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What do you think the purpose of drug court is?
Brooklyn
Brooklyn Treatment Court participants offered what turned out to be fairly
common explanations of what they understood as the purpose of the drug
court, basically seeing the drug court as an opportunity or another chance:
- Brooklyn Treatment Program is there to help you get on with your
life and try to get yourself together. . . . So they say, well listen,
I give you another chance. I’m gonna send you to detox. It was
on me to get high when I walked out. Then they gave me another chance—to
go into a residential—so they really didn’t do anything bad
to anybody—they really just try to help you be a human being, a
successful person in society, to do what you had to to do. If you didn’t
come back to treatment court, you was going to go to jail and experience
Rikers Island to see if you like that. So I don’t really have anything
bad to say. . . .
- Well, I think the purpose of it to me . . . is that they tell you,
it’s like, they gonna give you an opportunity to live or die. It’s
just as simple as that to me. It’s either you want to live or you’re
gonna die. And they give you all the ways to see either you’re
gonna live or you’re gonna die. That’s it.
- This is just to help people get on the right track.
- I believe the purpose of the court is to help the community, ’cause
I’m an individual in that community. . . . They don’t see
us a bad people; they see us as good people doing bad things and they’re
just trying to help the individual so they can grow. . . . It helps
the community itself; and we all try to help each other.
- I was just going through the motions. I didn’t even know how
to stop. I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to stop. I was just like
on automatic pilot. Up, smoke, just like that, same thing . . . getting
caught up in something . . . and breaking that cycle, it gave me an
opportunity to know where to go. . . . A lot of times you don’t
really know where to go or how to start to get yourself a break. Once
you get caught up in that mode, you can’t get out of that mode.
It’s like a merry-go-round. But they gave me an opportunity to
say, stop and look back at whatcha doin’ and where you goin’.
Now you have an opportunity—you got the positive side . . . and
it’s all on you. I wanted to do it for such a long time but I just
didn’t know how.
- I think the purpose of the treatment court is to give you a second
chance at living. To get your life back together. . . . [Brooklyn Treatment
Court] gave you the opportunity to change your life and get your life
back together.
- For me it’s a rehabilitation. Give me an opportunity to pick
myself up and start over.
- I believe . . . it gives you an opportunity for a second chance. .
. . It gives you a choice.
- An opportunity to turn things around.
Las Vegas
Las Vegas focus group participants had widely varying views on what the
purpose of the drug court was and how they regarded the experience. Most
participants agreed that the main purpose of the drug court was to help
people and, in this aim, that it represented a very different criminal
justice experience for them. Common responses to the question asking them
to explain what they believed the purpose of the drug court was included
teaching people how to “get off drugs,” getting people away
from a lifestyle of drugs and crime, avoiding incarceration, and giving
people an “honest chance.”
- I think it honestly represents a chance, and somebody who never even
dreamed about turning around, okay, they can. . . .
- I think when the program started the intentions were good. . . .
- You know something, I was hiding out using it for [keeping me] out
of the pen. But it also made me aware. I didn’t think I had a problem.
I thought everything was okay. This made me look back and say, “Hey,
I was messing up.”
- I think the main purpose for drug court is that most of the crime
stems basically from drugs and alcohol and if they can get them to realize
that in the process of the drug court . . . the more people that come
out and decide to stay straight, the less crime it could end up being.
. . .
- I think it’s to teach someone how to get off drugs and not just
put them in jail.
Some participants had different, more cynical ideas about the purpose
of a drug court. One participant said that the drug court is the government’s
way of making money:
- In my opinion just to get money for the State . . . by having you
pay every week.
Another said that the drug court concept was:
- The government’s way of dealing with the inability to create
more prison space.
Miami
Miami participants saw the drug court as a very helpful experience:
- To help you out . . . to come clean . . . and also the purpose of
it is to clear your record.
- To become clean and show us that there is a better life than drugs.
. . . We don’t need that. I have two children and they know I come
here . . . a 13-year-old and an 8-year-old. . . . I tell them very flat
and open, my children. They know why I come here, they know what I do
for a living. That’s the way it is and I feel good coming here.
- To better yourself as a person, right? Just like, I mean, what he
said, you come here to keep clean, aright, to better yourself as a person.
To make you see beyond what you’ve been doing.
- I think also what they’re saying but also to help people . .
. the people who have really been on drugs . . . to make sound decisions
and I think they really want to help them get back on the right tract
so they can live normal productive lives and get their priorities straight
as far as being aware of themselves and what they want in life because
your priorities change once you’re off those drugs and you start
changing, your priorities start changing and you change and I think
that what they want. They want us to change, to get us back to normal,
back on track and live productive normal lives.
