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Acknowledgments
This report describing the perspectives of the persons who participated in six of America’s major drug courts would not have been possible without the support, cooperation, and assistance of many people. First, we would like to thank Marilyn Roberts, Director of the Drug Court Program Office, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), whose leadership and support made this special undertaking a reality. Director Roberts recognized the importance of gathering information directly from drug court participants to gain valuable feedback, in their own words, on how they experienced drug courts.
We conducted 12 focus groups in 6 sites; 11 were composed of active or recent participants in the respective drug courts and 1, in Portland, Oregon, involved community members concerned with drug and crime issues. (The community focus group is not described in this report.) The focus groups in Las Vegas and Portland were funded under a related research effort, the National Drug Court Evaluation (I), funded by DOJ’s National Institute of Justice. These first focus groups served a dual purpose: to contribute to the ongoing evaluations in those sites and to pilot or “road test” the participant focus group approach for the other sites. What we learned in these first focus groups contributed greatly to the approaches that were taken in the subsequent sites. The findings from the six sites are combined in this report.
In all locations, the site courts were very receptive to the idea of participant focus groups and went to great lengths to arrange meeting spaces and identify appropriate candidates for the focus groups. We owe debts of gratitude to officials in each site who embraced the concept and provided the logistical support and cooperation that made the focus groups possible. In Brooklyn, Brooklyn Treatment Court officials, including Judge Jo Ann Ferdinand, Valerie Raine (Project Director), and Jayme Delano-Fitzgerald (Program Coordinator), helped us arrange the focus groups. In Las Vegas, our groups with Clark County Drug Court participants were made possible by the enthusiastic support and cooperation of Judge Jack Lehman, John Marr (Director, Choices Unlimited), Chuck Short (Court Administrator), and David Gibson (Public Defender). In Miami, Judge Stanley Goldstein, Bennett Brummer (Public Defender), and Kathy Fernandez-Rundle (Dade County State Attorney), as well as Janis Sanders (Director, TASC), Dr. Carolina Montoya (Director, Office of Rehabilitative Services), Doug Skinner, and Norma Stales, encouraged and facilitated the focus groups with Miami Drug Court participants. In Portland, Oregon, Judge Harl Haas, Michael Schrunk (District Attorney), and James Hennings (Metropolitan Public Defender), as well as Valerie Moore (Executive Director of InAct, Inc.), Robert Williams (Drug Court Coordinator for the Metropolitan Public Defender), and Ray Mathis (Executive Director of the Citizens Crime Commission), supported the focus groups in Multnomah County. In San Bernardino, Judge Patrick Morris and Debra Cima (Drug Court Administrator), as well as Anthony Saldana (Program Director, Mental Health Systems) and Nancy Hackett (Counseling Supervisor, Mental Health Systems), deserve our thanks for the assistance they provided in encouraging and arranging the focus groups with San Bernardino Drug Court participants. The King County Drug Court (Seattle) focus groups were made possible by the cooperation and assistance of Judge Nicole MacInnes and Mary Compiano-Taylor (King County Drug Court Program Manager) as well as Paige Garberding (Public Defender), Denis O’Leary (Assistant District Attorney), and Faire Lees and Bill Schipp (TASC drug court case management staff). All of these officials made this work possible through their dedication to drug courts and their commitment to learning more about how they were operating.
Finally, we must thank the nearly 150 drug court participants in the 11 focus groups in 6 locations who agreed to participate. These individuals were at various stages of the drug court process—some just starting out, some further advanced, others recently graduating. All were or had been in very difficult circumstances legally, healthwise, and in their lives generally at the moment they contributed their time to speak with us. In our observations of host drug courts, we saw participants earn praise, graduate, or be sent to jail after speaking with us. On the whole, they were more than candid, critical, and thoughtful and, no doubt, worked harder in addressing our challenging questions in the demanding 2-hour sessions than they had probably anticipated. We think their input—reported in the following pages—has more than justified the need for serious consideration of the views and experiences of participants to help improve development and inform evaluation of drug courts in the United States and elsewhere.
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