Treatment Courts

Drug courts are an effective problem-solving approach for dealing with alcohol and other drug addicted offenders in the judicial system. Drug courts closely monitor the defendant's progress toward sobriety and recovery through ongoing treatment, frequent drug testing, regular mandatory check-in court appearances, and the use of a range of immediate sanctions and incentives to foster behavior change.

In drug court, judges collaborate with other traditional court participants (prosecutors, defense counsel, treatment providers, probation officers, law enforcement, educational and vocational experts, community leaders and others), whose roles have been substantially modified, but not relinquished, in the interest of helping defendants deal with addiction.

A DWI Court is dedicated to changing the behavior of alcohol and other drug-dependent offenders arrested for driving while impaired. The goal of DWI Court is to protect public safety by using the drug court model to address the root cause of impaired driving, alcohol and other drug problems, with the repeat offender as its primary target population.

Guiding Principles for DWI Courts

Guiding Principle #1: Target the Population

Targeting is the process of identifying a subset of the DWI offender population for inclusion in the DWI court program. This is a complex task given that DWI courts, in comparison to traditional drug court programs, accept only one type of offender: the person who drives while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The DWI court target population, therefore, must be clearly defined, with eligibility criteria clearly documented.

Guiding Principle #2: Perform a Clinical Assessment

A clinically competent objective assessment of the impaired-driving offender must address a number of bio-psychosocial domains including alcohol use severity and drug involvement, the level of needed care, medical and mental health status, extent of social support systems, and individual motivation to change. Without clearly identifying a client’s needs, strengths, and resources along each of these important bio-psychosocial domains, the clinician will have considerable difficulty in developing a clinically sound treatment plan.

Guiding Principle #3: Develop the Treatment Plan

Substance dependence is a chronic, relapsing condition that can be effectively treated with the right type and length of treatment regimen. In addition to having a substance abuse problem, a significant proportion of the DWI population also suffers from a variety of co-occurring mental health disorders. Therefore, DWI courts must carefully select and implement treatment practices demonstrated through research to be effective with the hard-core impaired driver to ensure long-term success.

Guiding Principle #4: Supervise the Offender

Driving while intoxicated presents a significant danger to the public. Increased supervision and monitoring by the court, probation department, and treatment provider must occur as part of a coordinated strategy to intervene with repeat and high-risk DWI offenders and to protect against future impaired driving.

Guiding Principle #5: Forge Agency, Organization and Community Partnerships

Partnerships are an essential component of the DWI court model as they enhance credibility, bolster support, and broaden available resources. Because the DWI court model is built on and dependent upon a strong team approach, both within the court and beyond, the court should solicit the cooperation of other agencies, as well as community organizations to form a partnership in support of the goals of the DWI court program.

Guiding Principle #6: Take a Judicial Leadership Role

Judges are a vital part of the DWI court team. As leader of this team, the judge’s role is paramount to the success of the Drug court program. The judge must also possess recognizable leadership skills as well as the capability to motivate team members and elicit buy-in from various stakeholders. The selection of the judge to lead the DWI court team, therefore, is of utmost importance.

Guiding Principle #7: Develop Case Management Strategies

Case management, the series of inter-related functions that provides for a coordinated team strategy and seamless collaboration across the treatment and justice systems, is essential for an integrated and effective DWI court program.

Guiding Principle #8: Address Transportation Issues

Though nearly every state revokes or suspends a person’s driving license upon conviction for a DUI offense, the loss of driving privileges poses a significant issue for those individuals involved in a DWI/Drug Court program. In many cases, the participant solves the transportation problem created by the loss of their driver’s license by driving anyway and taking a chance that he or she will not be caught. With this knowledge, the court must caution the participant against taking such chances in the future and to alter their attitude about driving without a license.

Guiding Principle #9: Evaluate the Program

To convince “stakeholders” about the power of DWI court, program designers must design a DWI court evaluation model capable of documenting behavioral change and linking that change to the program’s existence. A credible evaluation is the only mechanism for mapping the road to program success or failure. To prove whether a program is efficient and effective requires the assistance of a competent evaluator, an understanding of and control over all relevant variables that can systematically contribute to behavioral change, and a commitment from the DWI court team to rigorously abide by the rules of the evaluation design.

Guiding Principle #10: Create a Sustainable Program

The foundation for sustainability is laid, to a considerable degree, by careful and strategic planning. Such planning includes considerations of structure and scale, organization and participation and, of course, funding. Becoming an integral and proven approach to the DWI problem in the community however is the ultimate key to sustainability. 

 

Family dependency treatment court is a juvenile or family court docket of which selected abuse, neglect, and dependency cases are identified where parental substance abuse is a primary factor. Judges, attorneys, child protection services, and treatment personnel unite with the goal of providing safe, nurturing, and permanent homes for children while simultaneously providing parents the necessary support and services to become drug and alcohol abstinent. Family dependency treatment courts aid parents in regaining control of their lives and promote long-term stabilized recovery to enhance the possibility of family reunification within mandatory legal timeframes.

A juvenile drug court is a docket within a juvenile court to which selected delinquency cases, and in some instances status offenders, are referred for handling by a designated judge. The youth referred to this docket are identified as having problems with alcohol and/or other drugs. Over the course of a year or more, the team meets frequently (often weekly), determining how best to address the substance abuse and related problems of the youth and his or her family that have brought the youth into contact with the justice system.

Modeled after drug courts and developed in response to the over-representation of people with mental illnesses in the criminal justice system, mental health courts divert select defendants with mental illnesses into judicially supervised, community-based treatment.  Currently, all mental health courts are voluntary.  Defendants are invited to participate in the mental health court following a specialized screening and assessment, and they may choose to decline participation.  For those who agree to the terms and conditions of community-based supervision, a team of court staff and mental health professionals works together to develop treatment plans and supervise participants in the community.

Veterans Treatment Courts use a hybrid integration of Drug Court and Mental Health Court principles to serve military veterans, and sometimes active-duty personnel. They promote sobriety, recovery, and stability through a coordinated response that involves collaboration with the traditional partners found in Drug Courts and Mental Health Courts, as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare networks, Veterans Benefits Administration, State Departments of Veterans Affairs, volunteer veteran mentors, and organizations that support veterans and veterans’ families.