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74–754 2001

S. HRG. 106–1054

OVERSIGHT OF THE OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS: PROGRAM PERFORMANCE—DRUG

COURTS

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON YOUTH VIOLENCE

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

OCTOBER 3, 2000

Serial No. J–106–111

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary

(

(II)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah, Chairman

STROM THURMOND, South Carolina

CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa

ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania

JON KYL, Arizona

MIKE DEWINE, Ohio

JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri

SPENCER ABRAHAM, Michigan

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama

BOB SMITH, New Hampshire

PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont

EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware

HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin

ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey

CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York

MANUS COONEY, Chief Counsel and Staff Director

BRUCE A. COHEN, Minority Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON YOUTH VIOLENCE

JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama, Chairman

BOB SMITH, New Hampshire

JON KYL, Arizona

JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California

HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin

KRISTI LEE, Chief Counsel

SHERYL WALTER, Minority Chief Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Page

Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., a U.S. Senator from the State of Delaware ............. 12

Sessions, Hon. Jeff, a U.S. Senator from the State of Alabama .......................... 1

WITNESSES

Belenko, Steven, Fellow, National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse,

Columbia University, New York, NY ................................................................. 44

Gebelein, Hon. Richard S., Judge, Superior Court of Delaware, Wilmington,

DE .......................................................................................................................... 39

Goldkamp, John, Professor of Criminal Justice, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA ................................................................................................................ 55

Leary, Mary Lou, Acting Assistant Attorney General, Office of Justice Programs, Department of Justice, Washington, DC ............................................... 5

McMaken, Hon. Michael E., Judge, District Court of Alabama, Mobile County,

Mobile, AL ............................................................................................................ 29

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Responses of Mary Lou Leary to Questions from Senator Sessions .................... 65

Responses of Hon. Michael R. McMaken to Questions from Senator Sessions .. 128

Responses of Hon. Richard S. Gebelein to Questions from Senator Sessions .... 130

Responses of Steven Belenko to Questions from Senator Sessions ..................... 133

Responses of John S. Goldkamp to Questions from Senator Sessions ................ 135

SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Youth Violence, Washington,

DC:

Chairman’s Report on the Oversight Activities ............................................. 164

Oversight Plan of the Chairman ..................................................................... 184

Hummel, John H., KPMG LLP, Washington, DC ................................................. 204

(5)

OVERSIGHT OF THE OFFICE OF JUSTICE

PROGRAMS: PROGRAM PERFORMANCE—

DRUG COURTS

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2000

U.S. SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON YOUTH VIOLENCE,

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in room

SD–628, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Jeff Sessions (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Also present: Senator Biden.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF SESSIONS, A U.S.

SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF ALAMAMA

Senator SESSIONS. Good morning. We will get started now, and

I think Senator Biden will be joining us shortly.

I am pleased to begin the performance review by the Subcommittee on Youth Violence of programs funded through the Office of Justice Programs with this hearing. OJP is the grant-making arm of the Department of Justice, and the subcommittee’s ultimate focus in looking at OJP will be on financial and performance

accountability of OJP’s programs—bang for the buck.

OJP’s budget for a variety of criminal justice programs has increased from $695 million in fiscal year 1992 to $3.9 billion in fiscal year 2000. Much of this budget increase has resulted from the

1994 Violent Crime Act that created and enlarged numerous criminal justice programs. Today, OJP funds programs ranging from juvenile violence prevention efforts to community preparedness initiatives to drug treatment for incarcerated offenders. With all this

money being spent for many different programs, it is time for performance analysis to begin.

The analysis will focus on simple questions: What is the problem

being addressed? What is the solution that Congress or OJP is advocating? How much does it cost? Does it work?

The Subcommittee on Youth Violence has developed an oversight

plan that I will place in the record. The first area that the subcommittee will examine is OJP’s substance abuse programs. These

programs run from prevention programs to treatment programs to

reentry programs. For today’s hearing, we will be looking at one of

these—drug court programs.

What is the problem being addressed? Well, drug use leads to

crime. At least it is clear that drugs are an accelerator to crime.

6

A recent OJP report entitled ‘‘The 1999 Annual Report on Drug

Use among Adult and Juvenile Arrestees’’ revealed the troubling

statistic that over 60 percent of 30,000 male arrestees from 27 of

34 different sites and cities around the country tested positive for

either cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine, opiates, PCP, and in

some cases several of those drugs. Those numbers have not

changed since the mid-1980’s at least, if not the early 1980’s. Sixty

percent plus—often as high as 66 percent—have drug-tested positive for just any crime for which they were arrested, whether it be

burglary, shoplifting, or robbery.

The old choices have been prison, which is costly, or probation,

which has proven to be unsatisfactory. Even with offenders being

prosecuted, while they are being tried to be sent to jail, they often

are released on parole and often are released on bail prior to trial.

So they are out at that time; if they are still strung out on drugs,

they may well be committing crimes.

As a Federal prosecutor for 15 years, I saw firsthand how drugs

can gain control of and destroy people. Drugs sap the will to work

and can be responsible for and accelerate crime. There is indeed a

problem. So drug courts have been used for a decade. Is that a solution to our crime problem? I remember vividly—and Judge

McMaken, is here from Mobile who was at that meeting in the late

1980’s—when I was U.S. attorney, we brought up Judge Goldstein

from Miami, who I believe is generally credited with creating the

drug court. Judge Goldstein was extraordinarily enthusiastic, as

anybody who knows him knows, and he suggested incredible results from drug courts—just unbelievable reductions in recidivist

rates. In fact, they were so unbelievable, I told him they were unbelievable, but I did tell him if he could get 25 percent of what he

said, that would probably be progress, and we ought to consider a

drug court. I really arranged that meeting. Judge McMaken came

and became interested in it, and eventually the City and County

of Mobile created an eminent, first-rate drug court.

Drug court programs do serve as an alternative to trial and imprisonment for nonviolent offenders. If the offender enrolls in the

program, he will be required to complete a period of months without testing positive for drug use, to perform community service, to

complete certain educational requirements, and to hold down a job.

If he fails, he will be sent back to the regular criminal justice system.

Congress has, however, allowed local drug courts much flexibility

in how they operate, with a few notable exceptions. These exceptions include several things, such as requiring continued judicial

supervision over drug court participants. Judge Goldstein explained

he believed that personal supervision by the judge over the defendant was key to success. Mandatory periodic testing for drug use is,

in my view, an essential component of every step of the criminal

justice system. Our failure to do that systematically throughout the

criminal justice system is one of the greatest failures in our system, but it is done consistently in drug courts. Drug courts also

must have substance abuse treatment for each participant and exclude violent offenders in order to receive Federal funding from the

Drug Court Program Office.

7

Many of the participatants in drug courts fail. The best numbers

I have been able to see—and if others have different numbers I

would like to hear them—state that throughout our history of drug

courts, 200,000 participants have enrolled 50,000 have completed

and graduated, and 65,000 are still enrolled, which would indicate

some 80,000 offenders have failed or either been sentenced,

dropped out of the program maybe even gone to jail.

How much does it cost? It is my understanding that there are

currently around 560 drug court programs operating in the United

States with 293 additional programs being planned. This chart

here on my right shows the dramatic increase in drug courts from

one in the late 1980’s to 567 by 2000. That is a dramatic increase,

and it also shows an increase in Federal funding.

These figures on the right show that 1992 appropriations of $3.4

million increased to $57 million by 1999. That figure represents

Federal support for drug courts. It is not what they cost, because

I am sure most drug court judges will tell us the State and local

systems contribute substantially to these programs.

Over the past 10 years, OJP has spent a total of around $180

million on drug courts. That is a lot of money, and if we are going

to continue to spend that much money on a program, the American

people deserve to know if it works. While there has been no comprehensive nationwide study of all drug courts, scientific studies of

various individual drug courts have given us some indication of

how they work and do indicate that they have shown positive results.

For example, studies have shown that criminal recidivism, measured by rearrests, ranges from 12 percent to 32 percent for offenders who were not enrolled in a drug court program. That is a pretty

broad number, and it raises questions in my mind about the rigor

of those tests and what cohort was being tested. But 12 to 32 percent, according to the studies we have of offenders who are not enrolled in a drug court are rearrested.

For offenders enrolled in a drug court program, the recidivism

rate has been reported to drop to between 4 percent and 12 percent

during the 1- to 2-year period when they are in the drug court. So

this would be a drop of some significance, but we need to be sure

we are not comparing apples to oranges and that we have an honest number here. It is obvious to me that we don’t have a panacea.

For example, for recidivism after drug courts—that is, after they

have completed their time in the drug court—the studies showed

that a control group that had never been through a drug court program had rearrests of approximately 36 percent. The rearrest rate

for those who had gone through a drug program was 27 percent.

That is an 11 percent change. You would say that is a 25 percent

reduction and that is significant progress worthy of our attention,

but in the long run, you are talking about an improvement of 11

of 100. Eleven fewer out of the 100 would have been rearrested had

they gone through a drug court program as opposed to not going

through one, according to numbers that we have.

Despite the obstacles, the subcommittee understands that drug

courts are demonstrating positive results for addicted offenders and

reducing recidivism and drug use, at least for certain periods of

8

time. We will be looking at that in more detail, and I think it is

important that we do.

Another part of the does-it-work inquiry is how can we improve

drug courts. I am particularly interested in discovering what the

Federal Government is doing with research. Has the DOJ pinpointed the most effective elements of current drug court programs

in order to guide fledgling and existing drug courts? Instead of allowing the Federal Government to run drug courts around the

country, I believe our best contribution would be to provide blue

ribbon research and training for drug and crime programs.

Indeed, Fred Thompson, who formerly chaired this committee,

strongly believed that the virtually exclusive role of the Department of Justice in youth violence should be to provide the best blue

ribbon scientific evidence possible to our State and local systems

where our juvenile court systems actually function. Marshalling

monetary resources, data, and the accumulated criminal justice experience of coordinated Federal agencies, the Department of Justice

can make a real difference in this arena.

OJP has informed the subcommittee that it is funding a multistage National Institute of Justice evaluation of drug courts that,

when completed, will provide a clearer portrait of drug court effectiveness and the best practices. This is a critical step, and it will

be something I would like to hear more about. I have some concern

about why we haven’t done more research sooner. Indeed, we are

going from zero to 500 and 600 drug courts, with more planned,

and it seems to me we are awfully late in getting blue ribbon research.

Further, it is my understanding that OJP provides thorough

training and technical assistance to local courts to assist them in

building strong drug court programs and in promoting long-term

sustainability.

So we are privileged today to have an excellent list of witnesses.

On the first panel will be Acting Assistant Attorney General Mary

Lou Leary. Ms. Leary was designated by the President to serve as

Acting Assistant Attorney General of OJP in February of this

year—not too long ago. We certainly can’t blame you for problems

that occurred last year, can we?

Ms. LEARY. No.

Senator SESSIONS. In 1998, Ms. Leary was appointed as Deputy

Associate Attorney General, and from October 1999 until coming to

OJP, she served as chief of staff to the Associate Attorney General

at the U.S. Department of Justice. She was Acting Director of the

Community-Oriented Policing Services Office from June to October

1999. She served as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia,

which has got to be a challenge, from July 1997 to January 1998.

Indeed, I may ask Ms. Leary about the exceptional drug testing

program used in the District of Columbia.

Ms. Leary, would you raise your right hand, and I will administer the oath?

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you give to this subcommittee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the

truth so help you God?

Ms. LEARY. I do.

9

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. Be seated. We will be glad to hear

your statement at this time.

STATEMENT OF MARY LOU LEARY, ACTING ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, WASHINGTON, DC

Ms. LEARY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I appreciate this opportunity to provide you with information

about the work of the Office of Justice Programs in preventing and

controlling illegal drug use, particularly among our young people.

Drug prevention has long been a priority for OJP, and we currently

support a wide range of intervention initiatives to prevent and intervene in drug use, sanction and treat drug-abusing offenders, and

follow up with community-based services after incarceration.

Mr. Chairman, from our experience as prosecutors, you and I

both have seen the terrible toll that drugs can take on individuals

and on communities, but we have also seen the impact that innovative programming can have on illegal drug use, drug-related crime,

and improving opportunities for young people to grow up in a productive and fear-free environment.

As you mentioned, I did have the opportunity to serve in the U.S.

Attorney’s Office, and there I had the privilege of working with the

former U.S. attorney, Jay Stephens, to establish the first Weed and

Seed site in Washington, DC. That is a program that former U.S.

Attorney and now Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder also

strongly supported.

Senator SESSIONS. That is one I personally was involved with

and strongly believe in also.

Ms. LEARY. I realize that. I know that you have firsthand knowledge from your experience as U.S. attorney with how much of a difference Weed and Seed can make in a community, and from a

handful of programs at the very beginning, Weed and Seed has

now grown, and we have over 200 sites across the country at this

point in time.

As you know, these programs support law enforcement to weed

out drug dealing and violent crime and gangs, and then they bring

in social services and the like to help revitalize communities. We

have had evaluation teams looking at Weed and Seed, and we

know that there are things that we can do to improve that program; however, we do know that the basic strategy really works.

For example, in Seattle, violent crime dropped 54 percent in the

Weed and Seed target area 5 years after the initiation of the program, and that was compared with a citywide drop of only 38 percent. In Hartford, CT, Part One crimes fell 46 percent in 2 years

after inception of the program. Citywide, crime declined 22 percent.

Similarly, in Las Vegas, violent crime in the Weed and Seed area

dropped 8 percent in the program’s first 2 years. Citywide, the decline was only 3 percent, and this has been extremely helpful in

our efforts to eliminate drugs and crimes.

Many of OJP’s initiatives that are targeted at drug use by young

people are supported, as you know, through our Office of Juvenile

Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and in your role as chairman

of the Youth Violence Subcommittee, I know that you have been

looking at some of those programs. My written statement details a

10

number of those initiatives which are geared towards drug use by

young people.

Enforcement programs are also a critical component of our comprehensive effort to prevent illegal drug use and to help States and

local communities enforce their drug laws. OJP certifies about $900

million in programming to ONDCP as drug related, and practically

two-thirds of that amount of money actually goes to enforcement

initiatives. For instance, 40 percent of the funds awarded under the

Byrne Formula Grant program are used by States to support multidistrict law enforcement task forces that target drug trafficking.

Senator SESSIONS. Is that 40 percent of the Byrne Grants?

Ms. LEARY. The Byrne Formula Grant, that is correct.

We support intervention and treatment as well for drug-involved

offenders to try to break that cycle of drug use and crime. Eighty

percent of the prisoners who are incarcerated in our institutions

today report that they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol

when they were arrested or that they stole property to buy drugs

or they have a history of drug or alcohol abuse. I know that these

figures are not new to you, having worked as a prosecutor.

Senator SESSIONS. And alcohol is high, too.

Ms. LEARY. Extremely high.

Senator SESSIONS. People don’t understand the numbers are real

dramatic, are they not, on alcohol use and crime?

Ms. LEARY. They are extremely high, and, in fact, we are beginning to see some innovations in drug courts who are also addressing alcohol abuse.

You know, at the same time, you can see that study after study

tells us the treatment is effective, and particularly if it is prison

based on long-term treatment. Coercive treatment is just as effective, if not more so, than voluntary treatment. So OJP administers

several initiatives that combine drug treatment with criminal justice sanctions and incentives for good behavior.

And you and I have had some discussions about one of our most

widespread and effective programs to address drugs, and that is

the drug court program. Drug courts combine intensive supervision

and sanctions with incentives such as reduced charges or shorter

sentences for offenders who successfully complete treatment.

In the drug courts, we use judges to monitor offenders’ performance to make sure that they are getting drug treatment and other

services and that they are sticking to their regimen. As you noted,

Mr. Chairman, testing is a really important component of that. The

courts require the testing on a regular basis, and then they impose

prompt and graduated sanctions if there are any infractions.

