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I. Introduction: The Need for Perspectives of Drug Court Participants
What began in Miami, Florida, when the first treatment drug court was established in summer 1989 is by now recognized as a movement involving potentially more than 600 courts in the United States and elsewhere. The growth of that movement in less than a decade from the first Miami court to a handful of pioneering courts in Oakland (California), Portland (Oregon), Las Vegas (Nevada), Fort Lauderdale (Florida), and Kalamazoo (Michigan), and then to a whole generation of drug court initiatives represents one of the more rapid and dramatic changes in American criminal justice in recent memory.
As drug courts have grown in number, form, and function, most have shared in common the development of alternative, nonadversarial, and nontraditional methods in the courtroom that link drug treatment and other support services to criminal court proceedings in a way that has offered a new paradigm for courts and traditional, mostly punitive aims of justice (Hora et al., 1999; Goldkamp, 1994). Drug courts have stimulated debates within State and local court systems about what courts should or should not be—for example, whether they should willingly accept the role of “social service institution of last resort” (Goldkamp, 2000). At the same time, they have set in motion a ripple effect of related innovations, opening the door for other nontraditional innovations in courts. Domestic violence courts and community courts (Sviridoff et al., 1997; 2000) are but two examples of attempts to extend the emerging principles of a new jurisprudence to other difficult justice problems.
For researchers, the birth and rapid diffusion of drug courts (and the related wave of innovation and experimentation in courts generally) has raised many challenges (Goldkamp, 1999). Research, lagging in pace behind the wave of innovation, is now beginning to produce a body of findings relating to the impact and implications of widespread adoption of the drug court model (Belenko, 2000). The developing literature is still in need of a common framework for understanding drug courts (Goldkamp, 1999; 2000) and for examining the elements of the drug court model thought to produce its positive effects (Goldkamp et al., 2001).
At a time when a number of indepth and long-term studies of drug court impact are under way in the United States, few have sought to tap the perspectives of drug court participants themselves to test the assumptions underlying the drug court model. As the formal research agenda seeks to examine basic assumptions relating to drug court impact empirically, there is a need to take into account the views of the offenders who participate in drug court treatment to consider whether their experiences and attitudes or opinions correspond to the goals intended by those operating drug courts. Certainly, a participant perspective is at least implied in evaluating longer-term outcomes of drug courts, particularly relating to participants’ life choices (education, employment, abstinence from drugs, involvement in the criminal justice system, etc.). To obtain data on certain treatment outcomes—such as substance abuse abstinence, employment history, family developments, housing situations, and health history—there is often simply no other feasible way than to interview former drug court participants and comparison counterparts over time. As more formal evaluation is carried out in this area, followup interviews of drug court participants will almost certainly become an important research component.
The project described in this report, involving focus groups of participants in six drug courts across the United States, was conceived to gather feedback from participants in the shorter term, while awaiting the results of more extensive studies. The rationale for the focus group initiative was straightforward: Given the purpose of drug courts to change the behaviors of drug-involved defendants and offenders, we argued that direct feedback from the consumers of drug courts—their participants—is essential in evaluating the effectiveness of the drug court program. Such feedback should be informative not only in a practical sense as drug courts continue to evolve, but also for empirical and theoretical purposes as research examines the underlying assumptions and impact of the innovation.
The information that can be usefully obtained from drug court participants includes, but is not limited to, their assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the drug court process and the effectiveness of treatment, as well as their views on specific elements of the treatment approach. Participant perspectives can provide useful feedback on aspects of the courtroom experience and treatment programs and on participant interaction with their peers in treatment, which may be instructive in understanding the strengths and limitations of various approaches. As drug courts have given careful thought to balancing sanctions and incentives in designing the overall court treatment process, knowledge of how these court responses are perceived by participants may be useful in refining their application. As programs work to implement reasonable strategies for drug testing or enhancement of treatment services or, for example, decide to incorporate acupuncture, information describing how these elements are understood and perceived by drug court participants may be helpful in fashioning more effective approaches.
Focus Group Method
Focus groups differ in purpose and method from other means of obtaining information about the experiences of participants in the drug court process. Formal evaluations of drug courts can include indepth followup interviews of drug court participants over time to obtain “self-reported” data about past and current circumstances, experiences, and progress in the courts and treatment programs, as well as about other developments in behavior and lifestyle (e.g., substance abuse, health, participation in other social services). The focus group approach offers an interim and more immediate, though less formal, method for tapping participant perspectives that usually is not based on probability sampling, involves small numbers of participants, and is less costly. Focus groups can produce feedback in a more timely fashion than indepth interviews of large numbers of people conducted in formal evaluations. These attributes make the focus group an attractive means for gathering information for operational and programmatic purposes at important stages of development.
Ideally, focus groups are small groups of carefully selected individuals who represent a reasonable cross-section of those persons with knowledge or views of the topics being explored. Thus, rather than being a random sample of a targeted population, they might include a more purposely contrived and diverse collection of drug court participants, including, for example, a recent graduate, a person early in the treatment process, a person having difficulty moving past the early stages of treatment, a recent dropout, and so forth. The focus group facilitator guides participants through carefully selected questions, trying to elicit broad opinions but not necessarily trying to produce consensus. The purpose of the focus group is not to establish comprehensive views of each participant but to generate ideas, themes, issues, and findings from the group as a whole. Typically, the sessions are recorded and careful notes are taken. When the notes and recordings are transcribed, they become the data of the focus group. We cannot claim to be aware of all instances when focus groups have been employed by drug court programs to sound out their participants on particular questions, but we do know that they have been used informally and productively in some cases. In Las Vegas, to cite one example, the Clark County Drug Court’s treatment program, Choices Unlimited, conducted focus groups of women to sort out issues that may be particular to female participants who were involved in prostitution and the gaming industry so that the treatment approach could be adapted to their needs. As another example, during the planning stages of the Midtown Community Court in Manhattan, focus groups were employed to ascertain the views of community members, police officers, and other potential partners in the development of the community court approach. The focus group initiative described in this report was devised as a means for providing more immediate, personal feedback than might otherwise be obtained to help place the drug court innovation and its evaluation research in the context of the experiences and impressions of drug court participants.
