NCJ Number
215863
Journal
Drug Court Review Volume: 5 Issue: 2 Dated: 2006 Pages: 1-32
Date Published
2006
Length
32 pages
Annotation
This article outlines the national research agenda for adult drug courts and describes the process used by the National Research Advisory Committee (NRAC) to identify the research priorities.
Abstract
The NRAC developed a list of 23 research priorities for adult drug courts that fall within 6 key research domains: (1) judicial or court practices; (2) incentives and sanctions; (3) substance abuse treatment and other services; (4) community supervision and case management; (5) interagency and intersystem collaboration; and (6) differential impacts on minority citizens. The main goal of setting the research agenda was to encourage researchers to move beyond the question of whether drug courts work, which has already been established, to focus on why and how they work. The NRAC is an expert panel of nationally recognized scholars who were convened in 2005 by the National Drug Court Institute to develop a research agenda for adult drug courts. The NRAC began by specifying a set of standardized criteria for identifying critical research questions that included considerations of whether the research question was policy-relevant, whether it was amenable to high-quality research, and whether it built logically on an existing body of research evidence. After the list of 23 research priorities were identified by the NRAC, the list was reviewed by a national sample of 150 professionals involved with a broad range of professional disciplines within drug court programs, such as drug court coordinators, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, case managers, and treatment providers. Respondents rated each research priority by its perceived importance to the field. The NRAC has planned future meetings to focus on the research needs of juvenile drug courts, DUI/DWI courts, and family dependency treatment courts. References, appendix, table