The drug courts grant program, as you know, was authorized by

the 1994 Crime Act, and since that time, since 1995, Drug Courts

Program Office has awarded about $125 million. Six hundred communities have received that funding to set up courts. In addition,

there is training and T.A. and evaluation money that has been expended.

But as you know, drug courts really began as a grass-roots movement. So in addition to the support through the Drug Courts Program Office, all States and local communities use their own funds

or a combination of local, State, private, and Federal funding from

11

Byrne, LLEBG, juvenile accountability, incentive block grant programs to support the drug courts.

We have about 100 new drug courts coming on line every single

year, but only half of those are a result of Drug Court Program Office funding.

Senator SESSIONS. Are any dropping off line, do you know?

Ms. LEARY. A few, but very few, and some of them actually drop

out in the very initial stages. When we do our training for communities who are planning drug courts, almost all of them end up implementing a drug court, but we have had a couple of dropouts

along the way, which is good. They realize we really—this is too

much of a commitment or we are not ready, whatever.

In terms of local support, the California Legislature just this

year appropriated about $20 million to support drug courts in the

State. That is half the total appropriation for the Drug Courts Program Office for fiscal year 2001, a big commitment. And oftentimes,

we will see local communities come in with far more than the 25

percent required local match for funding.

So in addition to funding, OJP provides extensive training and

technical assistance to communities who are planning new drug

courts. We have, as you know, a mentor court system so that teams

who are considering planning a drug court can visit a court that

is up and running, talk to the program staff, and learn from the

experts who are doing it day in and day out. Then you can help

folks avoid common mistakes, and they don’t have to reinvent the

wheel when they go about their own drug court planning.

We closely monitor the performance of drug court programs that

we fund. We spend a lot of time in the field, and when we do discover problems in our monitoring visits and the like, we step in immediately and provide training and technical assistance. If the

problems persist even after that assistance, then we stop the

drawdowns of Federal funds until they fix the problem. On rare occasions, as a last resort, if a program fails to take remedial measures, then we will rescind the grant funds or not provide funding

for the following year.

We also rely on evaluations to measure the drug court performance. Since 1995, we have committed $5 million to evaluate drug

court programs. We plan to spend more in fiscal year 2001 to expand these efforts.

As the chairman knows, our National Institute of Justice has

begun a multiphase, multiyear, multisite evaluation of our drug

court programs. We have some preliminary findings from those

evaluations that were released this past year. We are using the results from that study to improve future drug court programming.

For example, through the training that we provide to drug court

communities, we are addressing any problems that were identified

in the evaluation. We are also taking those evaluation results, converting them to plain language that a practitioner can understand,

and we are disseminating those results broadly in the field.

We require communities who are planning a drug court to include on their team an evaluator or a management information

systems person, and the reason that we do that is so that communities will understand and will actualize setting up your evaluation

12

criteria from the get-go, and then it doesn’t become an afterthought

when you are midway through your program.

We are also supporting an evaluation of the effectiveness of the

various treatment services that are used by drug courts and the development of an assessment tool that can be used by drug court

programs to provide reliable information on the program costs and

to tell us what kind of savings we are incurring through the drug

court program. A privately funded analysis of 77 drug court evaluations that was released found that drug courts really are effective

in addressing drug abuse among nonviolent offenders and reducing

burdens on the criminal justice system and in helping offenders become law-abiding and drug-free citizens. That particular study

found that only 10 percent of drug court clients’ drug tests were

positive, compared to 31 percent of the defendants who were under

just regular probation.

Sixty percent of those who entered drug courts were still in treatment after 12 months. That compares favorably to a 50 percent

rate for folks who were treated in regular outpatient programs.

Senator BIDEN. Excuse me. Treated in outpatient programs, not

as a consequence of a criminal disposition, just voluntarily——

Ms. LEARY. Correct.

Senator BIDEN [continuing]. Going into a drug program. Thank

you.

Ms. LEARY. Correct.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ms. LEARY. One study has shown that rearrest rates for drug

court graduates were consistently lower than those for non-graduates overall. When researchers took a look at Portland, OR, they

found over a 1-, 2-, and 3-year period, 35 percent of the drug court

graduates were rearrested within 3 years compared to 61 percent

of non-graduates.

We know that drug courts also save money. Right here in Washington, DC, they save an average of $6,000 per client per year compared to the costs of incarceration. A comprehensive cost analysis

of the drug court program in Portland——

Senator SESSIONS. Saved $6,000?

Ms. LEARY. That is correct. Instead of incarcerating, you are

spending the money on a drug court program. You are saving the

$6,000 that you would have spent to incarcerate that individual for

the year.

Senator SESSIONS. I would be surprised if it weren’t more than

that.

Ms. LEARY. It is expensive.

Senator SESSIONS. If you take 20,000 or more.

Ms. LEARY. Well, I think when you figure in the costs of the drug

court and treatment as well, the savings are about—that is what

they are reporting to us, is a savings of $6,000. So we are being

conservative on our estimate.

A comprehensive analysis of the costs of the drug court program

in Portland, OR, found that for every dollar, every tax dollar that

they spent on the drug court program, they saved $2.50 in costs to

the public.

Senator BIDEN. What kind of costs?

13

Ms. LEARY. Those are costs in processing cases, in handling defendants, moving them through the court system, and the like; but

if you look at broader costs, if you look at, for instance, costs to victims of crime as a result of drug abuse and those kinds of broader

issues, the cost savings estimate was increased to $10 for every $1

spent, and that is coming out of that Portland study.

For me, I think particularly as a parent, one of the most compelling statistics coming out of the drug court program is that we have

had over 1,000 babies born drug free to drug court participants,

and when you look at the costs of caring for children who are born

addicted to drugs, you will see that in the early years, we are

spending a minimum of $250,000 per child. And, of course, as that

child gets older and complications develop and all, the costs increase exponentially. And there are also, you know, the untold

costs in raising those kids, who, studies show, have all kinds of

problems and oftentimes get involved in the criminal justice system

later in life.

Office of Justice Programs supports research and statistical analysis to inform programming as well as evaluations to measure effectiveness. We try at OJP to incorporate research and evaluation

as an integral part of our efforts, not just have it be an isolated

endeavor. We are trying to make evaluation part of every program

we support, use the results of research and evaluation to inform

our programming and to improve what we are doing out in the

field.

And in administering the drug court program, for instance, we

carefully scrutinize the results of those national scope evaluations,

individual assessments of drug courts, and the results of our monitoring visits. Starting with the passage of the 1994 crime bill, we

work with Congress so that now we are able to take money off the

top of all new programs for research and evaluation.

Senator SESSIONS. Is there any limit to how much you can take

off the top for research and evaluation?

Ms. LEARY. Yes. Yes. We are taking, I think it is 1 percent off

the top for all programs.

Senator SESSIONS. Would you need more than that?

Ms. LEARY. It would be helpful, and we can talk about that with

your staff.

I personally am committed to ensuring that we work with performance measures, build them into all of our programs at OJP,

and that OJP staff closely monitor our grant programs to measure

the effectiveness, and when we see problems, to intervene immediately with training and technical assistance.

You may be familiar with our drug court clearinghouse, for instance, which in the past 2 years alone has responded to 3,500 requests for technical assistance just in the drug court program.

And because crime is primarily a State and local responsibility,

we are also working hard to build research and evaluation capacity

at the State and the local level. We have entered into a cooperative

agreement with the National Association of Drug Court Professionals. They are working to develop standards and performance

measures for drug courts to use. Three years ago, those standards

were published, and they have been adopted by the Conference of

14

Chief Justices, by a number of States, and by the Conference of

State Court Administrators.

I would like to take just 1 minute to mention another initiative

this morning that is very much related to our drug abuse efforts,

and that is offender reentry. We know that——

Senator BIDEN. Excuse me. Would you define reentry? You mean

reentry into the drug courts or reentry into the use of drugs or reentry into—define for the record what you mean by reentry.

Ms. LEARY. Senator Biden, when I talk about reentry, I am talking about how we go about reintegrating offenders when they come

out of institutions. Many of them have drug problems, but some of

them do not as well, but how do we help communities who have

to deal with 500,000, 600,000 incarcerated individuals coming out

of institutions back into the community every year; how do we keep

them on the straight and narrow;, how do we keep them from getting involved again in criminal activity, from getting involved again

in drug abuse, from getting involved again in all the kinds of

things that led them to incarceration in the first place.

Senator BIDEN. And you are talking about drug-addicted or drugarrested—that their convictions are based upon a drug offense or

that there is a basis to believe that they were addicted to drugs

when they went into the system?

Ms. LEARY. No. I am talking about any incarcerated offender.

Senator BIDEN. Any incarcerated individual?

Ms. LEARY. But we know from our research that a vast percentage of incarcerated individuals have problems with drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and there are many other co-occurring disorders as

well.

But oftentimes when these individuals return to the communities

from the institutions, they have little or no supervision, and about

20 percent of them have no supervision whatsoever. So within 3

years, we know that perhaps two-thirds of them, about two-thirds

of them, recidivate. So we are developing approaches to deal with

the need for post-incarceration supervision through reentry courts,

which are modeled on the drug court model, and also through reentry partnerships which establish a network of community support services to help individuals with a reentry plan coming back

into the community, monitoring their adherence to the plan, and

monitoring recidivism.

It draws on the resources of the community to help deal with the

need for housing, employment skills, substance abuse treatment,

and the like, so that the individuals get the kind of support they

need to be held accountable, and the communities can be ensured

of their public safety.

We are in the very initial stages of these reentry initiatives, but

we believe that they hold significant potential for improving public

safety and for reducing recidivism.

Senator BIDEN. What is the relevance of drug courts? Is it just

that the model of drug courts——

Ms. LEARY. The model of drug courts. Well, I think it is important because the model of drug courts was actually kind of an inspiration for working with a number of communities on developing

reentry courts.

15

Senator BIDEN. I just want to understand what point you were

trying to make relative to drug courts. It is just—— Ms. LEARY. That drug courts have provided a very successful

model.

Senator BIDEN. OK. Good.

Ms. LEARY. And in addition, I think that the reentry initiative

can build on the success of drug courts by providing a host of services and support and sanctions for folks who come out of the institutions, and many of them are people who actually are in need of

drug court intervention.

Senator BIDEN. Can I ask another question? Are these—excuse

me. The models that you are contemplating or initiating relating

to, quote, reentry courts and/or reentry partner partnerships,

would it be required to participate in the reentry courts as a condition of sentencing or condition—since we don’t have in the Federal

system probation, what is the—in other words, what constitutional

authority do you have at a Federal level, or are these State

models—— Ms. LEARY. These are State.

Senator BIDEN [continuing]. Models you are setting up to hopefully encourage States to fund and States to—— Ms. LEARY. These are State and local.

Senator BIDEN. Would it be required that the participation in

these reentry courts be a condition of sentencing in the first instance?

Ms. LEARY. It could be, and the reentry courts are just getting

up and running, and they are developing their criteria now.

Senator BIDEN. I mean, I am the guy that introduced the bill.

Ms. LEARY. I know that.

Senator BIDEN. But my point is I think it is worth explaining

what you mean, because I know even though I am the guy that introduced the drug court bill and introduced this, I think the average listener or the record when you read it, it will be hard to understand why you went in one breath from drug courts to these

courts without explaining in detail why you were putting them together.

I just want to make sure no one is confusing this.

Ms. LEARY. Right.

Senator BIDEN. But I don’t want anybody walking away thinking

that what you are talking about is extending the drug courts into

becoming reentry courts, because if you didn’t listen closely, at

least that is what I was worried you were saying, as opposed to the

drug court model being a potential model for reentry courts, totally

unrelated, totally unrelated to the existence of the drug court.

You could have a State with no drug courts in it, like North Dakota, and it could end up having 10 reentry courts in the State.

Correct?

Ms. LEARY. Correct.

Senator BIDEN. OK. Because the greatest—and I apologize for

the intervention, Mr. Chairman.

The greatest problem I had in trying to sell the drug court idea,

however many years ago it was now—6, 8, 10 years or however

how long it was. God, it is a long time. How long has it been? I

have been here a long time. At any rate, it was that people thought

16

that this was a criminal court that you went to post-conviction. Do

you follow me?

Ms. LEARY. Yes.

Senator BIDEN. So that is why I don’t want any confusion here

about delineating the nature of the courts.

Ms. LEARY. Right.

Senator BIDEN. I found some difficulty in convincing people of

the drug court route.

Ms. LEARY. Yes. The drug courts have been a model, and we

have seen that it has been successful, that you can use the power

of the court basically and that leverage to pull the levers and hold

people accountable.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you very much. I am sorry for the intervention.

Ms. LEARY. No. That is fine, and I also mention it because we

had discussed earlier in the hearing some of our broader initiatives

at preventing drug use by individuals in the community, and this

is another way in which we can do that post-incarceration.

So through these initiatives, host and the drug court programs,

Office of Justice Programs is going to continue to assist State and

local communities to address the problem of illegal drug use. I look

forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman, and the other members of this committee, to further our efforts in this regard.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak. I am happy

to answer any questions that you have.

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. I think there is a role for drug

courts, and we need to make sure their work is as absolutely fine

as it possibly can be.

Senator Biden, we have a vote on, and I would be glad to give

you your choice. If you would like to do an opening statement now

as a ranking member?

Senator BIDEN. No. I don’t need to make an opening statement.

Thank you. I just ask unanimous consent that my statement be

placed in the record.

Senator SESSIONS. All right.

[The prepared statement of Senator Biden follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE

STATE OF DELAWARE

Mr. Chairman, thank you for convening this hearing today to look at the drug

court program. I have been involved with drug courts since their inception and I

believe in them. And, as the author—along with Senator Specter—of legislation to

reauthorize the drug court program, I look forward to exploring today how we can

help them work even better.

I look forward to hearing from all of our witnesses this morning, but let me take

a minute to thank Judge Gebelein for being here.

Not only is Judge Gebelein one of the nation’s foremost experts on drug courts,

but he also is in charge of the drug court program in my home state of Delaware.

I have been an observer in Judge Gebelein’s Drug court—he is known as a ‘‘tough

judge,’’ but he’s also smart enough to know that the old system of locking up every

drug offender and throwing away the key—with no treatment and no supervision

upon release was failing our criminal justice system and the public at large.

In the 1994 Crime Law, Congress created a grant program to fund drug courts

because we believed that they were a cost-effective, innovative way to deal with nonviolent offenders in need of drug treatment.

And in the past six years, drug courts have taken off. There are currently 533

drug courts currently operating throughout the country, with an additional 293

courts being planned.

17

Let me tell you why I am such an advocate for these courts—drug courts are as

much about fighting crime as they are about reducing illegal drugs.

It is no secret that there is a strong link between drugs and crime.

As one of our witnesses today, Steven Belenko, well knows—because he literally

wrote the book on this at The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse

at Columbia University—80 percent of those incarcerated today are there because

of a crime associated with drug or alcohol abuse or addiction; either they have a

history of substance abuse or addiction, they were high when they committed their

crime, they violated drug or alcohol laws, or they stole property to buy drugs.

The most recent Arrestee Drug Use Monitoring Program (ADAM) data revealed

that more than half of adult male arrestees in the 34 ADAM sites tested positive

for drug use at the time of arrest.

Drug courts take non-violent drug-related offenders and closely supervises them

as they address the root of their criminal problem.

This task is made more difficult by the fact that the root problem is a chronic,

relapsing condition—addiction.

Let me let you in on a little secret—if we just lock these folks up and don’t treat

them, they are going to commit crimes again and again and again. Treatment helps

to break that escalating cycle of drug-related criminal behavior.

To date, nearly 200,000 people have entered drug court programs and the results

have been impressive. About 70 percent of the drug court program participants have

either stayed in the program or completed it successfully. That is more than twice

the retention rate of most traditional treatment programs.

