Drug Courts: In Theory and in Practice PDF
Preview Drug Courts: In Theory and in Practice
D R UG C O U R TS D R UG C O U R TS IN THEORY AND IN PRACTICE James L, Nolan, Jr, Editor 13 Routledge Taylor & Francis Croup LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2002 by Transaction Publishers Published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2002 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2001007581 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Drug courts: in theory and in practice / James L. Nolan, Jr. p. cm (Social problems and social issues) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-202-30712-3 (cloth : acid-free paper) ISBN 0-202-30713-1 (paper : acid-free paper) 1. Drug courts—United States. 1. Nolan, James L. II. Series KF3890 .D777 2002 345. 73'0277—dc21 2001007581 ISBN 13: 978-0-202-30713-8 (pbk) Contents Preface vii Contributors xv Parti: Empirical Explorations 1 1 Theory and Practice in the Baltimore City Drug Court 3 William D. McColl 2 Systemic Constraints on the Implementation of a 27 Northeastern Drug Court Elaine M. Wolf 3 West Coast Drug Courts: Getting Offenders Morally 51 Involved in the Criminal Justice Process Sara Steen 4 The Denver Drug Court and Its 67 Unintended Consequences Morris B. Hoffman 5 Separated by an Uncommon Law: Drug Courts 89 in Great Britain and America James L. Nolan, Jr. Part II: Theoretical Assessments 113 6 The Adversary System and Attorney Role in the Drug 115 Treatment Court Movement Richard C. Boldt 7 Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Drug Treatment 145 Courts: Integrating Law and Science John Terrence A. Rosenthal v vi Contents 8 Drug Treatment Courts: A Traditional Perspective 173 Susan Meld Shell 9 The Drug Court Movement: An Analysis of 189 Tacit Assumptions James J. Chriss 10 Drug Control and the Ascendancy of Britain's 215 Therapeutic Culture Frank Furedi 11 Drug Courts, the Judge, and the Rehabilitative Ideal 235 Philip Bean Index 255 Preface The rapid expansion of the American drug court movement is now a rather well-documented story. Practitioners, politicians, and academics alike ac knowledge the profound impact drug courts have had on the American criminal justice system. From a range of disciplinary perspectives, con tributors to this volume seek to make sense of this important judicial in novation. What follows in this introduction is a brief review of the drug court phenomenon and a summary overview of the chapters included in the volume. In response to several developments—not the least of which was the growing number of drug cases crowding American courts and prisons in the 1980s—the first drug court was initiated in Dade County, Florida, in 1989. Judge Stanley Goldstein was the first judge to preside over what would become the essential model for over seven hundred similar courts established throughout the United States since. While drug courts vary from location to location, they share the same basic defining features: Drug courts offer drug offenders, as an alternative to the normal adjudication process, an intensive court-based treatment program. Unlike previous di version programs, such as Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime (TASC), the courtroom, rather than the clinic, is the focal point of treatment. That is, participants or clients (as they are typically called in drug courts) return regularly to the courtroom, where they engage directly and personally with the judge. In addition to these regular encounters with the drug court judge, clients participate in individual and group counseling sessions, Alcoholics Anon ymous (AA) and Narcotics Anonymous (NA) twelve-step groups, and acupuncture treatment. Progress in these various treatment modalities is monitored by the drug court judge who, during court sessions, offers praise and prizes for success and admonitions and sanctions for noncom pliance. Sanctions can vary from increased participation in weekly NA meetings, to community service, to several days of incarceration. Clients agree to participate in drug courts with the promise that successful com pletion will result in dropped charges or an expunged record of arrest. It is a process advertised to take one year, but that often lasts much longer. vii viii Preface In many important respects, drug courts depart from the practices and procedures of typical criminal courts. Prosecutors and defense counsel, for example, play much reduced roles. Often lawyers are not even present dur ing regular drug court sessions. Instead, the main courtroom drama is be tween the judge and client, both of whom speak openly and freely in the drug court setting. Often accompanying the client is a treatment provider, who advises the judge and reviews the client's progress in treatment. Court sessions are characterized by expressive and sometimes tearful testimonies about the recovery process, and are punctuated with applause from those in attendance. Once completing the program, clients participate in color ful graduation ceremonies, which involve emotional speeches from grad uating clients, the issuing of graduation certificates, and sometimes visits from the media and local luminaries. Media coverage of the drug courts has been almost universally