- To keep me off of drugs.
One participant saw the drug court as a result of crowded jails:
- One of the reasons they started is ’cause they didn’t have
enough beds in jail. . . . So there was a bed shortage in the jails.
That’s why we first started it.
Portland
Portland participants offered a variety of opinions about the goals of
the Portland drug court. Some felt that the program was beneficial since
it provided rules and guidelines for behavior and supervision. One participant
said that the drug court helped him/her set priorities in his/her life.
Another said that the drug court provided structure to his/her life:
- I think the drug court really is all about, or what it is for me,
was to show me that I had an opportunity to get my life together by
making some serious behavioral changes. . . .
- The court is giving you the rules and parameters of behavior while
the facilitators are helping you to live up to that standard.
- For me, it gave me a sense of getting my priorities back in mind and
being structured enough to do what I’m supposed to do.
- It gives me a reality check. I had been into drugs so long, so hard,
I had not even slowed down to see where I was standing. I was [committing]
suicide.
Other participants said that they believed the purpose of the drug court
was to solve a person’s addiction problem:
- I think it’s an attempt to get people out of the system by solving
a person’s addiction problem, out of the justice system, some of
the crimes are related to drugs. .
- They said to me, okay, you’ve been using drugs, you finally got
caught, we’re not just going to slap you on the hand, we’re
going to keep you here for a year. Do right. We’ll feed you all
this stuff, show you the sickness you have, and, after the year, let
you go, it’s up to you whether you’re going to continue using.
- There has never been any place for drug addiction, except the criminal
justice system, and I think this has provided an alternative place for
the medical system, so to speak, in the health care system for drug
addiction, not just the criminal justice system.
One Portland participant thought that the purpose of the drug court was
to reduce recidivism and also reduce jail overcrowding:
- It’s going to cut down on the recidivism rate for people who
have drug offenses. It’s going to ease overcrowding in the jails.
It’s going to save the county and State money in the long run,
because they are going to spend less money putting us through treatment
than they are locking us up.
Some of the participants had less positive comments about what they thought
the purpose of the drug court to be:
- Actually, I think the drug court plays the role of a babysitter.
. . . I think it’s a babysitting capacity.
One participant said that he thought it was an insurance scam; another
thought it had financial aims:
- They were worried about my insurance. They called me four times to
make sure I got it paid. I don’t know that they are being honest
with us.
- It’s more like a boundary. . . . To me I don’t think they
really care . . . much about what happens to you, as long as they’re
doing their job . . . as far as the payment issue and stuff. If you
can’t pay they are going to throw you in jail. . . .
San Bernardino
San Bernardino participants were convinced the drug court was designed
to help them, to teach them a new way of life, and to give them a second
chance, but with structure and enforcement . . . a needed “hammer.”
- You don’t like it. . . . You gotta go deep down in your heart
and understand it’s like a second chance. . . . You’d rather
be out here than in jail.
- A second chance at turning your life around. . . . It’s the best
place because you got a hammer over your head . . . y’know, jail.
It’s like you just gotta do it. It’s the hammer.
- It’s a mind thing, it’s all up to you. . . . This program
gonna be on your neck for a year but it’s all up to you if you
really want to stay clean.
- Most of us want to be different people and have a normal life with
a house and kids and all, but a lot of us are still into drugs and we
don’t know how. And, you know, going to jail doesn’t stop
us. This gives you a chance to change your life around.
- I think it helps you feel special. . . . I want a future and I couldn’t
do that on my own.
- To me, I think it’s more responsibility. It teaches you how to
be more responsible, how to manage your life, and encourage you to get
a job . . . and give you a different frame of mind than being an addict.
- To show me and my kids a clean way of life and not the life I had
in the past. . . . It tries to show us a different way, hopefully a
better way.
Seattle
Seattle participants saw the drug court’s purpose as involving a
response to jail crowding and an element of punishment, but with an overall
helpful intent:
- The prisons are getting so overcrowded and they’re not going
to help the addict by throwing them in prison. . . . So the idea of
drug court is to keep them out of prison, put them in treatment and
get their lives back. . . .
- Also, I believe in drug court there is some punishment . . . facing
jail and different types of sanctions. . . . It guides people into different
avenues of opportunity.
- It’s treating people like people instead of criminals.
- To give the drug addict an opportunity to get off drugs and straighten
out his life. . . .
- Drug court was designed I believe for political reasons. . . . I believe
it was designed to help overcrowding in the penal institutions. Instead
of warehousing us into institutions, it treats us as individuals.
Back to Drug Court Knowledge
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| An Honest
Chance: Perspectives on Drug Courts |
April
2002 |
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