The other 30 percent of the participants went to jail. And I think that should be

heralded as a success of the drug court program as well.

Without drug courts, this 30 percent would have been unsupervised, not monitored, and unless they happened to be unlucky enough to use drugs or commit a

crime near a cop, they would still be on the streets abusing drugs and committing

crime. Drug courts provide the oversight to make sure that does not happen.

Rather than just churning people through the revolving door of the criminal justice system, drug courts use a mix of sanction and incentives to help these folks to

get their acts together so they won’t be back.

When they graduate from drug court programs they are clean and sober and more

prepared to participate in society.

In order to graduate from most drug courts, participants are required to finish

high school or obtain a GED, hold down a job, keep up with financial obligations

including drug court fees and child support payments. They are also required to

have a sponsor who will keep them on track.

Drug courts work. And that is not just my opinion. Drug courts are effective at

taking offenders with little previous treatment history and keeping them in treatment. Treatment experts agree that the longer someone stays in treatment, the

more likely that person is to remain drug-free and to become a productive, tax-paying member of society.

That may be why drug courts are getting results.

Drug courts reduce recidivism. Though post-program recidivism rates vary between drug courts, consider the impact of the Jefferson County, Kentucky drug

court: Thirteen percent of the graduates of that program were reconvicted for a felony, compared to 60 percent of non-graduates and 55 percent of the comparison

group.

Drug courts also reduce future drug use. An average of ten percent of drug court

participants have positive drug tests compared to 31 percent of those on probation.

And drug courts are cost-effective. According to a study of the Portland, Oregon

drug court, for every $1 spent on the drug court, $2.50 is saved in avoided costs

such as criminal justice costs, public assistance and medical claims. If you factor in

larger costs—such as victimization and theft—there is a savings of $10 for every tax

dollar spent on drug courts. Just as important, scarce prison beds are freed up for

violent criminals.

Harder to quantify is what I believe may be the most important impact of drug

courts. Nearly two-thirds of drug court participants are parents of young children.

After getting sober through the coerced treatment mandated by the court, many of

these individuals are able to be real parents again. And more than 1,000 drug-free

babies have been born to female drug court participants, a sizable victory for society

and the budget alike.

Mr. Chairman, new innovative and effective programs like drug courts don’t come

along often. When they do, we should make sure that we do everything possible to

make sure that they continue to succeed. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about how they think we can do that.

18

Senator SESSIONS. I am inclined to think we probably should go

before the next panel.

Thank you, Ms. Leary. Thank you for the work you have done

since you have been in this position. We will have some questions

when we get back, and then we will take the second panel. We do

have a vote, and it will probably take us 10 minutes to get back.

Thank you.

[Recess.]

Senator SESSIONS. OK. We will get started again. Senator Biden

will join us in a minute.

Ms. Leary, thank you for your comments and observations. Our

goal fundamentally today and what we will do as we go along is

to ask you, as you have taken over this office to make sure that

you know and your staff knows precisely what is going on, precisely

what our research shows, what is working, how much money is

being spent, and how much money is being planned to be spent.

On the OJP funding for drug courts, both the discretionary and

block grant formula amounts, how much is now going to drug

courts? We have a chart up here. Can you tell us if that chart accurately summarizes where we are and what additional information

you need to give an accurate answer to that question?

Ms. LEARY. I can tell you we tried to figure out for fiscal year

1999 how much money went to drug courts, because as you know,

it comes from multiple sources, and so with respect to OJP funds,

it is approximately $55 million that went to drug courts during fiscal year 1999.

Senator SESSIONS. Now let me ask you: You have an account in

OJP for drug courts and a division, and what is the name of that

division?

Ms. LEARY. Well, we have the Drug Court Program Office.

Senator SESSIONS. Drug Court Program Office that reports directly to you?

Ms. LEARY. That is correct.

Senator SESSIONS. And that has a budget of $50 million?

Ms. LEARY. No. No. That has $40 million.

Senator SESSIONS. Forty million.

Ms. LEARY. Now, in addition to the Drug Courts Program Office,

there are several other funding streams coming through OJP that

go to drug courts: the Byrne Formula Grant, the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant, Byrne Discretionary. Some Weed and Seed

funds go to drug courts, and the Juvenile Accountability Incentive

Block Grant. Moneys from each one of those funding streams can

and actually does go to drug courts as well.

Senator SESSIONS. Does that make sense to you? Should it all be

funneled through the Drug Court Program Office?

Ms. LEARY. Well, one of our goals with reorganization, as you noticed, is to kind of streamline things and make a little bit more

sense.

Senator SESSIONS. You are talking about more than 20–25 percent funding through your own Department of Justice. It is not

under the program office.

Ms. LEARY. Yes. And these are statutorily prescribed. You know,

you have purposes, permissible purposes for each of these other

grant programs, and drug courts would be one of the permissible

19

purposes, but in addition, we shouldn’t forget that a lot of money

comes to drug courts from States, localities, private foundations,

and the like. So even when you look at the Federal funding, that

doesn’t reflect the total.

Senator SESSIONS. Now, the Byrne Grant goes to the State, and

the State can then use it for drug court funding. Is that why you

do not have accurate numbers, or it is difficult to have accurate

numbers?

Ms. LEARY. It is difficult to have accurate numbers.

Senator SESSIONS. But you think that the number is $57 million

for fiscal year 1999. Are there any other funding streams out there

other than State moneys and local moneys from the Federal Government that could be going to drug courts?

Ms. LEARY. Well, HHS provides money for treatment, and you

know the drug courts rely very heavily on HHS funds for that. So,

yes, there are Federal funds.

Senator SESSIONS. And now that is not included in that $57 million, to your knowledge?

Ms. LEARY. I don’t know since I don’t really know how that chart

was put together. I would say it appears not to.

Senator SESSIONS. Do you have the numbers available of what

amount HHS is putting into drug courts?

Ms. LEARY. No, we don’t, but we can work with your staff to help

identify some folks who could help get that number.

Senator SESSIONS. Can you get it from them, or does it take me

to get it from them?

Ms. LEARY. We will do everything we can, Senator.

Senator SESSIONS. We need to know that.

Ms. LEARY. Sure.

Senator SESSIONS. You need to know that.

Ms. LEARY. We do.

Senator SESSIONS. The taxpayers need to know what we are

spending.

Now, basically would you describe how this thing works? If a city

applies or a jurisdiction applies for a drug court, and the Federal

Government gives a grant, about what percentage of the cost are

they funding in that initial grant, and what is your vision about

continued funding of the drug court?

Ms. LEARY. Well, when a community initially wants to do a drug

court, what we do first is, instead of giving them a grant, we bring

them on board for a year of a training program. So we will bring

them to any one of a number of sites throughout the country. They

come with a whole team from their jurisdiction which would, you

know, include an evaluator or a management information systems

person, and they attend a total of, I think it is about 9 days of

training over the course of that year to understand what drug court

is all about, what are the various models here, the cost/benefit

analysis, and the like. And so before we give them money to set up

a drug court, we do that. They would need to make sure that they

know what they are getting into.

Senator SESSIONS. They have been trained.

Ms. LEARY. That is correct, and then we give them an implementation grant, and that can go up to, I think, 3 years, and after that,

you can get an enhancement grant for special purposes. Many enVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
20

hancement grants actually go to building capacity and funding for

evaluation activities.

Senator SESSIONS. In existing courts?

Ms. LEARY. Correct.

Senator SESSIONS. So normally you have a grant that provides

funding for 3 years. Is a State required to match that in any—— Ms. LEARY. Twenty-five percent match.

Senator SESSIONS. So it would be 75 percent Federal support for

3 years?

Ms. LEARY. Well, they are not all 3 years. If you can hold on 1

second.

It is up to 3 years.

Senator SESSIONS. OK.

Ms. LEARY. It is not a requirement, and it is up to 3.

Senator SESSIONS. And then presumably the court is 100 percent

funded by the State and local institutions?

Ms. LEARY. They can be funded by the State. They can get local

or private foundation, whatever.

Senator SESSIONS. But the Federal Government’s funding would

normally be expected to end after 3 years?

Ms. LEARY. That is our goal, yes, that they would move off to

State and local sources of funding, and, in fact, 22 legislatures in

recent times have passed legislation at the State level to support

drug courts. So we really are seeing success with this, and when

you have 100 new courts coming on board each year, and only half

of them are funded with Drug Court Program Office funding, that

is also a good sign.

Senator SESSIONS. It is 100 new courts, and only half of them are

receiving Federal money?

Ms. LEARY. Only half are receiving Drug Courts Program Office

money, but, you know, they are probably using some of their other

sources.

Senator SESSIONS. Now, HHS has a substantial sum of money

devoted to drug treatment. Are you aware of how effectively they

are working with local drug courts to apply those drug treatment

resources in a way that facilitates the success of a drug court?

Ms. LEARY. The very best drug courts are working closely with

HHS, and they need to be partners. That is one of the things that

we tried to facilitate.

Senator SESSIONS. But I have been in the real world, and the

real world doesn’t always work like we think. I mean, maybe HHS

has a plan they want to do in a local community, and they are not

interested in redirecting resources under some sort of a hegemony

of the judge who wants to do it a certain other way.

Ms. LEARY. Right.

Senator SESSIONS. Could we improve OJP’s cooperation with

HHS in helping fund drug treatment for these courts?

Ms. LEARY. I would have to say that there is always room for improvement in Federal collaboration among agencies. I have seen

that from my own experience in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and at

OJP, but we do work pretty closely with CSAT to try to coordinate

our efforts in treatment and also even data collection, because if a

drug court is working with OJP and with HHS, they have to collect

data for each of those Federal agencies. It doesn’t make sense for

21

us not to be talking to one another about common data elements

that would be useful for both agencies and the courts.

So we are working on that regard as well, but there is always

room for improvement only Federal collaboration.

Senator SESSIONS. Let me mention to you and discuss with you

the 1997 GAO report which preceded your time there. It recommended that the Department of Justice require drug court programs to collect in-program—that is, while they are in the drug

court and being tested and meeting regularly with the judge—inprogram recidivist data and post-program recidivist data. That is,

after they have completed and graduated, what kind of recidivist

data do we have? This makes sense to me because it would enable

OJP to evaluate drug courts, perhaps determine which ones work

better than others, and could help give valuable advice to all these

States who are thinking about adopting it.

To me, we could provide no greater service than to have really

peer-reviewed scientific information that we could provide to a local

or State jurisdiction when they decide to adopt a drug court. So

what efforts have we undertaken to date, and what information

and statistical information have we obtained since that 1997 GAO

report?

Ms. LEARY. The most reliable information that we have obtained

is through our NIJ studies, which we have provided to your staff

and have talked about with them, and that is because we have discovered that States and local courts—— Senator SESSIONS. Some of those were pre-1997, weren’t they?

Have you undertaken anything intensively or significantly since

1997 to really make a major leap in your analysis of these drug

courts?

Ms. LEARY. Yes. We have a big effort in partnership with the National Institute of Justice, which is part of OJP, to do this longterm study. And that will give us, you know, perspective. It is kind

of a—it is a national evaluation, but in terms of the—I think we

have a real obligation to help build the capacity at the local level

so that the courts can get a better handle themselves on the results

of their efforts. We found that they are sorely lacking in expertise

and equipment and sophistication.

So we have done a number of things. Number one, when we

bring communities in——

Senator SESSIONS. I guess I want to stay on this research and

evaluation information question. GAO recommended that. Do you

agree with their recommendations?

Ms. LEARY. No, I agree that ideally you would be collecting that

kind of data.

Senator SESSIONS. And they talked about evaluating programs

through DOJ funding to assess post-program criminal and drug recidivism and compare that to a group of non-participants or similar

cohort.

Ms. LEARY. Right.

Senator SESSIONS. Do you agree that would be a good project?

Ms. LEARY. That would be very useful, and some of that has been

done.

Senator SESSIONS. Well, some of that has been done. Can’t we

get that information? Isn’t that a reasonable request for those of

22

us who are providing funding that after a decade here we begin to

really evaluate this?

Ms. LEARY. Yes, I agree. I think that is very useful information.

It is information we should have. It is not easy to obtain, as you

know, particularly in instances where the supervisory power of the

court has ended. Somebody is no longer on probation. It is difficult

to track that individual into the future, and that is a problem that

we are grappling with, and we are trying to figure it out at the

Federal level, and we are also trying to help the States build capacity so that local courts can do a better job.

Senator SESSIONS. Well, will you commit that as part of this National Institute of Justice study that you would evaluate those

issues that GAO suggested that we will have a recidivism program

both in-program and out-of-program and compared to nonparticipants?

Ms. LEARY. Yes.

Senator SESSIONS. I just think that is important. We need to nail

that down.

Ms. LEARY. Right. And I should probably make it clear that we

will do it through the studies. It is impossible to do it for every single drug court in America.

Senator SESSIONS. Right. That is correct.

Ms. LEARY. But we will get a handle on it.

Senator SESSIONS. Take a series of them and get some top scientific evaluation there.

Would you also be willing to give the Subcommittee a progress

report on results as the NIJ study data comes in? Would you share

those with us as they come in?

Ms. LEARY. Sure.

Senator SESSIONS. Tell us about this study, NIJ study. Have you

had an opportunity, since you have been on board, to evaluate exactly what is planned there, and can you describe for us some of

the things that you would like to see covered by this study?

Ms. LEARY. The study is—it is a multiphase study, so it is taking

place over a period of time. They are looking at individual drug

courts to try to ascertain the number of things, the topology of the

drug courts——

Senator SESSIONS. What does that mean?

Ms. LEARY. Let me tell you some of the questions they are trying

to answer.

Senator SESSIONS. OK.

Ms. LEARY. They are trying to answer questions who are these

folks who come into drug courts, what do they need, what are the

courts doing to address those needs, and how effective are the steps

that are being taken to address those needs, how much does it cost,

what is our cost/benefit analysis, what happens to these individuals

while they are enrolled in drug court in terms of recidivism, retention, and the like, and then what happened to them after they finish up the drug court program, and obviously compared to people

who are on regular probation, for instance, or people who are on

various forms of intensive supervision, electronic monitoring and

the like, you know, a decent comparison group. Those are the basic

questions that we are trying to answer.

23

Senator SESSIONS. Well, the thing is it can be awfully

muddled—— Ms. LEARY. Yes.

Senator SESSIONS [continuing]. About how you compare and what

you compare. If you have, for example, an individual who is sentenced normally to probation for a smaller offense, and they have

access to the State treatment program of mental health or something, and the judge orders them to undergo treatment, and they

report to a probation officer, you know, you never know what has

been happening in that treatment. They may be drug testing the

person.

Ms. LEARY. That is right.

Senator SESSIONS. You don’t have the leverage of the judge. So

comparing this really would take some rigor, and that is why the

studies you have got provide insights into this, but from what I can

understand, the experts you will be testing later recognize that we

are not where we need to be with data at this point.

Ms. LEARY. That is right. That is right, and you will get a lot

more information from the other witnesses on the panel about this,

but it is very important, I think, for evaluators to understand what

it is that we are evaluating, you know, what are the nuances of

this program, how does it actually operate, what are the outside influences that might impact on what is happening on it.

Senator SESSIONS. One more question, and I will let—did you

have something you wanted to say?

Ms. LEARY. That is fine.

Senator SESSIONS. With regard to how a case is handled, there

are two theories. One is that you require the defendant to admit

that he is guilty and actually plead guilty and withhold adjudication of the guilty plea pending successful completion of the drug

court, the post-conviction, post-adjudication—post-conviction, postplea, I guess is the right word—way of handling it, and the other

would be to simply move them into a diversion from criminal justice without a requirement of a plea and to go through this drug

court program of treatment and monitoring.

Does the Department of Justice recommend one or the other of

those programs at this time?