Drug Court Participant Focus Groups in Six Sites
Over the past 2 years, the Crime and Justice Research Institute conducted focus groups with drug court participants in six American drug courts2 to solicit the views of individuals who are involved in the drug court process. The principal objective was to test some of the basic assumptions that have been made in the design and operation of drug courts—assumptions concerning the deterrent and rehabilitative aims of drug courts and about drug court participants themselves, including their problems, histories, and expectations. The focus groups we conducted, for example, questioned drug court participants about the role of the courtroom, the drug court judge, drug testing, the impact of treatment services, and the use of incentives and sanctions, particularly incarceration.3
Site selection for the drug court focus groups targeted well-established courts in diverse geographic locations. Research staff reasoned that focus groups conducted in relatively new courts would be less productive and would produce less detailed assessments of drug courts (as opposed to courts or treatment more generally). The selected drug courts had full caseloads and several years of routine operation, creating a common “culture” or understanding of the drug court process among participants. We gained the enthusiastic cooperation of six of the longest established courts in the United States, including the Brooklyn Treatment Court (established 1996), the Clark County (Las Vegas) Drug Court (1992), the Miami Drug Court (1989), the Multnomah County (Portland) Drug Court (also known as the S.T.O.P. program, 1991), the San Bernardino Drug Court (1996), and the King County (Seattle) Drug Court (1994).
Focus Group Procedure
The six court sites were selected to represent diversity of approach, location, and drug court population. In each site, court staff volunteered enthusiastically and went to great lengths to facilitate the focus groups, finding space and helping to enlist volunteers. We hoped to limit the number of participants and the duration of the focus groups; in each jurisdiction, at least two focus groups ranging from 8 to 22 participants and lasting no more than 2 hours were conducted.4 Each site visit also included interviews with drug court officials and administrators and observations of the drug courts in session. Research staff were initially concerned that the groups formed might disproportionately include each court’s most successful participants—biasing the results in a direction favorable to the programs being discussed—but instead, the final groups included participants at all stages of the drug court process, from those who had been enrolled in the program only a matter of weeks to recent graduates, and from participants who were proceeding successfully through the treatment regimen to those who were struggling to stay in the program. Overall, the groups included a diverse mix of participants who differed in racial and ethnic backgrounds, drug problems and histories, criminal histories, and status in the drug court programs. Focused discussions with these drug court participants conveyed an overall impression that the drug courts we visited were indeed working for participants who suffered from very serious substance abuse and related problems.
The rooms in which the focus groups were conducted ranged from treatment program meeting rooms to courtrooms and jury rooms. (The larger groups were an accommodation to unanticipated enthusiasm on the part of drug court participants who wished to volunteer.) Each participant was offered an honorarium of $25, paid at the end of the session, although some declined. Payment was discussed with the cooperating court in advance to address any concerns.5
Each focus group began with an explanation of the group’s purpose and an introduction of the session facilitators, who made it clear that they were researchers who did not represent any of the agencies involved in the drug court and were seeking helpful information from participant views of their experiences. Participants were told that the session was being recorded, but their identities would remain confidential and neither whether they participated nor the content of what they said would in any way affect their status in the drug court program. Participants were given an opportunity to leave the focus group if they did not wish to participate after these explanations were given. Each signed a written summary of these understandings before the focus group proceeded.
Focus Group Content: Questions for Drug Court Participants
Focus group discussion topics were drawn from knowledge of the aims of the drug court movement, evaluation issues, and operational challenges faced by drug courts to date in this country. In addition, in each site questions specific to local issues or problems were incorporated into the focus group discussion. The sessions began with discussion of participants’ areas of residence and the neighborhood drug and crime problems with which they were most immediately familiar. Questions then moved to discussion of the drug court, focusing on aspects of the courtroom and treatment experience and asking participants about their impressions of the problems, attitudes, and progress of their peers. Only toward the end of the discussion did the planned structure of each focus group turn to the participants’ personal experiences in the court, including their individual problems, successes, and use of drugs. Throughout the course of discussion, facilitators encouraged participants to assess strengths and weaknesses of aspects of the drug court experience. The focus groups sought to address the following topics:
The focus group project was designed to elicit participant responses to these questions in a consistent manner across sites. As the project progressed, we discovered that participants found some questions meaningful in certain locations and not very meaningful in others. In addition, questions were added during sessions at the prompting of participants or to address special features of the local program. Thus, while most questions were asked across sites, not all were. This report highlights the themes and variations in the responses of drug court participants across sites.
2. The focus groups in Brooklyn, Miami, San Bernardino, and Seattle were funded by the Drug Court Program Office of the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, under grant number 98–DD–BX–K008. The Portland and Las Vegas focus groups were conducted as part of the National Drug Court Evaluation (I) funded by the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, under grant number 98–DC–VX–K001. Analysis of the focus groups in all sites is combined for this report.
3. For a discussion of the assumptions underlying the drug court model, see Goldkamp et al. (2001).
4. In Portland, we also conducted one focus group consisting of community representatives.
5. For example, in Brooklyn, court officials requested that cash not be paid to participants at the courthouse. Instead, money orders were mailed to addresses provided by participants. In all other sites, participants were paid in cash after signing a receipt at the end of the sessions. The community focus group in Portland did not receive honoraria.
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