| Summary: | Drug Treatment Courts and Their Progeny: Overcoming Their Winding Trajectory to Make the Concept work for the Long Term
Author: Caroline S. Cooper
Abstract
The introduction of the drug court model in 1989 jumpstarted a revolution in terms of the criminal justice system’s approach for dealing with drug involved defendants. Many lessons have come out of this experience, including the recognition of the complexity of factors that often lead to drug use, the complexity of services needed to address it, both in the short and longer term, that therapeutic approaches and quality treatment services are far more effective in treating drug addiction than in incarceration and associated punitive mechanisms, and that to keep these programs effectively running, significant judicial oversight is needed to keep their many “moving parts” in sync. The author provides a summary overview of the evolution of the drug court model in the U.S. along with some of the challenges that have surfaced based on the technical assistance and training she provided to hundreds of drug court programs. Although more refined data is clearly needed, anecdotally it is reported that over 5,000 judges have served as drug court judges, many of whom report the significant value and insights the drug court experience provided for their judicial perspectives and skills as they dealt with their general caseload, not simply the drug court. With over a quarter of a century of experience in implementing the drug court model, the time is ripe to reexamine in greater depth the drug court experience and current issues that have emerged, and to develop a more structured and systematic approach for sustaining the drug court model over the long term.
Key words: drug court, drug treatment court, therapeutic jurisprudence, procedural justice, addiction
|
|---|
