Drug Courts: Adult and Juvenile Rehabilitation Programs
Eugene Berry
Crj2200
Introduction to Criminal Courts

Drug courts handle nonviolent substance abuse offenders, drug courts are used primarily to solve a problem rather than to send someone to jail or lock an offender away with less chance of rehabilitation. In the United States there are currently almost 2500 drug courts in the 50 states as well as the U.S. territories of Guam, and Puerto Ricco. Drug courts got their start in Florida, in 1989 judge Gerald Wetherington, Judge Herbert Klein, and state attorneys designed the court for non-violent offenders in Miami-Dade County, to battle a rising crack-cocaine problem in there city’s. Drug courts are a program the can involve different levels of intensive supervision by the courts themselves, this includes drug testing and substance abuse clinics or treatment programs. Drug court judges gain a lot of discretion and leeway in this system and can give the offenders instant or gradual sanctions if the offenders fail to meet the standards of the program given. To help keep the offenders compliant the courts can offer fewer drug tests, fewer court dates, and even the possibility of reduced or completely dismissed sentences if they programs are fully completed. Drug courts are proven to keep offenders from repeating their offences and the overall reduction in recidivism rates on these charges. There is research being done today that shows this treatment method could reduce drug related crimes even though it doesn’t show to reduce the demand for drugs in the country. These programs however when combined with treatment, can be a way to stop incarceration rates for low level, and non-violent repeaters from swelling up the jail population to its current all-time highs.
The US congress passed a grant program in support of the growing drug court system, these grants are handed out by the BJA and the DOJ. Congress budgeted 530million dollars in federal funds for drug court grants in since 1995. In 2010 alone congress gave the grants in total of 45 million dollars. Since these programs started sweeping the nation there are now new expanding programs to cover other types of abuse, with growth of over 466 juvenile drug courts specifically for those under the age of 18, as well as a growing number of DUI or DWI courts to help treat guilty plea offenders with over 166 active today. There are no actual national totals available at this time for total number of participants in these programs but the Urban Institute using a statistical model estimated that over 55000 offenders are treated each year, with an astounding 1.47 million people in total that are eligible to participate in these programs in the united states. Drug and DUI courts are one of the most effective strategies for curbing recidivism to date. There are many critics that say that these court programs do not really reduce recidivism any more than normal incarceration, parole or probation methods. On main issue with knowing for sure who is right is that the court systems do not normally track the abstinence of the offenders after the programs are complete, the only way to know if the offender failed to stay clean is if he gets caught again.
These court programs are evaluated by three different criteria. First is evaluating the overall operations, which track the number of participants, the number of offenders who complete the programs, and how many referrals to the programs are received from the court system. Second is the cost-savings compared to the conventional cost of arrest, incarceration, and any criminal victimization that occurs? They have to prove that there funding is cost effective compared to the normal process mentioned. The third criteria is the effectiveness of the programs on the lives of the offenders compared to the offenders who were not referred to these programs and were processed through the traditional systems. Research shows that many offenders to not respond to traditional incarceration and that more than half fail to drug test or comply with treatment conditions and rules of normal probation methods, and that the majority of these offenders return to drug use as soon as 6 months after release from jail. The Government Accountability Office used Meta analytical techniques to study the effectiveness of the drug court and dui court systems starting in 2005. The GAO reported that these programs did in fact lower recidivism rates at a noticeable and reportable level. They found out that the after program recidivism rates of the offenders continued to decline even after graduation of the programs. Four out of five of the programs that reported for the study had shown lower relapse rates than the traditional comparison groups studied the used incarceration and probation. The fifth study showed that there was no noticeable difference in the positive drug testing when compared but still shows that it was at least equal to traditional methods. Four of the GAOs study’s studied the cost effectiveness comparisons. Only one of the four study’s reported a benefit cost of about 800 – 8,500 dollars saved per offender. The three other studies showed a cost of 750 – 8500 dollar increase in spending per participant compared to conventional case processing. This direct cost comparison when compared shows no favor for the drug courts being a cost effective way to handle drug and dui offenders. The GAO realized they missed an important factor and calculated and reported the reduced costs of crime resulting from the recidivism reductions gained from the programs. The report showed that when added the programs saved in total 1000 to 15000 dollars per participant compared to traditional processing cost. So after all is totaled thanks to the reduced recidivism rates directly reducing the cost of crime, the programs are shown to be in favor over the traditional methods when it comes to financing and cost saving. Juvenile drug court programs came into place to try and push the success of the adult drug courts into the juvenile justice system. There are two main goals that are mentioned when these programs were launched. First is to provide “intensive and continuous judicial supervision over delinquency and status offence cases that involve substance abusing juveniles”. The second is to provide “coordinated and supervised delivery of an array of support services necessary to address the problems that contribute to juvenile involvement in the justice system”. The second goal is reached through services of mental health care, family care, and substance abuse treatment. In 2007 the center for Criminal Justice Research obtained a grant to fund a research study on the outcome and process evaluation of juvenile drug courts. Overall two of the nine courts scored as being effective, four scored low enough to need improvement, and three were claimed as ineffective. The referral agencies were scored as well and over 10 were found either highly effective or effective, and 12 were noted as needs improvement, and the last 13 were found ineffective. Juveniles were found to complete the drug court programs 1 percent less than traditional probation. When calculating the results for recidivism for drug and alcohol offenses the juveniles in the drug court programs had worse results when compared to youth attending standard probation after the program was finished. Follow up from both groups however tell us that drug courts had significantly lower chances of substance abuse in alcohol abuse specifically with a 8 percent less chance overall. For general drug use the drug court group was behind by almost 15 percent then standard probation methods. With only two of the drug courts giving evidence for better outcome with juvenile drug courts it’s apparent that the same techniques do not work remotely as well as with the adult drug court system.

References

Douglas B. Marlowe, David S. DeMatteo, and David S. Festinger, “A Sober Assessment of Drug Courts,” Federal Sentencing Reporter, vol. 16, no. 2, December 2003, p. 153.

Drug Courts. (n.d.). Retrieved May 20, 2015, from http://www.nij.gov/topics/courts/drug-courts/Pages/welcome.aspx
Latessa, E., Sullivan, C., Blair, L., Sullivan, C., & Smith, P. (2013). Final Report Outcome and Process Evaluation of Juvenile Drug Courts.