American Drug Policy and the Evolution of Drug Treatment Courts (From Juvenile Drug Courts and Teen Substance Abuse, P 27-54, 2004, Jeffrey A. Butts and John Roman, eds. -- See NCJ-208175)

• NCJ Number: 208177
• Author(s): John Roman; Jeffrey A. Butts; Alison S. Rebeck
• Date Published: 2004
• Length: 28 pages
• Sale Source: Urban Institute Press
• Publication Format: Book (Softbound)
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

In describing the proliferation of drug courts in America during the 1990's, this paper argues that the drug court concept was evolutionary, not revolutionary, in that it was a movement of existing substance abuse treatment regimes into the criminal justice domain.

Abstract

The proliferation of drugs courts during the 1990's was not the result of a revolutionary change in American social values, nor did it involve a sudden shift in drug policy. It resulted from a century-long evolutionary process that moved the medical model of treatment for drug abuse, which had been the exclusive domain of social services, into the criminal justice model of mandatory and coercive case management. Juvenile drug courts apparently evolved directly from the adult drug court model, rather than as an adaptation of traditional juvenile case processing. The need for specialized case processing for drug-abusing juveniles followed many of the same precursors of adult drug courts, i.e., rising caseloads of drug offenders and perceptions of the effectiveness of drug treatment in reducing the demand for drugs. The rapid proliferation of both juvenile and adult drug courts, however, was largely due to Federal funding and training that provided uniformity in drug court operations across jurisdictions. Most drug courts pursue a mission that attempts to blend a concern about reducing recidivism and providing effective treatment. How these goals are balanced is a function of each drug court's history. 35 references