The District of Columbia Drug Court is designed to use the power of the court to retain drug-involved defendants in treatment and provide an accountability structure in which treatment is offered. Services to drug-involved offenders include a court-based program that combines drug outpatient services with graduated sanctions for program non compliance and referrals to intensive outpatient and inpatient treatment programs. This evaluation examines how and why earlier court-based drug intervention strategies were modified and looks at client recruitment, use of court resources and defendant accountability under the new procedures. The goal is to identify elements critical to program success and issues involved in expanding Drug Court eligibility to a larger pool of defendants. Data were collected from focus group interviews with program participants, review of Drug Court monthly reports, interviews with program staff and key members of participating agencies and analysis of computerized files from the Pretrial Services Agency and the program. Tables, figures, notes, appendixes