tries are drug- or alcohol-related.
“It is purely an idea to try to help people, the poorest of the poor, the lowest of the low,” she told The Lab Report. “Just trying to help these women who are seen as, you know, just prostitutes.”
She initially felt “very green,” she said, but now is happy with how STAR has operated “on a shoestring budget.” The program receives around $160,000 from the state grant, which helps pay for a probation officer, a probation staffer who screens potential clients, and a STAR counselor, Mulder said. Fifteen women currently participate in the court; a few others are in treatment facilities before they progress to the courtroom sessions.
Mulder said underfunding in Dallas County’s criminal justice department has hindered STAR’s ability to address the women’s needs. Many participants spent decades in sex work and need extensive services; some are homeless and the court can’t provide a place to sleep, she said. Drug testing alone is expensive.
“We may not be great all the time,” Mulder said, “but we are trying with what we’ve got to work with.”
Other Texas counties assign a magistrate to oversee most of their specialty courts. A magistrate is typically appointed by local judges to focus on a specific area of the law, instead of balancing a traditional trial docket.
Elizabeth Rainey, a magistrate judge in the West Texas city of Midland, operates three county-funded specialty courts and will soon add another. Hers are staffed by four probation officers who each manage about 35 cases. “All I do is specialty courts,” Rainey said, “which I think is the best job in the whole world because I don’t have to deal with juries or any of that other nonsense.”
That set-up has appeared to pay off. All Rise named Midland’s Adult Felony Drug Court a “National Mentor Court,” which means it stands out as a model for other jurisdictions to mimic. Rainey attributed its success to following best practices: “We have a handbook that says exactly what we’re supposed to do. If you have an ugly baby, just kiss it, right? If you don’t have a resource, then let’s just acknowledge it and do the best we can.”
Rainey is also one of nine members of Texas’ Specialty Courts Advisory Council, which makes recommendations to the governor’s office on which courts to fund every year. Speaking generally, Rainey said some judges use these programs as a “badge to wear” during elections but aren’t engaged in their operations. She also knows of judges who prioritize them while keeping up with criminal dockets. They may hold a session after 5 p.m., schedule it on Fridays when jury trials are over, or pause a trial to make time. “If you don’t have the same [buy-in] coming from the team, especially from the leader of the team being a judge, I mean, that’s going to be evident and it’s going to be felt,” Rainey said.
Since 2018, when Rainey started Midland’s first drug court, she said she’s had someone cover for her only three times (each of which, she noted, was because she was in the hospital and had no choice). Participants reveal deeply personal experiences; it’s important the person who presides is someone they trust who knows their struggles, she said.
“They look forward to coming to court just to have those three minutes with the judge,” Rainey said. “Like that special parent-child relationship: You want this authority figure to tell you that you’re doing well, which is good, but then that authority figure also needs to be there to hold you accountable.”
Research backs that up. Drug court participants consistently rate their interactions with the judge as “one of the more important and positive aspects of their experience,” according to the National Institute of Justice. When a judge spent longer than three minutes with each participant, positive outcomes and program cost-efficiency surged.
Participants might join primarily to avoid prison, but sitting behind bars can be easier than sticking with these programs, said Rainey. “We are forcing you to face trauma and pick through roots and scabs,” she said. But if done right, “it can make a vast ripple of change.” She recalled a Midland participant with two young daughters who faced a decade in prison. Now, she supports her girls as a nonprofit’s executive director.
Grant applications include questions about judicial attendance, drug testing, and training, but are largely self-reported, which makes accountability difficult. Texas’ Office of Court Administration began to provide oversight in 2019, but only has two employees, said Erin Morgan, one of its program managers. In 2022, the state began to commission peer reviews through its Specialty Court Resource Center housed at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. The reports are usually requested if officials are confused about an application or spot a red flag in the paperwork, Morgan said.
“Not everybody’s going to be able to be 100% on every standard just because not every jurisdiction has the capability,” Morgan said. “But you got to be minimum standards or you’re hurting people and making them worse.”
Peer reviews recommend next steps and an action plan to improve each court’s operation. But the presiding judge has to choose to implement them.
The review for Dallas’ Felony DWI Court noted “overwhelmed” probation officers and said participants reported inconsistent treatment, difficulty maintaining jobs because of program stipulations, and “little grace or flexibility” when hardships arose. Reviewers from Williamson County, north of Austin, made 13 priority recommendations, including that Judge Tracy Holmes needed to spend at least three minutes with each client, attend court more often, address violations faster, and avoid punitive measures. The participants “should never be detained in jail to achieve treatment or social service objectives,” they wrote.
Months after the report, the state declined to renew the DWI court’s grant. Holmes said in an email that the county now funds its operations, noting its “success and necessity.” She declined to comment on the peer review’s findings.
Rainey led the review into STAC (Successful Treatment of Addiction Through Collaboration), a specialty court overseen by Judge Lela Lawrence Mays. The report detailed the harms of jail sanctions among the court’s 180 enrollees. Participants felt they were punished even after completing treatment and reported the requirements felt like a part-time job, the reviewers wrote. The findings included that court staff “should feel safe” to voice their opinions and that the team needed to better assess participants’ trauma for their treatment plans.