Ms. LEARY. We leave it up to the individual courts to determine

what works best for them, but what we do is we provide information about the various models and how well they work in different

settings, and at this time, I think better than half of the drug

courts in operation use what you might describe as kind of a postadjudication model. Some use kind of a hybrid pre- and post-adjudication, and some use something else altogether.

So we have seen a trend towards the post-adjudication model.

Senator SESSIONS. It always struck me that that made more

sense, because you end up 2 years down the road, and the witnesses are gone, the evidence has been lost, the person totally rejects the drug court, and you have got to figure out how to try the

case.

Ms. LEARY. I have been in that courtroom.

Senator SESSIONS. Whereas, if he successfully completes it, it is

easy to—what do you call it?—not adjudicate guilt and dismiss the

plea.

24

Senator Biden, I will turn it over to you.

Senator BIDEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I agree with you that

the evaluation of the program would be useful for a whole lot of

reasons, but as my grandfather would say, I don’t want—I want

the horse to be able to carry the sleigh here, and to do the kind

of genuine evaluation that leads to discussion of recidivism, based

on rearrest, recidivism based on not arrest but use of drugs, the

question of whether or not someone is drug free, for how long.

These are all fairly difficult to measure.

I just want to make sure everybody understands. When we

passed this the first time, I did not advertise it to be a cure-all of

anything. I advertised it as we were taking a low risk at a minimum to save big money with the prospect and hope that it would

impact upon future drug use and recidivism, but that was not the

promise of the program. So I want to make it clear I don’t want

to set a new bar for whether or not this program is working or not

working. That is just me speaking.

But the second point I want to raise with you is that before you

so quickly commit another administration to this thorough study,

I think it is important that somehow you get to us a written response that indicates with some specificity what you are suggesting

you are willing to study or likely to study. For example, in many

States, they don’t even have computerized criminal records within

the State. Within the State. And so the knowledge that you would

know whether or not there was a rearrest is de minimis in some

States.

And so what I am concerned about is if we come along after your

study, and you find out that you say we can’t give you an accurate,

a definitive picture of rearrest rates, recidivism, then we are in a

circumstance where if we make that a mandatory requirement of

the program, we are going to be imposing on the States an incredibly expensive burden of, you know, computing. Now, I wish they

were like my State and small enough and enlightened enough to

get ahead of the curve, but it is easy for us with 750,000 people

to do this, compared to States with 10 to 32 million people.

And so the second point I would make is that it is pretty important to know what is the baseline from which you are starting to

monitor accurately future drug use or post-drug court drug use

with or without arrest. It requires a lot of testing, and so if that

is the measure, that is a very different measure. You could have

someone—I mean, we all know a whole hell of a lot of addicts who

never get arrested or drug users who never get arrested, and so I

just think it is very important you and the Department are very

specific about what is it you think we should be—you should be

tasked to do relative to studies, and I would love all this information. What I don’t want to do is set a bar, and then you all come

back to us and say, by the way, you know, we need an extra $220

million, or we need X, Y, Z, or that you have to not fund as many

drug courts in the future because you are funding the studies.

Do you follow me?

Ms. LEARY. Exactly.

Senator BIDEN. So I would really like to know, and I fully agree

with the objective of the chairman. I sincerely mean that, but I

would just make sure we better be counting, you know, understand

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what we are doing so we don’t—so the Senator and I, if we are still

here, or whether we are not, someone else who has this committee

later says, Well, wait a minute now, you all didn’t do this study,

this program can’t mean much, or, you know, the study says this,

and therefore the program doesn’t work. I mean, specificity is pretty important.

Senator SESSIONS. Senator Biden, I just was reminded that there

is an objection from your side to committees—we have got until

11:30 a.m. We have got a couple of judges.

Senator BIDEN. I will withhold any more questions, or I will do

it in writing.

Ms. LEARY. The points are very well taken on that.

Senator BIDEN. I agree with you. Let us move on.

Senator SESSIONS. All right.

Senator BIDEN. I agree with you.

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Ms. Leary. I appreciate that, and

we will probably submit some other questions and we would like

to be partners with you in improving this program. I do believe

there is good in drug courts, and obviously we are spending an increasing amount of money on them. If we can identify the very best

parts and the very best courts and replicate that, we will do a service to the country.

Ms. LEARY. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Leary follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. MARY LOU LEARY

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee:

I appreciate the opportunity to provide you with information about the work of

the Office of Justice Programs (OJP) in preventing and controlling illegal drug use,

particularly among young people. Drug prevention has long been a priority for OJP,

and we currently support a wide range of initiatives to prevent and intervene in

drug use, sanction and treat drug-abusing offenders, and follow up with communitybased services after incarceration.

As a former state and federal prosecutor, I have seen the terrible consequences

of illegal drug use and trafficking—ruined lives, families torn apart, and communities devastated by drug-related crime. But through my experience at the United

States Attorney’s Office here in Washington, DC, I have also had the opportunity

to see how communities—working together with criminal jsutice, health, education,

and other agencies—can reduce illegal drug use and drug-related crime and improve

opportunities for young people to grow up in an environment free from drugs, crime,

and fear.

As you may know, Mr. Chairman, I had the privilege of working with former U.S.

Attorney Jay Stephens to establish the first Weed and Seed Program in the District

of Columbia. That program, based in Washington’s Langston-Carver neighborhood,

has had remarkable success in driving out drug traffickers, closing crack houses,

and making the streets safe for the families who live there. Later, working with

former U.S. Attorney and now Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, we expanded

our Weed and Seed efforts to four sties in D.C.

OJP currently supports Weed and Seed programs in over 200 communities

throughout the nation. These programs support law enforcement initiatives to weed

out drug dealing, gang activity, and violent crime and seed the targeted area with

educational, treatment, and social services, and employment opporutnities. Drug

abuse prevention and other youth programs are essential components of many Weed

and Seed programs. In addition, most Weed and Seed programs involve youth in

their community crime prevention, school-based, and neighborhood cleanup efforts.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, from the Weed and Seed sites in Mobile, these programs have tremendous community and neighborhood support. In addition, their

methodologies have been independently evaluated and determined to work in reducing crime and improving the vitality of neighborhoods. A National Impact Evaluation of Weed and Seed also shows that the small amount of federal funding provided

to sites, and the emphasis on broad-based community participation, has stimulated

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sites to mobile a far greater amount of local ersources for their Weed and Seed programs, particularly for the seeding component. Our strategy in administering Weed

and Seed is to provide funding and technical assistance to help communities leverage resources to sustain their efforts, and many communities have responded overwhelmingly to this challenge. We are now working to enhance Weed and Seed site

data collection and evaluation capabilities, so that sites can use the results of these

performance measures to further improve their programs.

I would like to briefly describe for the Subcommittee OJP’s other major drug-related initiatives in five categories; prevention, enforcement, intervention and treatment, post-incarceration supervision, and research and evaluation. Together, these

initiatives constitute a comprehensive approach to the prevention of illegal drug use

and the control of drug-related crime.

PREVENTION

Prevention is the first step toward ensuring the public safety, and, for that reason, is an integral component of OJP’s comprehensive approach to reducing drug use

and its consequences. We know, for example, that 16 percent of all jail immates and

about 25 percent of property and drug offenders said they committed their offense

to get money to buy drugs. At the same time, research also shows that young people

who refrain from using illegal drugs before the age of 18 are likely to avoid drug

problems throughout their lives. Clearly, prevention is an important key to community safety. OJP supports a broad array of initiatives designed to educate young people, their parents, and adults who work with youth about the dangers posed by drug

use.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, while OJP funds some drug prevention efforts directly, such as Weed and Seed, many states use OJP funds awarded through the

Edward Byrne Memorial State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance (Byrne) Formula Grant and Local Law Enforcement Block Grant to support drug prevention

initiatives. However, most OJP initiatives designed to prevent drug use by young

people are supported through our Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP).

For example, OJJDP partners with the Office of National Drug Control Policy

(ONDCP) on the Drug-Free Communities Support Program. This program supports

community coalitions that engage youth, parents, media, schools, and law

enforcemennt to reduce and prevent youth substance abuse. Under this program,

funds have been provided to over 300 communities.

OJJDP also supports the Drug Prevention Program for Youth. This school-based

program provides Life Skills Training to youth to enable them to resist pressure to

use drugs. The program also tests and demonstrates promising drug prevention

strategies to reach children in grade school, middle school, and high school and develop a comprehensive, strategic approach for replicating model drug prevention

programs for youth.

Drug prevention also is an importannt component of many other programs OJJDP

supports. Under the Safe Schools, Healthy Students Initiative, OJJDP—in partnership with the Department of Education and Health and Human Services—last year

provided more than $100 million to 54 communities to design comprehensive, community-based programs to prevent aggressive behavior and drug and alcohol abuse

by young people. The programm involves a partnership among educational, mental

health, social service, law enforcement, and juvenile justice agencies.

OJJDP and BJA also support Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA), which operates facilities where young people can participate in positive recreational, educational, and social activities. Through its Smart Moves program, BGCA helps local

clubs provide drug and alcohol prevention programming for youth. In addition, drug

abuse prevention is an objective of the Juvenile Mentoring Program (JUMP), which

pairs at-risk youth with adult role models to prevent drug use and deliqneucy and

to improve school work and life skills. Through these and other efforts, OJP is working to deter young people from illegal drug use.

ENFORCEMENT

Enforcement programs are another critical component of OJP’s comprehensive effort to prevent illegal drug use and to help states and local communities enforce

drug laws. Of the approximately $900 million in program funding that OJP certifies

to ONDCP as drug-related, two-thirds of these funds are for enforcement initiatives.

For example, states use approximately 40 percent of funds awarded under the

Byrne Formula Grant Program to support multi-jurisdictional law enforcement task

forces that target drug trafficking.

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As you know, Mr. Chairman, the Byrne program was created by the Anti-Drug

Abuse Act of 1988 specifically to help states enforce state and local drug laws. In

providing guidance to states on their use of Byrne funds, BJA emphasizes controlling violent and drug-related crime and serious offenders through multi-jurisdictional and multi-state efforts to support national drug control priorities.

Funds awarded to states and localities under BJA’s Local Law Enforcement Block

Grant (LLEBG) Program also may be used for drug enforcement efforts. LLEBG

funds may be used to hire law enforcement officers, pay overtime, procure equipment, enhance school security, create drug courts, adjudicate violent offenders, establish multi-jurisdictional law enforcement task forces, and support crime prevention programs. State and local jurisdictions determine how they will use their

LLEBG funds.

BJA also is helping local jurisdictions safely investigate and close down clandestine drug laboratories. These labs illegally manufacture controlled substances, often

endangering the nearby neighborhood and the officers who investigate the labs, as

well as increasing the availability of illegal drugs. For example, under a BJA grant,

the National Sheriffs’ Association provides training and technical assistance to state

and local law enforcement and regulatory personnel on safe methods for investigating and cleaning up illegal drug labs.

INTERVENTION AND TREATMENT

Intervention and treatment are important linchpins of OJP’s comprehensive drug

control initiative. Research has shown that combining criminal justice sanctions

with substance abuse treatment is highly effective in breaking the cycle of drug use

and crime. Many studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of treatment, particularly treatment in prison or other long-term residential settings followed by

aftercare treatment in the community. OJP administers several major initiatives

that combine drug treatment with criminal justice sanctions and incentives for good

behavior.

One of the most widespread and effective programs is drug courts. Drug courts

use a ‘‘carrot and stick’’ approach. Intensive supervision and sanctions are combined

with the prospect of reduced charges or shorter sentences for offenders who successfully complete treatment. Although drug courts vary among communities, such

courts typically involve active participation by judges, regular drug testing of offenders, and prompt, graduated sanctions. Drug courts use a partnership approach that

integrates drug treatment with other health and social services. As an alternative

to traditional incarceration or probation, drug courts are an effective means to reduce drug use and recidivism and are less costly than traditional supervision.

In 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (Crime Act) authorized a new Drug Courts Grant Program in the Department of Justice. To administer

this new grant program, the Drug Courts Program Office (DCPO) was created within OJP. Since 1995, DCPO has awarded more than $125 million to support the planning, implementation, or enhancement of drug courts in over 600 local communities.

DCPO also provides technical assistance to communities in designing, implementing, and operating drug courts. Much of this technical assistance is provided

through DCPO’s Drug Courts Clearinghouse at American University. The Clearinghouse provides technical assistance to DCPO grantees, conducts research, and collects and disseminates information on drug courts.

DCPO also sponsors the mentor drug court program, through which jurisdictions

establishing new drug courts have the opportunity to learn from established drug

courts, thereby avoiding potential problems. In addition, DCPO sponsors regional

training conferences for drug court grantees.

DCPO closely monitors the drug court programs supported with OJP funds. When

problems are detected, DCPO staff step in to provide additional training and technical assistance. If problems persist, drawdowns of federal funds are prohibited until

corrective measures have been taken. As a last resort, for programs that fail to take

remedial measures, grant funds are rescinded.

DCPO also relies on evaluations to measure drug court performance. In 1998 and

again in 1999, Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance

Abuse (CASA) released findings from reviews of 77 drug courts. CASA reported that

evaluations have shown that drug courts are effective in addressing drug abuse

among nonviolent offenders, in reducing the burdens imposed on the criminal justice

system by drug-related cases, and in helping offenders become law-abiding, drugfree, and self-sufficient members of their communities.

Among the CASA findings are the following:

• Compared to other treatment programs, drug courts provide more comprehensive supervision and monitoring, increase the rates of retention in treatment, and

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reduce drug use and criminal behavior while participants are in the drug court program.

• Drug use for participants while in the program remains low, as compared with

similar defendants not in a drug court. CASA found that an average of 10 percent

of drug tests of drug court clients were positive, compared to an average of 31 percent for similar defendants not in a drug court, but under probation supervision.

• Retention and graduation rates among drug court participants remain high, as

compared with other outpatient treatment programs. Sixty percent of those who entered drug courts were still in treatment after 12 months, compared to 50 percent

of individuals treated in outpatient programs.

• Recidivism for participants while in the drug court program remains low for

graduates. Post-graduation recidivism rates are also low. In an evaluation of the

Jefferson County, Kentucky drug court, only 13 percent of drug court graduates

were convicted of a felony in the one-year following graduation, compared to 60 percent of those who failed to graduate and 55 percent of the comparison group of eligible offenders who declined to participate in the drug court program.

Other evaluations found nondrug court clients were about twice as likely to

recidivate as compared to drug court clients. In Portland, 27 percent of drug court

clients were arrested for a new offense, compared to 46 percent for the comparison

group. In Las Vegas, 39 percent of drug court clients were rearrested, compared to

66 percent for the control group.

Drug courts can also help communities save money. For example, Denver reports

savings of $2.15 million annually, and Washington, DC saves an average of $6,455

per client per year compared with the cost of incarceration. A comprehensive cost

analysis of the drug court program in Portland, Oregon, found that every taxpayer

dollar spent on the drug court saved $2.50 in other costs to the public. When broader cost savings were taken into account, such as costs to crime victims, the ratio

of the benefit to the taxpayer was estimated at $10 saved for every $1 spent.

As of June 1, 2000, there were 533 operating drug courts with another 293 in the

planning stages. While drug courts originally served only adult offenders, today specialized drug courts have emerged to serve juveniles, Native Americans, families,

and individuals charged with driving under the influence (DUI). More than 57,000

individuals have graduated from a drug court. More than 1,000 drug-free babies

have been born to drug court participants. And over 90 percent of drug court graduates are gainfully employed.

Research also has shown a tremendous need for prison-based drug treatment. The

National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found that 80 percent of the 1.7

million adults incarcerated at the time of its study were under the influence of

drugs or alcohol when arrested, stole property to buy drugs, or had a history of drug

and alcohol abuse. From prisoner surveys conducted by OJP’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, we know that over 80 percent reported drug use prior to incarceration, and

between 30 and 40 percent report having been under the influence of alcohol immediately prior to or during the commission of their offenses. A study by OJP’s Corrections Program Office (CPO) in 1997 indicated that approximately 70 to 80 percent

of all state prison inmates are in need of substance abuse treatment. However, only

a fraction of the substance-abusing offenders in the nation’s correctional facilities

have access to treatment.