positive. Moreover, the movement has been supported by politicians across the po litical spectrum. Federal support for drug courts has increased steadily over the past seven years. In 1995 the Drug Courts Program Office (established within the Department of Justice in the same year) issued $12 million in grants to drug courts. During the Clinton administration this increased to $15 million in 1996, to $30 million in 1997, and then to $40 million in 1999. In February 2001, President Bush designated $50 million in his proposed budget for drug courts, the highest level of federal support to date. So pop ular is this new form of criminal adjudication that new domestic violence courts, juvenile drug courts, family courts, reentry courts, and community courts have been initiated based on the drug court model. Drug courts have even spread internationally: England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, and Canada have, within the last several years, established programs inspired by the U.S. model. Moreover, in 1999 the United Nations Drug Control Pro gram convened a meeting with representatives from eleven different coun tries to discuss the international implementation of drug courts. Movement activists, therefore, do not overstate matters when they speak of drug courts as a movement, even a revolution, in the criminal justice sys tem. Just over a decade after the first drug court was established Jeffrey Tauber, former president of the National Association of Drug Court Pro fessionals (NADCP), wrote in a November 2000 letter to NADCP members that the drug court movement had "come of age/' and that a vision to "change the face of the criminal justice system" through the movement had been largely realized. As evidence he noted the joint resolution passed by the Conference of Chief Justices and the Conference of State Court Ad ministrators in August 2000 endorsing drug courts and "problem solving courts" based on the drug court model. The resolution acknowledges the "rapid proliferation of drug courts" and the strong "evidence of broad community and political support" for Preface ix the movement. Moreover, it commits the chief justices and state court administrators to "take steps, nationally and locally, to expand and bet ter integrate the principles and methods of well-functioning drug courts into ongoing court operations." It also encourages the "broad integration over the next decade of the principles and methods employed in problem- solving courts in the administration of justice." Less than a year later, the American Bar Association (ABA) followed suit, adopting a very similar resolution at its annual meetings. Here the ABA called for "the continued development of problem solving courts" and went so far as to encourage "law schools, state, local and territorial bar associations, and other organi zations to engage in education and training about the principles and meth ods employed by problem solving courts." The available evidence strongly suggests that the intentions of these res olutions have been and are being realized. For example, by the summer of 2001, more than 1,200 drug courts had been initiated or were in the plan ning and implementation stages throughout the United States, with drug courts operating in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico. It has been estimated that more than 225,000 clients have en rolled in a drug court program and that more than 1,500 judges have served as a drug court judge. Also, as noted above, the model has spread internationally and has inspired the development of a host of other prob lem-solving courts. A sociological analysis of the emergence and impact of the American drug court movement was the focus of my book, Reinvent ing Justice: The American Drug Court Movement (2001). It was in the context of finishing this project that the idea for this volume came to mind. Rein venting Justice offers an overview of the sociohistorical developments lead ing to the initiation and growth of drug courts, a detailed ethnographic account of twenty-one drug courts around the United States, and a consid eration of the unintended consequences of the movement. While the book helps explain why drug courts were developed and what they look like in practice and in effect, the work invites further research in several respects. For one, the national focus of the earlier project welcomes additional em pirical examinations at both the local and international levels. Thus, inten sive locally focused empirical assessments of individual drug court sites are important to confirm common features and/or to tease out differences pe culiar to certain locations. Also, as mentioned above, the U.S.-led drug court movement has recently become an international phenomenon, the full sig nificance of which would profit from comparative assessments of emerg ing courts in very different national contexts. Moreover, Reinventing Justice raises, but does not directly address, a number of other questions more po litical, philosophical, and jurisprudential than sociological in nature. A fuller comprehension of the movement's complexity and consequences would, therefore, benefit from a diversity of disciplinary perspectives.
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