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IX. Court Responses to Participants’ Progress
 Do you think the rules are fair?
 An important rationale for the drug court approach is that it offers
participants an opportunity to engage in a sound treatment process in
a consistent and fair environment in which favorable progress is encouraged
and rewarded and lack of compliance is sanctioned, sometimes with incarceration
or termination from the drug court program. Because of the importance
of this assumption, focus group participants were asked to comment on
the fairness and consistency of responses to participant progress in drug
court.
Click here for excerpts of comments from focus group participants.
What kinds of rewards and sanctions have you experienced in drug court?
Another underlying premise of the drug court model as it has grown and
changed in applications around the country is that use of incentives and
sanctions will shape behavior through deterrence. Many courts have developed
quite an array of rewards (promotion to the next phase of the program,
certificates, applause, and graduation) as well as sanctions (essays,
sitting in the jury box for several days, demotion to an earlier phase of treatment, jail,
and termination). Focus group participants were asked to talk about rewards
and sanctions they have experienced and how they reacted to them.
Click here for excerpts of comments from focus group participants.
Is jail important? How well would drug court work if the judge didn’t
send people to jail when they were performing poorly?
Originally employed as an important element of the Miami Drug Court,
incarceration as a sanction—or “motivational jail” as the
Miami Drug Court officials termed it—has become a special deterrent
sanction intended to give a message to participants who are failing to
comply with the conditions of the drug court and who risk termination.
The use of incarceration with drug courts has been the source of some
debate, with critics arguing that drug offenders are not fazed by the
prospect of incarceration, that incarceration should be used selectively
to have any effect, and that excessive use of incarceration in the drug
court program defeats the purpose of having the program serve as an alternative
to incarceration.
Whether asked directly or indirectly, participants in all focus groups
expressed great reluctance and even fear of going to jail. In fact, they
seemed to suggest that selective use of incarceration in drug court worked
very much in the way it was intended to work: as a last resort motivator
or a feared “hammer” for persons not taking the program (and
their addiction) seriously.
Click here for excerpts of comments from focus group participants.
Would you rather be in drug court or go to jail for a few months?
Another assumption underlying the drug court model is that substance-abusing
defendants facing incarceration will choose participation in drug court
to avoid incarceration. Moreover, as suggested in preceding comments,
the threat of incarceration is thought by drug court designers to be an
important inducement to continued participation in treatment and compliance
with the requirements of the drug court process. What in the original
Miami drug court was termed “motivational” jail or “Judge
Goldstein’s Hotel” was conceived as a special sanction that
is now employed in every court when repeated efforts to encourage compliance
have failed. Some critics of the drug court assumptions argue that proponents
incorrectly assess the effects of deterrence on participants who would
easily choose serving time in jail over the hard work of being engaged
in the drug court process for 12 to 18 months of treatment and court attendance.
Click here for excerpts of comments from focus group participants.
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| An Honest
Chance: Perspectives on Drug Courts |
April
2002 |
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