Studies have shown a tremendous difference in recidivism rates for drug-abusing

offenders who receive treatment as compared with those who do not undergo treatment. A Delaware study, for example, found that inmates who completed the state’s

drug treatment program were three times more likely to be drug and crime-free

after 18 months than nonparticipants or those who failed to complete the program.

To help fill the treatment gap, OJP’s Residential Substance Abuse Treatment for

State Prisoners (RSAT) program provides formula grants to states for substance

abuse treatment programs in state or local correctional facilities. Last month, OJP

awarded more than $57 million to all 50 states and eligible territories to continue

to provide substance abuse treatment to state and local prisoners. Originally authorized in the 1994 Crime Act, RSAT has allowed OJP to provide more than $230 million to the states and territories since 1996.

In implementing RSAT, states are encouraged to adopt comprehensive approaches

to substance abuse testing and treatment for offenders, including relapse prevention

and aftercare services. RSAT programs must last from six to 12 months, be provided

in residential treatment facilities set apart from the general correctional population,

focus on the substance abuse problems of the inmate, and work to develop the inmate’s behavioral, social, vocational, and other skills needed to reduce substance

abuse and related problems and improve the ability to remain drug and crime-free

upon the offender’s return to the community.

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Another major OJP program is Breaking the Cycle (BTC), a system-wide, coordinated program designed to reduce substance abuse and criminal activity of druginvolved offenders by combining drug treatment with criminal justice sanctions and

incentives. It is based on research suggesting that early identification and assessment of drug users, followed by treatment and supervision tied to the court’s coercive powers, can reduce drug use and crime. BTC’s focus is on maintaining continuous treatment as the defendant moves through the justice system.

In 1996, OJP’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) selected Birmingham, Alabama

as the first Breaking the Cycle demonstration site. In 1998, NIJ expanded the initiative to Jacksonville, Florida and Tacoma, Washington, and, in 1999, selected

Lane County (Eugene), Oregon as the first Breaking the Cycle project in a juvenile

justice system. Each site brings a strong collaborative framework to the initiative,

which includes partners from the justice and treatment communities and the local

political system. Each also has undertaken other innovative strategies to treat and

monitor drug-using defendants. Each site has an active drug court and networks to

promote criminal justice and treatment system coordination.

In fact, the court plays a critical role in each BTC project, both in offender management and in oversight of program implementation and operation. Judges are responsible for ensuring that sanctions and incentives are applied appropriately and

that treatment and other services are coordinated among the various program partners.

Under Breaking the Cycle, Birmingham has significantly improved its handling

of drug-using defendants. Substance abuse assessments that once were conducted

six months after arrest are now completed within two days of arrest. The number

of defendants on the project’s active caseload has more than doubled from 900 a

month to over 1,800, and the median length of supervision has increased from about

150 days to 232 days. Treatment also includes case management, frequent urinalysis, and other needed services. Criminal justice and service providers are now engaged in developing a seamless transition of drug treatment and supervision data

from the pretrial stage to post-adjudication supervision.

Birmingham’s experience as Breaking the Cycle’s ‘‘pioneer site’’ reinforced the importance of elements such as strong system collaboration, a comprehensive management information system, and the availability of wide-ranging treatment options.

The Birmingham experience also showed that Breaking the Cycle’s collaborative

structure can be used to address other system issues. NIJ has incorporated the lessons learned in Birmingham into its partnership with the other Breaking the Cycle

sites. It also is working with site officials to transition Breaking the Cycle to other

local, state, and federal funding sources.

POST-INCARCERATION SUPERVISION

Experience with these and other treatment programs, as well as research, have

documented the need for post-incarceration supervision and follow-up treatment, or

aftercare, in the community to reinforce institutional interventions. OJP is developing approaches to help offenders stay crime and drug-free when they return to

their communities following incarceration. The objective of these efforts is to hold

offenders accountable for their behavior, to reduce recidivism, and to increase public

safety.

About half a million offenders are released from prison or jail each year and return to our communities. Too often, these offenders fail to receive the close supervision, drug treatment, and other services they need. About 100,000 offenders are

under no supervision, drug treatment, and other services they need. About 100,000

offenders are under no supervision at all. Mr. Chairman, as you and I know from

our experience as former prosecutors, many of these offenders recidivate. In fact, we

know that about two-thirds of released offenders will reoffend and be reincarcerated

if they are not closely monitored to prevent recidivism and drug abuse relapse.

OJP has begun testing two approaches to help communities more effectively supervise offenders following incarceration. The first initiative is a reentry court, along

the lines of a drug court, which supervises released offenders using judges instead

of traditional parole boards. Law enforcement and correctional officers, along with

treatment and service providers, set up a reentry plan, monitor offender behavior,

and apply sanctions and incentives.

OJP is providing intensive technical assistance to nine state and county agencies—including Broward County, Florida, San Francisco, and the states of Delaware,

Iowa, Kentucky, and West Virginia—to develop a variety of models for reentry

courts.

The second approach involves reentry partnerships, where law enforcement, corrections, and the community work together to prepare for and manage the reentry

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process. Under this initiative, reentry plans are developed for individual offenders

based on a network of community resources, including employment, housing, substance abuse treatment, family counseling, and other services. This comprehensive

approach draws upon the resources of a broad range of partners, including corrections agencies, community police, treatment providers, and community-based organizations. The offender, the offender’s family, the victim, and the community all work

together to develop a comprehensive strategy for managing an offender’s reentry to

community life. Eight states are participating in this initiative—Florida, Maryland,

Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, South Carolina, Vermont, and Washington.

In addition, to maximize the impact of federal funds in the reentry partnership

sites, OJP plans to collaborate with the Departments of Labor (DOL) and Health

and Human Services (HHS). DOL would provide assistance in developing and operating jobs-related programs in the reentry sites, and HHS would support substance

abuse and mental health services. We have also set aside monies under this program to support an evaluation, and, in fact, our National Institute of Justice has

just recently issued a Request for Proposals for this purpose.

RESEARCH AND EVALUATION

In addition to these programmatic efforts, OJP supports research and statistical

analysis to inform programming, as well as evaluations to measure program performance and effectiveness. At the Justice Department, from the Attorney General

on down, research and evaluation are real priorities. Research and evaluation are

not isolated endeavors, but an integral part of our efforts to administer justice in

this country and to improve the operations of the criminal and juvenile justice systems. Our goal is to have data and knowledge driving policy, so that our programming and funding decisions are based on sound performance measures, hard data,

and ongoing analysis.

Starting with the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill, we worked with Congress to

allow us to take money off the top of all the new program funds to support research

and evaluation in those areas and to help inform future federal spending. At OJP,

we are working to make evaluation a part of every program we support and to use

the results of research and evaluation to inform our programming and spending decisions. For example, since 1995, we have committed $5 million to evaluate drug

court programs, and we plan to expend additional monies in fiscal year 2001 to expand these efforts. Our National Institute of Justice has designed a multi-phased,

multi-year, multi-site evaluation of over 30 drug court programs. Some preliminary

findings from the first evaluations were released this past spring, and we are using

those results to improve our drug court programming. In addition, we are supporting an evaluation of the effectiveness of the various treatment services used by

drug courts and research that will develop an assessment tool that can be used by

drug court programs throughout the country to provide reliable information on program costs and cost-savings.

In addition, we are supporting initiatives that incorporate research and evaluation

into programs from their inception. In these programs, researchers and practitioners

work together to identify local crime-related problems, guide the implementation of

interventions, evaluate progress, and disseminate data.

I am committed to continuing to ensure that performance measures are built into

every program that OJP has a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer monies are

spent wisely and effectively. For that reason, I am working to ensure that OJP staff

closely monitors every grant program to measure effectiveness, and to quickly intervene with training and technical assistance where needed to improve program operations. If a program continues to flounder in spite of additional assistance, I believe

we must learn from our mistakes and end funding for projects that simply do not

work.

In addition to federally supported initiatives, we are also working to build research and evaluation capacity at the state and local levels. Federal support for research and evaluation is critical. But at the same time, we must build capacity at

the state and local levels to enable those officials to better understand and respond

to crime. Because crime in this country is primarily a state and local responsibility,

we must enhance state and local capacity to assess their crime statistics, analyze

risk factors, and conduct research and evaluation to inform local planning and programming.

OJP is working to foster performance measures at the state and local level. Assistance provided to drug courts is one example. Although OJP closely monitors the

drug courts supported with its grant monies, provides training and technical assistance where needed, and rescinds funds from ineffective programs, many drug courts

are supported with funds from state and local government, private industry, and

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foundations. In fact, as you know, Mr. Chairman, drug courts began as a grass-rots

movement, without federal assistance, and spread across the nation.

In an effort to ensure the effectiveness of all drug courts, OJP entered into a cooperative agreement with the National Association of Drug Court Professionals to develop standards and performance measures for drug courts. A Drug Court Standards Committee, composed of drug court practitioners from throughout the country,

developed recommendations published in DCPO’s 1997 report, ‘‘Defining Drug

Courts: The Key Components.’’ This landmark report describes the 10 key components of a drug court and provides performance benchmarks for each component.

The Conference of Chief Justices, the Conference of State Court Administrators, and

several states have adopted the key components and performance benchmarks as

standard measurement tools for drug courts.

OJP also is working to help jurisdictions collect and analyze drug use data, and

then use those data in local criminal justice planning. Through the Arrestee Drug

Abuse Monitoring (ADAM) program, 35 jurisdictions across the country collect and

analyze interviews and urinalysis of adult and juvenile arrestees and detainees in

police lock-ups. Analyses of these data help jurisdictions understand local and regional drug use trends, as well as the links between drug use and crime, and make

informed decisions about deployment and spending. ADAM was the first national

indicator, for example, to document an alarming rise in Western jurisdictions in

methamphetamine use. ADAM has also found that marijuana was the most commonly used drug among juvenile detainees.

ADAM is designed so that each participating local jurisdiction can customize information to meet its unique needs. ADAM makes it possible to identify levels of

drug use among arrestees; track changes in patterns of drug use; identify specific

drugs that are abused in each jurisdiction; alert officials to trends in drug use and

the availability of new drugs; provide data to help understand the drug-crime connection; and evaluate law enforcement and jail-based programs and their effects.

ADAM also serves as a research platform for a wide variety of related initiatives,

including the relationship of drugs and crime to related social problems, such as alcohol abuse, domestic violence, drug markets, firearms, gambling, gangs, and sexually transmitted diseases. For example, in Indianapolis, a special committee convened by the mayor’s office consisting of law enforcement officials, court officials,

and service providers, used ADAM data to develop a plan to address problems such

as prostitution, drug use, and other crimes.

Through an agreement with the Bureau of the Census, OJP’s Bureau of Justice

Statistics collects additional data regarding drug use by prison and jail inmates,

drug-related programs in state and local police agencies, and the adjudication and

sentencing of drug offenders. For example, BJS surveys found that more than 80

percent of jail and prison inmates reported prior drug use, compared to 36 percent

of the general population.

CONCLUSION

These data highlight the need for continued national attention to the problem of

illegal drug crime and drug-related crime. OJP has adopted a comprehensive approach to preventing illegal drug use, enforcing drug laws, providing appropriate

interventions and sanctions for drug-abusing offenders, ensuring post-incarceration

supervision and treatment, and supporting research and evaluation to inform these

efforts. I look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman, and the Members of this

Subcommittee to prevent illegal drug use in this country, particularly by our nation’s young people, and to reduce drug-related crime. This concludes my formal

statement. I would be happy now to answer any questions you or the Subcommittee

Members may have.

Senator SESSIONS. All right. Our next panel, we will get your

names up there, and if you can go on and step forward, I guess I

will ask you first to give your oath, if you would.

Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you give to this subcommittee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the

truth, so help you God?

Judge MCMAKEN. I do.

Judge GEBELEIN. I do.

Mr. BELENKO. I do.

Mr. GOLDKAMP. I do.

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you very much.

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Our second panel is comprised of several distinguished experts

on the operation and study of drug courts. Judge Mike McMaken

has presided over the drug court in my hometown of Mobile, AL,

for 7 years. I have watched with great admiration how he has conducted that court. He served as district judge in Mobile County

since 1987 and currently presides over the district court. He has

served tirelessly to improve the Alabama criminal justice system,

devoting particular efforts to child advocation advocacy. He co-authored a publication entitled ‘‘Implementing Child Advocacy: A Rational and a Basic Blueprint.’’ He served as first president of the

board of the directors of the Child Advocacy Center, Incorporated,

in Mobile, and when he was a private practitioner, he represented

the Mobile County Department of Human Resources at one point

of his legal career, almost exclusively dealing with child custody actions involving abused and neglected children. He served as an assistant district attorney and prosecutor in both Mobile and Tuscaloosa and was present at and has presided over the creation of this

drug court and its history since.

Senator Biden, you have someone you would like to introduce.

Senator BIDEN. I do, and let me say, Mr. Chairman, first of all,

thank you and to the whole panel. I am supposed to be, like we

all are, but I have three other things I am supposed to be doing

now, and I say to Judge Gebelein there are 19 University of Delaware students in the back room from my former professor, Professor Belinski. I can’t remember what grade he gave me. So I am

trying to figure out if it was a good grade, I am going to go speak

to him. If it wasn’t, I am going to go to the press conference, but

all kidding aside, and I am supposed to be with Senator Hatch at

11 o’clock, which I am obviously not going to make, at another

function on the digital divide and the H–1B visa.

So I apologize if I step out, gentlemen, during your testimony.

But I know you know Judge Gebelein, Mr. Chairman. He has

been here before. He has been a member and associate judge in the

Superior Court of Delaware since 1984. Prior to that, he had a job

similar to the one you had as a Federal prosecutor. He was our attorney with the State of Delaware. He is a good card-carrying Republican, which I hope makes you like him a little more, but he

also is——

Senator SESSIONS. He did look like a nice fellow, I must admit.

Senator BIDEN. He is one hell of a guy. He has served as chairman of the Delaware Sentencing Accountability Commission since

1989. He is the founder of the Delaware Statewide drug court system—ours is Statewide—where he serves as drug court judge responsible for post-adjudicated offenders, and he is the founding

member of the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

There is much more to say about him, except to suggest to you that

this is a serious man who has taken his job incredibly seriously.

We have had, I am very proud to say, incredible success in Delaware. He has dealt with over 1,400 folks who have come through

his system. They have so far a 62 percent completion rate, success

rate, and I have visited his courts many times.

I am happy he is here, and in the event that I don’t get to stay

for the whole testimony, it is not because of my lack of interest. It

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is because I have these other things, and I know so much about

what he has done already.

But I appreciate you having him here, Mr. Chairman.

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you.

Our next panelist is Dr. Steven Belenko, a fellow at the National

Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse, CASA, at the Columbia

University. He studied drug courts for a number of years and has

published two studies that synthesize the current body of drug

court research on outcomes, such as recidivism rates for drug court

participants and graduates as compared to non-participants.

Dr. John Goldkamp is currently a professor of criminal justice at

Temple University where he heads the Crime and Research Institute in Philadelphia. His research focuses broadly on discretion in

criminal justice and innovation in the courts, with special emphasis

on treatment and alternatives to confinement, including drug

courts. Dr. Goldkamp co-authored the first comprehensive evaluation of the Nation’s first drug court in Miami. They didn’t get a 80

percent cure rate, I don’t think, did they?

Dr. Goldkamp has conducted one portion of the large-scale national evaluation funded by NIJ to study the oldest drug courts in

the United States.

Judge McMaken, thank you for coming, and I just want to reiterate that I know how much you care about the people who come

before you, and how hard you work to try to turn their lives

around. I have seen that commitment over many years, I appreciate you for that. I think it is not atypical of other drug court

judges around the country. We would be glad to hear your comments at this time.