In a 7-page response to the Specialty Court Resource Center, Mays outlined a plan of action but disagreed with many of the reviewers’ points, writing that clients are provided due process with jail sanctions and her court prioritizes less punitive measures like community service and reprimands. She said her team already undergoes quarterly training and has been a “pioneer in implementing trauma-informed care” for more than two decades.
Mays contended that Midland’s review team lacked an understanding of the “unique challenges and complexities” of operating in Dallas and appeared to base the report on “personal opinions.”
“While we are more than willing to have our processes reviewed and refreshed by the advantage of a peer review,” the judge wrote, “we must respectfully assert that Midland, Texas is not our peer in population, in complexity or in any other measurable set of relative analytics.”
In an email to The Lab Report, Mays referred to her 7-page letter, adding “our position on this matter remains unchanged.”
In February 2025, reviewers from Tarrant County listed four main recommendations for Mulder’s STAR Court: more drug testing, a memorandum of understanding between team members, staff training on trauma-informed care, and that “court should be scheduled on a consistent basis.” Mulder said she was in trial more often during her first two years leading STAR and could not find substitute judges. (Dallas County’s Community Supervision and Corrections Department did not respond to multiple requests for STAR attendance records prior to 2025.)
Mulder said the women see their probation officer and therapists weekly. “I didn’t realize just seeing me for that little talk is just as important,” the judge said in an interview. Ideally, she added, Dallas could be like other counties that require only a magistrate judge to oversee the courts. She said she’d be open to stepping down if it meant better outcomes for the women in STAR.
“I don’t know that there is a magistrate who would volunteer,” Mulder said. “But if that would make it more consistent, then maybe that should happen.”
The hearings follow a formula. As Mulder called name after name during three recent STAR sessions, her rapport with the women was obvious. Each of the 14 walked to the center of the room to face the judge while others clapped from the gallery. Mulder usually began each conversation with some variation of, “How you been?”
Some were new. Quite a few said they didn’t have housing and were staying at shelters. One woman had an out-of-state warrant and Mulder told her to cite her STAR enrollment to clear it. A participant relayed a roadblock while trying to find a job; Mulder said staff would set her up with the Texas Workforce Commission. A different woman needed help fixing a typo on her birth certificate. Another said she’d started grief and trauma counseling and was beginning to heal after a miscarriage. One said she was applying for federal student aid and her family was finally embracing her again.
“I’m proud of you,” Mulder said, again and again. She awarded McDonald’s and Lyft gift cards to women who had been performing especially well.
At her turn, the woman who asked Mulder where she had been during the session in mid-August spoke in a mock-serious tone. “You was not here,” she said, and pointed at Mulder. “I phased up.” Those behind her clapped and cheered. The woman rubbed her stomach over her white T-shirt, revealing a baby bump. She told Mulder she was due soon, and the two discussed medication for postpartum depression.
Most of the admonishments were light. Mulder ordered one woman to stop posting sexual content online and urged another to set up her voicemail. A woman was referred to the nonprofit New Friends New Life for resources; a few others to Metrocare for mental health services. Those who missed a drug test were reminded of its importance.
Penalties escalate for repeat infractions. At the end of STAR’s most recent hearing on Tuesday, bailiffs handcuffed two women who failed to show up for drug tests. Mulder had placed both participants on “zero tolerance” in the past for the same problem. “I hate doing this,” the judge said to herself as she prepared the detention paperwork. She listened to the women explain why they missed their check-ins, but ordered one to jail for two days and the other for three.
“We do have consequences,” the judge said. “I’m sorry that it’s hard.”
Mulder told the group to keep their chins up. “I know it’s a major bummer when people have to serve some days,” the judge told the court. “But this happens. It’s to make a point; mistakes happen, there’s consequences, but then we all continue on, OK?”
Some of the women have come a long way. In an interview with The Lab Report, one participant said she’d been on the streets for more than two decades but joined STAR when she tired of prostitution and drugs. (The Lab Report agreed not to name program participants due to safety concerns.)
The woman said she first scoffed at STAR’s requirements; she didn’t want to leave home for a time-consuming program. Now, after more than two years in STAR and an additional one sober, she’s close to graduating. “I’ve learned stuff about my addiction, I’ve learned stuff about myself, and I think I’m a better person because of it,” she said.
It makes a big difference, she said, when Mulder is present instead of a visiting judge.
“I don’t open up like I do with her,” the woman said. “They really want to see it succeed; and that they got a program for people like you means a lot.”
Mulder handed the woman a yellow slip. It marked an achievement: She’d made it to her final phase. “Yes!” the woman shrieked to a swell of applause. She told Mulder she planned to celebrate with ice cream.
Before she returned to her seat, the woman described her gratitude for STAR. Then, in a moment that showed the potential of these programs, she made a vow.
“I’ve grown so much,” she told Mulder. “There’s nothing that would make me go back to that lifestyle.”
Kelli Smith is a staff writer for The Lab Report. kelli@labreportdallas.com.