PANEL CONSISTING OF HON. MICHAEL E. McMAKEN, JUDGE,

DISTRICT COURT OF ALABAMA, MOBILE COUNTY, MOBILE,

AL; HON. RICHARD S. GEBELEIN, JUDGE, SUPERIOR COURT

OF DELAWARE, WILMINGTON, DE; STEVEN BELENKO, PH.D.,

FELLOW, THE NATIONAL CENTER ON ADDICTION AND SUBSTANCE ABUSE (CASA) AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW

YORK, NY; AND JOHN GOLDKAMP, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF

CRIMINAL JUSTICE, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY, PHILADELPHIA,

PA

STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL E. McMAKEN

Judge MCMAKEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a privilege to

be here. I want to thank you for the invitation to participate in this

proceeding.

First, it is always a pleasure to talk about the Mobile drug court

program. After 7 years, I have become very attached to it, but it

is also because I believe these programs can have a very positive

impact on the community and on the participants when they truly

commit to recovery. I realize these are very expensive propositions,

and your committee is absolutely correct to be concerned that the

Government money that is spent is only spent on programs that

are successful.

I have to acknowledge that the Mobile program expends the vast

majority of its resources on program activities, rather than evaluation. Although there was a study done back in 1997, it was not as

34

full-fledged an evaluation study as we would like, and it was 3

years ago. So those figures are no longer current, although it did

indicate we were doing well there reducing the recidivism rate.

Our numbers are a little bit smaller than some of the programs

around the country. I don’t know all the numbers of other programs, but we do have a very intensive level of monitoring and supervision and judicial involvement.

My personal experiences after this 7 years is that we are definitely making a big impact on the people that graduate. We just

had our 30th graduation last Friday. We graduated our 454th graduate out of 1,183 participants, which is a smaller number than

Judge Gebelein’s program, but we are very pleased with that. We

have consistently graduated 43 percent of our defendants. We are

very, very difficult with them, and sometimes we are probably a little bit unreasonable by other persons’ opinions, but we do have to

work in what I consider a very conservative political environment,

and our county commission spends a lot of money on this, and they

have a right to expect a safe and positive return on their investment.

There are several reasons I am convinced that we are successful.

Senator SESSIONS. You say 40 percent. That means that those

who consistently test positive or otherwise fail to follow your orders, you remove from the court, and they go back into is criminal

justice system?

Judge MCMAKEN. They are sentenced. We are a post-plea, presentence program. If they fail, they are sentenced immediately.

Now, we defer quite a while before we decide they have failed, but

the 43 percent represents those who have been in the program a

year or more. They have graduated every graduation we have held

at 43 percent for the past 7 years.

I would think that—my personal conviction that we are successful is biased, obviously, but I would have thought—and I am not

familiar with these proceedings so I have no preconceived notion of

how to go about this, but I brought some before and after pictures

of somewhat representative defendants in our program. I would

have thought I could have shown these photos to these ladies, and

that would be enough to make them persevere. That doesn’t always

work, but the dramatic appearance of people, their demeanor, their

participation, their attitude between the time they admit and the

graduation is amazing. It is a transition that you can’t understand

unless you go to a graduation proceeding.

Senator SESSIONS. I think you invited me to the first one, if I am

not mistaken.

Judge MCMAKEN. Yes, sir, and you are invited to every one.

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you. And I attended.

Judge MCMAKEN. At each graduation, I give the defendants an

opportunity to stand up and speak, and their comments are usually

very touching and sometimes very tearful, but they are given with

emotional expressions of gratitude for what they have received

from the program, and this, I wanted to point out, is not a time

when they have to impress me. They are done. They have already

got their dismissal order in their hand. Their plea is set aside, and

they are free to go, but they are genuinely touched by the changes

in their lives, I am convinced.

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It is very compelling to hear people say things like thank you for

giving me my daughter back; or a child, my parent; or a spouse,

my husband; or whatever. Or very commonly, Drug courts saved

my life, thank you so much. One especially moving comment is,

Thank you for helping my baby be born drug free. I have had defendants who I have sentenced who failed the program, went off to

the penitentiary, had their baby at Julia Tutweiler, came back, and

brought the child to us in court to show us that this baby was, in

fact, born drug free. In prison, but drug free. I got my family back.

I got my children back, is a very common statement from a lot of

the women. My family respects me again, or I respect myself now.

One really small comment, but very telling to me was one lady

told me—it has been years ago—I can leave my daughter in the

room with my purse again, which you can imagine what life is like

when you can’t trust your daughter to that extent.

Often the tone of the testimony we receive for graduation is very

spiritual. It is, I think, a good sign in a lot of ways, and you and

I obviously share some beliefs with the same church membership,

but that is a very moving and compelling fact with some of our

graduates, their spiritual reawakening, so to speak.

I acknowledge that not all of our graduates will succeed. I realize

some will fail, but many I think persevere, and sitting as I do at

sort of the top of the criminal justice funnel in Mobile County, I

get to see everybody or one-fourth of everybody that comes through

the system at their initial appearance for bail hearings and whatnot. I am satisfied we are doing good with that respect.

Two things I would like to see us do: One, we need to work more

with the children to prevent drug use. I try to take—we have been

doing this for several years—defendants to schools or youth groups

at churches to participate in discussion about not so much ‘‘just say

no’’ to the drugs, but a ‘‘this is my story, I didn’t say no, and this

is what happened to me.’’ We try to match them to the demographics of the group that participate with them. We try to have

a question and answer session. We don’t do that enough. We need

to do more in the effort of prevention in exchange for the what

community gives to the drug court defendants, and that is also

helpful in their treatment.

One last thing I would like to mention, and it is not necessarily

on point, but I believe it is very relevant, if I may go over my time

just a second.

Senator SESSIONS. Please go ahead. Yes.

Judge MCMAKEN. Recently, I have been involved in an infant

mortality program. That is because there is strong research to

show that drug use is a prime cause for infant mortality, but there

is so much more involved in that issue. I strongly believe that we

need to work to get treatment to all women who are involved prenatal drug use. I have an article, ‘‘A Reason for Hope.’’ It describes

some of the issues related to prenatal alcohol and drug abuse and

the cost, and I emphasize what Ms. Leary mentioned earlier in this

respect. The costs to society as a result of that problem are huge.

The consequences of what, I am afraid, is a fairly widespread community acceptance of drug use and abuse may affect more children

than we really know, and we are talking about resulting damage

being costly not just in medical expenses, but they are huge, but

36

for other directly related social costs such as public assistance and

special education services.

As you know, I am a father of an 8-year-old girl with Down Syndrome who requires intensive special education assistance. I also

have a 6-year-old son who has ADHD who is gifted, but he also requires a lot of attention as well. So I do understand the difficulties

of some of those problems on a firsthand basis, but the special education expense alone is monumental, and there is research, I believe, that justifies the statement that children who are exposed to

prenatal drug use often need special education services and tend to

be more impulsive. They are more likely to use drugs. They are

more likely to drop out of school, and they have tendencies more

often towards violent behavior.

Senator SESSIONS. Is there a study on that? I have always heard

that.

Judge MCMAKEN. In the article that I have included in my testimony, there are references to a number of experts in that field, yes,

sir.

I believe that this is an issue directly related to this committee’s

work, and I think it also is affected by what you do in our drug

courts, and we are trying to get more gender-specific treatment and

paying especially close attention to the pregnant females, one of

which we just graduated Friday, as a matter of fact.

Senator SESSIONS. So a pregnant female just graduated. Is there

any doubt in your mind that that graduate was more likely to have

been drug free having gone through the court than if she hadn’t

gone through the court?

Judge MCMAKEN. I can say with a high degree of confidence that

we made a big difference. This was somebody who was with us for

about 20 months. In other words, she was over the 12-month normal timeframe. She was very problematic, extremely difficult. She

was AWOL more than once, noncompliant in a lot of ways, but she

has made a tremendous turnaround. I feel very confident that she

is drug free today. I can’t verify it now. She is gone from our program, but I believe that baby will be born drug free next month.

Senator SESSIONS. If she had not been subject to that intensive

supervision, you believe it is likely she would have been heavily

using drugs?

Judge MCMAKEN. Her lifestyle was such that it would almost be

unavoidable.

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you very much, Judge McMaken. I appreciate those comments and your great leadership.

[The prepared statement of Judge McMaken follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF MICHAEL E. MCMAKEN

WHAT IS A DRUG COURT?

For quite some time courts have struggled to find ways to more effectively deal

with the increasing volume of criminal cases, especially those cases that are either

drug offenses or drug-driven crimes. The volume of criminal cases directly attributable to drug and alcohol abuse is phenomenal and it has virtually overwhelmed

the criminal justice system. The number of prisoners in city and county jails and

in state and federal institutions is incredibly large.

Given the huge cost of housing a prisoner for a year, it is much more fiscally attractive and beneficial to the community if we can find ways of disposing of criminal

cases AND providing treatment to reduce the amount of drug abuse with its related

social costs. Drug courts provide an option for doing both at once. It is infinitely betVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
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ter to keep a person out of prison, working and paying taxes rather than pay

$15,000.00 to $25,000.00 per year to feed, clothe, secure, ‘‘entertain’’, heat, cool, and

provide medical care for, that person.

Specific details of the Mobile Drug Court program are described in the document

‘‘Drug Court Participation Requirements’’ attached to this testimony. The Mobile

Drug Court ‘‘Judgeship’’ is not an official full-time judicial position. I was elected

to serve as a District Court Judge and my regular duties in that respect have not

really changed. The District Court Criminal cases, and the ‘‘Small Claims’’ and ‘‘District Civil’’ cases are scheduled as usual and the Drug Court cases must be fit in

wherever and whenever that is possible. The Drug Court cases are virtually exclusively Circuit Court prosecutions and a huge percentage of them are prosecuted by

solicitor’s information rather than indictments. As a result this takes a fair portion

of the caseload off of the prosecutors, judges and the Circuit Court criminal jury

dockets.

The following three paragraphs present a cursory overview of our program, which

will hopefully give you some feel for how we operate. A defendant charged with a

non-violent, drug-related (or ‘‘drug-driven’’) felony criminal offense may elect to

plead guilty and enter Drug Court if their application is approved by the prosecution. After a guilty plea is entered, the court defers sentencing and admits the defendant to the court-based, three-phase, intensive outpatient, drug treatment program, which is expected to last for one full year.

During this treatment program the defendant must attend weekly group treatment sessions (the number diminishes from 3–4 to 1–2 depending on Phase), meet

with his case-manager and treatment counselor for individual review sessions, undergo frequent drug testing, attend 3 (5 in Phase I) NA, AA or CA meetings weekly,

pay the treatment fee of $1,500.00 (for the year) and appear in court as ordered by

the Judge to verify program compliance.

Court appearances may vary from as often as every 2–3 weeks to a minimum of

every 2 months depending on the defendant’s performance. A defendant must test

drug-free for at least the six months prior to graduation in order to complete the

program. Failure to comply with these requirements will result in a custodial prison

sentence without the need for further court proceedings. If the defendant successfully completes the program, his guilty plea is set aside and his case is dismissed

at a formal graduation ceremony where his friends, family, fellow drug court participants and the public can celebrate the happy event.

FREQUENT JUDICIAL INVOLVEMENT

It is one thing for a treatment counselor or probation officer to develop a relationship with a defendant over whom they have responsibility. It is quite another for

a judge to spend enough time in court with a defendant to know very much about

him or her. After numerous court appearances and extensive reviews of performance

reports, it is the rule rather than the exception in drug courts for judges to interact

with a defendant in a meaningful way.

Another reason this program is very different from traditional court proceedings

is the fact that there are virtually no lawyers or other legal representatives involved. The prosecutor and the defense attorney are present at the plea dockets but

they do not often participate at status hearings. It is the Judge and the defendant

* * * one-on-one so to speak.

I frequently tell defendants when they plead guilty that they want to be the person I do NOT know. They should want me to say: ‘‘Who is he?’’ That will mean that

I will have had very little opportunity to learn about them because their performance will have been exemplary. It is usually the ‘‘problem children’’ whose names

I recall the most vividly.

Sanctions can vary from lectures and scolding to incarceration for violations of the

treatment program requirements or sentencing if that ultimately becomes necessary. At the same time, the Court encourages and congratulates successful performance and accomplishments (such as getting their Driver’s License reinstated,

registering to vote or getting their (GED). Regular and intensive judicial interaction

is probably the most distinguishing feature of drug courts.

Intensive judicial participation may well be the factor that makes THE difference

for some defendants. When discussing scheduling of the most recent graduation our

staff was somewhat anxious that I put off committing to a specific date. I replied

that I was waiting to learn when I would be in Washington, DC. I suggested that

we could schedule the ceremony and that they could proceed without me if I had

to be away. One counselor was horrified that I would even consider that. She said

some of the defendants would not want to graduate if I would not be there. When

I expressed amusement at that suggestion, the others insisted that she was correct.

38

They believe that the defendants want to ‘‘show me’’ that they can do it after a year

or more of my ‘‘tormenting’’ them.

GRADUATION

The graduation ceremony, which is scheduled about every 2 months, is a time of

celebration by all parties and often a critical renewal of the staff’s energy and spirits. The defendant is afforded, and usually takes, the opportunity to speak about

their experience in the program. This testimony is frequently the fuel needed to

keep everyone going for another two months because the program is very demanding and challenging.

Graduation can be a very emotional time. Listening to them share their journey

is touching. Tears frequently flow freely. They often break down when they personally and publicly thank their counselors and case-managers for their efforts.

Having the defendants and their families thank you for putting them in jail and

essentially making their lives miserable at times can be a truly humbling experience. They frequently share with the Drug Court staff comments like:

• ‘‘Thank you for giving me my daughter back; now I can leave her alone in

the room with my purse.’’

• ‘‘Thank you for helping my baby be born drug free!’’

• ‘‘Thank you for showing me a better way to live.’’

• ‘‘Thanks to you I have my wife (husband, child, parent * * * or most importantly * * * my children) back.’’

• ‘‘I lost everything * * * my job, my family, my home * * * and when I

reached the bottom, drug court showed me the way back up again.’’

• I especially recall one woman who, after long and agonizing months of fruitless efforts on our part, failed the program and was sentenced to the penitentiary while she was pregnant. When she was released from prison she came

back to court one day and brought her baby girl by for us to see the child that

we had helped to be born drug free ... even though for her that had to happen

while she was in prison. Her expression of gratitude and joy over the happy result left a very memorable impression on me.

THE IDEA HAS SPREAD FAR AND WIDE

There are many drug court programs now but in February of 1993 when the Mobile Drug Court began there were only a few around the country and those were

mostly in Florida and California. I believe that there are approximately 450 programs around the country at this time and I expect that more are being considered

and organized all the time

Drug court programs have been very successful in many ways and they have

achieved a greater and much more wide spread acceptance now than when they

were first created. That is certainly true for our program here in Mobile, Alabama.

As good as he concept is, there is no doubt that such programs can be improved.

The better programs almost certainly are constantly undergoing changes. In the beginning there was a good deal of trial and error. Our greatest improvements have

probably come from our most painful mistakes.

HOW ARE WE DOING?

I agree that we must try to evaluate the success of drug court programs and determine which formats or components are most effective and achieve the best results. However, when reviewing and evaluating them we must remember that there

are many differences among the programs.

I have tried informally and on an ad hoc basis to personally evaluate how and

where we are succeeding. ‘‘Who is graduating and who is failing?’’ is an important

question. The information is not readily available in a database to evaluate our performance and we must certainly improve that part of our programs. It goes back

to the old saying, ‘‘When you are up to your waist in alligators, it is difficult to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp.’’ My sense is, and this

is based on some statistical data gathered together over a year ago, that we are succeeding most often in the cases where the defendant has no prior felony convictions

and their Drug Court case is only an offense for possession of drugs. However, there

are some truly remarkable exceptions to that ‘‘rule.’’

We tried to pull together data on age, race, gender, type of offense, criminal history, and number of appearances in court and length of time in the program. On

a limited basis, I do this personally for every graduating class. That is to ensure

that we are hitting our target demographics as well as to try to remember and comment on each graduate’s ‘‘story’’. I also make a little ‘‘State of The Drug Court’’ adVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00038 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
39

dress at graduation. This data needs to be maintained for every participant (graduates and failures) and used to improve our selection criteria and program content.

PROGRAM DEMOGRAPHICS

The figures that follow assume that all seventeen of the scheduled graduates actually appear and graduate at 1:00 PM on Friday, September 29, 2000. This breakdown is only a very cursory examination of some of the demographics of our graduates and I wish it could be more.

1,183 Defendants admitted to date

1,044 Defendants admitted to MDC more than one year ago

507 Defendants Sentenced

454 Defendants Graduated (43.4% of the 1,044)

395 Graduated Defendants w/No Prior Felony Convictions (87%)

59 Graduated Defendants w/Prior Felony Convictions (13%)

347 Graduated Defendants who had only Drug cases (76.4%)

21 Graduated Defendants who had Drug cases and other cases (4.6%)

86 Graduated Defendants who had only Other-Than Drug cases (18.9%)

334 Males to Graduate (73%)

120 Females to Graduate (27%) (When I last asked the Mobile Metro Jail population was 12% female.)

265 Blacks to Graduate (58.%)

189 Whites to Graduate (41.6%)

29 Average Age of all Graduates

14.9 Average Number of Months the Graduate was in Drug Couort

The average graduate seems to match our original demographic target fairly well.

We seem to be fairly and appropriately treating male/female, black/white, and

younger/older defendants. Although I have no statistical data to back it up, I also

feel very strongly that we are spread from the top to the bottom of the socio-economic scale. The amount of community service that is done to defray drug court fees

is significant. At the same time, we have many defendants who pay the full fee

amount and a number of them are able to do it with east . . . if they so choose.

It would appear that we might want to examine very carefully the applications

of those defendants who have other than Drug cases or expend less energy on them

while they are with us. Another conclusion one might draw is that we might need

to be very cautious about accepting, or expending too much energy on, defendants

with prior felony convictions.

I believe that every drug court program could benefit from this kind of self-examination process and that the Mobile Drug Court must improve in this respect as

well. We need to consistently evaluate our performance, refine those policies that

work best, change those that are not successful and determine our recidivism rate

to more fully document and validate the program’s usefulness.

Attached to this document is the 1997 ‘‘Report to the Drug Court of Mobile County: Comparing Drug Court Graduates to Non-Drug Court Participants’’, which was

prepared by Professor G. David Johnson, PhD. Dr. Johnson is the Interim Associate

Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of South Alabama.

Although this evaluation was not as comprehensive as one might prefer, it did establish that the recidivism rate of the drug court participants was lower than nonparticipants. This appears to be consistent with reviews of other drug court programs. Dr. Johnson will hopefully undertake a follow up evaluation of the program

in the future.

When comparing drug court programs please remember that they, as is all politics, are ‘‘local’’. Drug Courts cannot exist without ‘‘local politics’’ in their creation

and continued existence. In the absence of either an enlightened monarch or benign

dictator there must be some strong sense of community ‘‘political will’’ to finance,

undertake and preserve a drug court program. The drug addict lobby is neither very

popular nor especially powerful and it is up to the community leaders (both elected

and otherwise) to take the initiative on this front.

There must be some vision and courage among the local elected governmental, judicial, law enforcement and other community leadership to attempt to solve the

drug problem by other than ‘‘conventional means.’’ Those conventional means have

not achieved a great deal of success if one judges by the overwhelming availability,

use, and unfortunately widespread community acceptance of, illegal drugs.

HOW WIDESPREAD IS THIS PROBLEM?

I believe that it is generally accepted that the use of illegal drugs occurs in all

segments of the community. Drug and alcohol abuse is oblivious to age, gender,

40

race, education and socio-economic status. In the Mobile program alone we have had

as defendants two lawyers, one Ph.D. Psychologist, the children of several lawyers

and doctors, many nurses, one former police officer, and the family members of quite

a few friends or acquaintances of the Drug Court staff. In one case we even had

a family member of one of our staff as a program participant.

The motivation to change the way drug-driven crimes are prosecuted has its motivation in the perception that we have failed to a large extent so far as well as in

the obvious economic consequences of drug crimes. Our courts are overloaded with

these cases and the prisons are overflowing with drug prisoners. We cannot build

or staff enough prisons to keep up * * * especially for habitual offenders and/or sentencing guidelines in many courts.

DRUG COURTS ARE NOT ALL CREATED ALIKE

Since the drug court programs are all local there exist a variety of philosophies

and formats. While I do not pretend to have a comprehensive overall understanding

or personal knowledge of all the existing programs in the country, it is my belief

that many of the programs vary greatly in how they are organized and how they

work. • There are diversion, post-plea and combination programs. • Some only accept felony cases or misdemeanor cases, while others take both

kinds of criminal cases but no cases other than adult criminal cases. • Occasionally drug courts involve dependency cases (including child custody

issues) in addition to criminal matters however most are exclusively criminal courts. • Some programs treat juveniles only. • Some courts have been created for Native-American defendants. • Some programs obtain drug treatment by contract with outside providers while

other courts hire their own drug counselors and treatment staffs. • Some operate in-home drug testing labs while others do not, but instead cooperate with exist in drug testing facilities. • Not all programs use the same type of drug testing equipment, supplies, policies

or procedures. • Some programs are smaller in scale with extremely intensive monitoring and

drug testing while others are much larger in scale with less frequent contacts and/

or drug testing programs. • Some programs are essentially loose coalitions of existing community programs

with informal or formal agreements regarding referral and reporting for treatment

and case management. • Programs require a commitment varying from only six months to a year or

eighteen months or perhaps longer. • Some programs may admit participants who want to continue their methadone

use but Mobile, for example, does not. • Some drug courts have frequent judicial review, involvement and interaction

with defendants while others may have less judicial contact in favor of staff monitoring. • Some courts may have a full-time Drug Court Judge but many are presided

over by judges with other dockets as their primary responsibility. • Some courts may operate with ‘‘special’’ judges (such as referees or magistrates)

selected by some means other than regular judicial elections or appointments. • While some programs may have become institutionalized into the local judicial

structure others may continue to exist only due to the personal commitments and

dedication of key personnel or supporters.

EXPAND PROGRAM ACTIVITIES

I believe that we need to expand the activities of the Drug Courts and make the

programs and the Defendants give back to the community for several reasons. First

the community is offering the participants an unparalleled opportunity to ‘‘beat

their case’’ AND beat their drug problem at the same time. Avoiding a felony conviction can be a lifetime financial bonanza. Second, Mobile County for instance foots

the bill for a significant part of the cost of the program and deserves to be compensated whenever possible. Third, the Defendants often need to learn to start accepting responsibility for their own mistakes and transgressions. Facing the consequences of their actions is often the first step to true recovery.

COMMUNITY SERVICE WORK

In Mobile we have insisted on regular community service work as an ongoing part

of the treatment program. This is a two-fold effort. First, in order to offer the more

financially strapped defendants an opportunity to pay their required contribution to

41

the cost of treatment, we have allowed them to perform community service work for

up to one-half of their obligation. This is a voluntary component of the community

service work. They sign up and work essentially on their own schedule but they

must regularly participate to verify their efforts to be responsible for the payment

of their fees.

PUNITIVE COMMUNITY SERVICE WORK

Second, there is also a Punitive Community Service Work project every Saturday

morning at 7:00 AM. This is an alternative to going to jail for not complying with

some drug court program requirement. It helps to reduce the jail population and it

makes the defendants reflect more intensely on their less than successful participation in treatment.

We try to focus on helping the Mobile County Schools with labor to reduce their

costs and improve the appearance of their grounds and facilities. In addition to the

schools we also work closely to assist city and county parks, public housing, county

and city special projects, special community events and the county litter patrol.

This Punitive Community Service Program has been an ongoing project for several years. It is an effort not only to modify behavior but to also show the community that the program and the courts are working for the benefit of everyone. The

participants wear safety-vests which reflect to the citizens the program’s presence

and involvement in their neighborhoods.

‘‘THIS IS MY STORY’’

The ‘‘This is My Story’’ program is one of my favorite parts of what the Mobile

Drug Court does. We try to take drug court volunteers (defendants) into the schools,

church youth groups, social or civic organizations (for example the Key Club convention in Mobile last year) and any other place where the participants can share their

‘‘testimony’’ with the audience. This is primarily directed toward children but not

exclusively. We try to match our speakers with the audience demographically to the

greatest extent possible. It is sometimes even more compelling when the speakers

grew up in that neighborhood or went to that school.

Our speakers (usually 3 to 6) tell how they got into trouble, why they started

using drugs, when they began and what happened as a result of their drug activities. The most productive part is the question and answer session during which the

kids can interact freely with the speakers. We do not do this nearly enough but it

may well be the best way we can make a significant contribution to the community

in the long run. I would like this to be done on a regular basis with the full support

of all of the Mobile County schools.

CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES ‘‘INSPECTIONS’’

We have taken the entire staff to several of our correctional facilities on a number

of occasions. I believe that this offers several benefits. First, the staff gains a more

complete appreciation of where the defendants go if they fail. It can give them a

better understanding of why and how to work harder to help our Defendants succeed.

Second, it also gives them a better understanding of why the program exists in

the first place and enhances our relationship with the Department of Corrections.

The staff has an opportunity to interact with the inmates and even visit with some

of our prior participants, which goes surprisingly well for the most part. This interaction is highly educational and helpful for all of us.

Third, frequently the people who work with Drug Court do so because of some

personal experience or prior addiction problems themselves or with family members

or other people they love. If the staff member does not already consider what they

do as a kind of mission project it offers an opportunity to make the staff into ‘‘missionaries’’ rather than ‘‘just’’ employees. Many of the staff members feel this way

about their work.

WE NEED MORE GENDER SPECIFIC TREATMENT

Women often have more issues and are much more problematic program participants. This is just not my gender-biased observation but it has long been the consensus of the experienced female drug court staff members. We must focus on providing more gender-specific treatment. We need special treatment groups to focus

on special programs in several areas but this is never more important than with

the women participants.

We seem to have a fairly significant number of prostitutes with drug and alcohol

addiction problems and they have proven themselves to be THE highest risk catVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
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egories of drug court candidates. They and other women participants often have

long histories of repeated problems concerning child custody (dependency due to

abuse or neglect) and other related issues. If those women never deal with their underlying problems they are virtually condemned to repeat the cycle and the result

is inevitably another child at risk in the mother’s unchanged environment. They

often have a child to replace the one who was previously removed from their care.

Women may not be as willing to discuss certain sensitive issues in groups where

men are present. Some more difficult issues include sexual abuse, domestic violence,

marital problems, medical problems, emotional or psychological issues and pregnancy matters. Pregnancy is an especially critical issue for many important reasons.

WHAT DO WE DO WITH THE DRUG ABUSING PREGNANT WOMAN?

The abuse of alcohol and other drugs during pregnancy is exceedingly dangerous

and costly. The costs mount even after the baby is delivered if the mother continues

to use drugs because it very often deprives the child of the nurturing and stimulation critical to proper development and growth.

The costs are enormous for the child, the family and the community. First, the

child can be severely damaged physically and mentally. Drugs are a significant

cause of infant mortality and premature births. The medical costs alone for the first

year of life for a very low birth-weight child, a low birth-weight child and a normal

birth-weight child vary dramatically. They can be in the range of $67,000.00 vs.

$24,000 vs. $9,000.00 respectively.

Those figures do not fully take into consideration the damage done to the child

in the most critical growth and developmental third trimester of pregnancy. The full

cost of the future medical, emotional, behavioral and developmental difficulties

caused by this drug use are more difficult to assess. The societal cost of special education, juvenile delinquency, and future criminal behavior are speculative in amount

but most experts would agree that they are huge.

It is critical to consider that the prenatal effects of drug and alcohol use have even

bigger implications on the future behavior of those children. Research has shown

that they tend to be more impulsive, have shorter attention spans, increased levels

of anxiety and depression and have difficulty concentrating. This all results in significantly reduced levels of academic performance. Children with these problems are

much more likely to use drugs, tend toward violent behavior and drop out of school.

The lesson to be learned is that prevention is crucial. Identification of women at

risk by their drug use during pregnancy and their referral to appropriate treatment

programs is essential to avoid the ‘‘wiring’’ problems drug use will cause in their

children.

If children are born with these developmental (and the inevitable if subsequent

behavior) problems, early intervention is imperative. Proper early intervention services can help to address and mitigate the results of the mother’s drug use. The implementation of the Adoption and Safe Families Act may be necessary in some cases

but appropriate services must be provided to these children.

PRISONS MAKE EXPENSIVE MATERNITY WARDS

Putting women in prison to ensure that their babies are born drug-free and

healthy is hardly a cost-effective solution. Although this sometimes is the ONLY alternative and it might work exceedingly well in desperate situations, there must be

a better overall policy for everyone’s interests. The need for change is obvious especially considering the critical lack of space for female prisoners and the number of

women who are held in county jails awaiting beds in the state system. Some female

inmates serve nearly their entire sentence while waiting for a bed in the state penitentiary.

In addition, the state prison and the individual county jails do not want to absorb

the medical costs associated with the delivery of a child. Other solutions must be

found. This is true NOT just for women with criminal cases but it is also true for

all women who are pregnant and who are abusing drugs and alcohol. Drug courts

should play a role in this area as well.

‘‘THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES ...’’

After over seven years on this bench it never ceases to amaze me when Drug

Court graduates:

• Come up to me in the parking lot at the Wal-Mart and say ‘‘Judge! Remember

me? Here is my card. I am in business for myself doing small construction jobs and

renovations. I am eighteen months clean?’’

• Come up to me in the reception line at Dauphinway United Methodist Church

while we were waiting to say goodbye to the minister who had just been appointed

43

Bishop and say, ‘‘Remember me? I am Carol. These are my two girls and I want

you to meet my mother’’ and have them thank me for what Drug Court did.

• Stop me on the street as my wife and I are walking to a wedding reception and

say, ‘‘Remember me. I have eleven months clean now. I’m doing great.’’

• Greet me with a huge smile at Sam’s where she works as a door-checker. As

she checks my cart when I go through the door and I am trying to control my sixyear-old and eight-year-old they say ‘‘Hi. I am still doing well. Thanks. Have a nice

day.’’

• Call my office and say ‘‘I am pregnant and doing great. Will you marry us next

week? It would mean a lot to me if you would perform my wedding.’’

• Run out of a group of jurors on their way to lunch in front of the courthouse

and say. ‘‘Hi. Can you believe it? I am on a jury. Thank you!’’

• Every time I visit my oncologist his ‘‘Angel of Mercy’’, the R.N. who administered my chemotherapy for six months, will hug me with a smile and not have to

say anything. Over a period of more than two years both of her children graduated

from Drug Court only to have one die in a tragic automobile accident about six

months later. There is a special relationship there that needs no discussion but it

is certainly one I will value forever. For me she and her husband epitomize the

plight of loving and dedicated parents who struggle with the problems of their children. I can vividly picture her mother sitting quietly and patiently in every single

court hearing both of her grandchildren ever had with me * * * never once asking

me for anything * * * just watching and loving her grandchildren as hard and as

faithfully as she knew how.

‘‘COST-BENEFITS ANALYSIS’’?

Drug court treatment for a year is highly labor-intensive and relatively expensive,

but significantly less so than the cost of even one year in prison; but that argument

only considers the most basic economic factors at play—especially the corrections

budget. How great are the much more intangible cost factors? What is the cost of

human suffering when we do fail or worse, when we do nothing? As uplifting as the

successes may be, the failures are equally discouraging.

WHAT IS THE COST OF DOING NOTHING?

Consider the lives of complete hopelessness led by some of our defendants. It is

difficult to imagine their situation. How can one relate to a man or woman who has

no horizon to their future? If your future is Friday or Saturday night and your only

objective is to find, buy and use drugs, what does that say about the quality of your

life? What does that do to your family? What does it do to your children? Removing

the normal nurturing and stimulation from your children’s lives is devastating. Yet

when possessed by the craving to abuse drugs you do not think about taking care

of your responsibilities. You care only for one thing. You sacrifice everything to satisfy your desire for drugs.

How do you feel when you sober up or come down from your ‘‘high’’ and realize

that you have no idea where your children are living? Or if they even have a roof

over their heads? Or if they are hungry? Or if they are safe? Or loved? Who is hugging them? Who tucks them into bed at night? Do they even remember me? Are

they alive? Can you feel the despair of thinking ‘‘What have I done? Again? Why

do I do this? What am I going to do?’’

PAUSE AND REFLECT

While considering and preparing my testimony I received by email a daily inspirational message from a service to which I subscribe. That quote stuck me as appropriate to the issue at hand. It is reminiscent of the New Testament reference to the

fact that the Hebrews drank from wells that they did not dig and ate olives from

groves that they did not plant when they entered the Promised Land.

A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when

he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.—D. Elton

Trueblood

What legacy do we want to leave for our children?

Senator SESSIONS. Judge Gebelein.

STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD GEBELEIN

Judge GEBELEIN. Senator, again I want to thank you for the

privilege of being here and speaking about drug courts. As has

44

been mentioned, in Delaware we do have a Statewide drug court

system now. We started the system back—we began in New Castle

County, where I am from, in 1993.

When we looked at the idea of creating a drug court, it was after

looking at criminal justice problems of substance abuse in general,

and we targeted two different groups of people to put in drug

courts. We targeted a diversionary group, a group of people who

are beginning their criminal careers who weren’t too seriously involved in crime, and that doesn’t mean they don’t have big problems, but they weren’t yet into the career criminal status, and we

created a diversionary-type drug court for those individuals where

they would waive their rights to a trial, agree to a stipulated set

of facts, and go into the drug court program. If they fail, the judge

holds a trial based only on a stipulated set of facts. So it solves the

problems of coming back later.

Senator SESSIONS. Stipulated facts?

Judge GEBELEIN. Yes.

The other group that we decided to target were those people who

were on probation, had been around for quite a while, were well

into their criminal careers and clearly had a substantial drug problem, and we targeted them because they were the fastest growing

number of people in our prisons and also the ones who seemed to

cycle through the system over and over again without getting any

treatment.

So we created a second-track drug court which is the one that I

preside over where, when you are arrested and you are on probation, you come into my court, and we try to resolve the new charge

with a plea and a sentence that involves substantial drug treatment resources. A lot of the individuals will be going to jail, starting out their sentence in a therapeutic community in the jail so

that we can get a hold of them and get their attention before they

move back out into the community.

So, basically, they either do resolve all their charges or they

don’t. In either event, they are going to probably end up being sentenced to do the therapeutic community. We control them, then, in

the community afterwards through the drug court model.

We have had some fairly good success with the people who enter

the program. We have had about, as the Senator mentioned, a 62

percent completion rate of those that have gone in.

Senator SESSIONS. These are the older repeat offenders with

heavy drug problems?

Judge GEBELEIN. These are the heavy-duty people. We have

1,632 of them that went into the program in the first 5 years, and

1,043 of those have graduated or have had a neutral discharge, and

there is about 3 percent of them that have a neutral discharge because we require them to graduate to have a job, a stable residence, have been drug free for 4 months. We have a number of people who come in who have mental problems or other disabilities

that prevent from ever getting a job. We can’t graduate them because they don’t meet the criteria, but we don’t think we should

terminate them because they have no control over why they can’t

meet the criteria. So they are discharged neutrally at the end of

the program.

45

We have been the subject of a number of studies. We had a study

that indicated that of the people who went through the serious

track, that is the post-sentencing track, of the graduates of the program, less than 9 percent of them had been arrested for a felony

offense within the first 18 months after discharge from the program, after graduation from the program.

Senator SESSIONS. In 18 months?

Judge GEBELEIN. Eighteen months.

Senator SESSIONS. Less than 9 percent rearrest in 18 months.

That is pretty good.

Judge GEBELEIN. And with those that did not complete the program, the rate was 27 percent rearrested for a felony within they

same period of time.

In the diversionary track, the numbers were better, as you would

expect them to be. It was less than 5 percent had been arrested for

a felony versus 17 percent for the non-completers of the program.

We are currently undergoing a study as part of the national

study with regard to the older drug courts, and one of the problems

with any of these studies is that you have to get a group together

big enough to study, and if you are going to take it out 2 or 3 years

to see if it really has a post-program effect, the number of programs that you can study is somewhat limited, because as you can

see from the chart, most of them have come on line in the last 2

or 3 years. So that is one problem.

The other problem is one that I think Senator Biden mentioned,

and that is that sometimes you are comparing apples to oranges in

these programs. The people who go into, for example, my track of

our drug court are very involved individuals. They have about a 15-

year history of drug use. Most of them have three or more felony

convictions. Compare them to the other track. Obviously, the people have less convictions, maybe one felony if any felonies and a

2- or 3-year drug history. So you have to be careful in comparing

those different groups.

Senator SESSIONS. I certainly agree with that. I think that is why

what we have got is a hodgepodge of studies. It would be difficult

but not impossible I think to get some good comparative studies.

Excuse me.

Judge GEBELEIN. And I think those studies are ongoing right

now. As I said, we are being studied by, I believe it is the NIJ

study, but we are also being studied by a CSAT study of substance

abuse down the road, which is even harder to do because you have

got to try to get these people to come back even after they are out

of the program and drop urines and talk about their substance

abuse, and it is a tough job to perform that evaluation, but they

are doing that currently.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Judge Gebelein follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF RICHARD S. GEBELEIN, DELAWARE’S DRUG COURT

During the late 1980’s, Delaware along with most other states was overwhelmed

with drug cases. Like many other states, Delaware had passed mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenders, and had increased enforcement efforts aimed at

drug activity. Under the auspices of the Governor, the Criminal Justice Council and

the State Sentencing Commission, Delaware established a cross jurisdictional comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
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mittee to make recommendations on solutions to the problem of substance abusing

offenders and the crime they commit.

The Committee identified a number of problems with how substance abuse treatment was provided to the population of criminal offenders. Indeed, the Committee

found that a lack of coordination and case management of the offender and his/her

treatment plan led to inefficient use of resources, missing opportunities for meaningful treatment, and offenders not receiving treatment (nor even being identified as

having a substance abuse problem) while under criminal justice control. Finally, it

was noted that there were gaps in the treatment continuum.1 One of the most glaring deficits in the system was the gap between prison based treatment and any

aftercare in a halfway house or community setting. Many offenders would relapse

within days or weeks after release before becoming engaged in treatment in the

community. Many would commit new crimes creating new victims, within weeks of

release.

In addition, the Committee was able to observe that the prison population that

was growing the fastest was also the most heavily drug-involved—those who were

incarcerated as a result of their failure on probation or parole.2 All of these failed

parolees and probationers had been under the control of the correctional/criminal

justice system one or more times and most had not had any substance abuse treatment while under supervision.

It was clear to the Committee that the correctional system and treatment systems

were equally fragmented, they lacked meaningful coordination within each system

as well as between the two systems.3 In those cases where a need was established

and treatment was provided it was done in a disjointed and ineffective fashion.

Gaps resulted because of authorization procedures, waiting lists, and communication

problems between criminal justice supervision and treatment providers. There was

no process in place for the criminal justice system to track individual offenders in

treatment, and no system for examining the utilization and/or effectiveness of treatment for offenders overall.

The Committee also saw a need for a continuum of treatment that would have

to be coordinated by stable case management.4 This would cause treatment to be

started earlier, employed more efficiently, and continued without gaps as the offender moved through complex levels of custodial and community supervision, as

well as through treatment that included initial interventions, transitional, and

aftercare services. In Delaware, the TASC case management model was recommended as a means to span the range of correctional interventions, as well as

the full range of institutional and community-based treatment programming. TASC

is a program model and a methodology designed to integrate the criminal justice

and treatment systems by providing client-centered services, including screening,

assessment, treatment planning and case management services, referring clients to

substance abuse treatment, other services, monitoring client progress, and facilitating communication with both justice and treatment.

Delaware was fortunate to have the opportunity to intensively study its criminal

offender population at all levels of supervision—both institutional and community

based—to identify substance abuse and other treatment needs through assistance

provided by the Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice and private

foundations. This study was accomplished with Delaware was designing its system

to deal with these offenders. The study established that of all the offenders under

criminal justice control, those with the highest level of need for substance abuse

treatment were the probation/parole violators who were incarcerated, and who

would be reentering the community. 5

At the same time the Committee looked at the newly emerging drug court model.

At that time, the few existing drug courts were based upon a diversion model that

assisted in case management and brought immediate treatment engagement to drug

offenders in lieu of further criminal processing. The committee recognized the advantages of this approach and adopted it as one key element of Delaware’s response

to this problem.

The Committee recommended the creation of a diversion model drug court for low

level offenders at the beginning of their criminal career. These offenders could be

tightly supervised and given treatment at a relatively low cost per individual,

$1500–$2000. Many could be diverted not only from Court processes but from a life

of crime.

This program has maintained a success rate of over 62 percent for the 1425 offenders percent who have been assigned to the program during the past six years.

The Committee also recognized that the drug court benefits, including ongoing judicial involvement, immediate sanctions, strict accountability and flexibility in sentence modifications as use of rewards and graduated sanctions to encourage treatment could well be adapted for use with the group of serious offenders (probationVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00046 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
47

parole violators) who came back before the Courts after incurring new criminal

charges.

These, the offenders with the most need of treatment, could be given the opportunity to resolve new charges in an expeditious fashion, receive a treatment oriented

‘‘addiction’’ sentence, and then by closely monitored and controlled both in custody

and upon reentry to the community.

Marrying the Drug Court model with a case management infrastructure provided

by TASC, Delaware designed its Fast Track—Drug Court. Since many of those who

agree to resolve their charges at Fast-Track will begin their ‘‘addiction’’ sentence in

residential treatment in jail (or prison), Delaware’s Fast Track-Drug Court has since

1994 been managing those offender’s re-entry into the community. The key to the

success of this program is good case management that stays with the offender as

that offender moves from Delaware’s excellent prison based therapeutic community

program, (Key) into a half-way house program, (Crest or other program), and then

to intensive outpatient treatment without any break or gap in treatment services.

Encouraged and congratulated by the Court at each step of this transition, the offender does not ‘‘float’’ after the conclusion of one program and before the commencement of another, with the high risk for relapse and/or recidivism that such

discontinuity often engenders.

Results for these serious offenders, many of whom have been in the criminal justice system for years are encouraging. Of those placed in the serious VOP Offender

Drug Court, 1632 have either been discharged (successfully or neutrally) or terminated (failed). Of these, 1043 have graduated or been neutrally discharged. Neutral

discharge is where completion is impossible because of a non-criminal justice reason,

e.g., illness or death. Thus the success rate is close to 63 percent. Those who successfully complete the program are about 50 percent less likely to be rearrested for

serious criminal offenses as other similar offenders in the criminal justice system. 6

The glue that holds this system together is active case management provided under

the TASC model. This case management enables the drug court to address the many

problems in providing treatment to offenders. In particular, through the TASC assessment and management, the Court can avoid placing individuals into appropriate

treatment, find alternative treatment programs for those who need them, find additional community, government and private treatment resources, and, provide the offenders with a constant reference point throughout their journey through complex

and confusing criminal justice and treatment systems.

In Delaware, as in many jurisdictions, TASC expanded its bounds as a program

for diverting offenders to treatment, to a systems approach that managed offenders

wherever they were in the criminal justice system. The expansion of TASC to serve

this larger function is also evidenced in programs such as CSAT’s Criminal Justice/

Treatment Networks and the Break The Cycle Demonstration Project funded

through the National Institute of Justice with collaboration from many federal treatment and justice agencies. These programs have TASC, or a similar case management entity, as a core element to manage offenders and to support both the criminal

justice and treatment systems.

At it’s most effective, TASC is an independent entity that is interrelated to both

treatment and justice systems through the court. TASC functions to manage cases,

but also to provide a forum for ongoing planning and decisionmaking, and as a focal

point for continued dialogue and learning about substance involved and other complex criminal client populations.

Recent a doctoral student at the University of Delaware has again looked at our

drug court, specifically targeting the difference between ‘‘so called’’ violent offenders

and non-violent offenders who have graduated from the court. She has found preliminarily that the drug court model has had a positive impact on both these diverse

groups. Her thesis should be published soon and will provide, I believe, some interesting discussion as to appropriate target populations.

It is, I believe, essential that we continue to study drug courts and their results.

We must continue to refine criteria for such courts allowing however for local experimentation. Our VOP track was not eligible for federal funding because it accepts

some offenders with convictions with violent offenses. Yet it has worked with these

offenders to reduce their recidivism.

The American Bar Association is building on the work done by NADCP in it’s ‘‘key

elements’’ to draft ABA Standards for Drug Courts. That is important. It is equally

important, however, that Drug Courts have the flexibility our federal system allows

to try differing approaches to a complex problem.

The Office of Justice Programs has provided seed money for these local courts,

acting within their diverse legal systems, to design and implement Drug Courts that

provide one of the best chances the Criminal Justice System has to impact on the

substance abuse problem and ultimately upon the crime rate.

48

1. EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF DRUG INVOLVED OFFENDERS, Drug Involved Offender Coordination Committee, March 12, 1992, pp. 4–5.

2. A Coordinated Approach to Managing The Drug Involved Offender, Treatment

Access Center, March 11, 1994, pp. 12–14.

3. Effective Management of Drug Involved Offenders, Supra. At pp. 4–6.

4. Id., at pp. 8–11.

5. A Coordinated * * * at pp. 13–14.

6. The Delaware Drug Court: A Baseline Evaluation, Whillhite, Stephen A., and

O’Connell, John P., May 1998, pp. 40–45. In particular, this first showed of program

graduates re-arrested only 26 percent were re-arrested for felonies compared to 56

percent of the non graduates re-arrested for felonies.

Senator SESSIONS. OK. Thank you very much.

Dr. Belenko.

STATEMENT OF STEVEN BELENKO

Mr. BELENKO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today about my review of drug court research and give you my perspective on the development of performance indicators and outcome measures for drug courts, as well as

what we know about best practices for successful drug courts.

First, in terms of what we know about the impacts of drug

courts, based on my review of existing research on drug courts as

well as some of the national drug court surveys that have been

done, the research to date suggests several conclusions. First, drug

courts provide closer and more frequent offender supervision, that

is, by drug tests, status hearings, and the like than under the

standard probation or pretrial supervision that is typical for the

population that is served by drug courts.

In addition, drug courts are able to provide timely access to

treatment and related services under traditional criminal justice

system processing or supervision. These services generally are not

readily available, or if they are, they tend to be delayed or occur

later on in a case.

Second, the positive urinalysis rates and rearrest rates are generally low for drug court participants while they are under the

drug court program supervision, especially for those who end up

graduating from the program. Several studies that have compared

in-program rearrest rates to other drug offenders find reductions,

though these rates vary across—as you mentioned in your opening

statement, vary widely across drug courts.

Third, we know research on drug treatment outcomes has consistently found that a longer time in treatment is associated with

better outcomes, and drug court program retention is substantially

longer than typically seen in community-based treatment whether

or not it is a criminal justice-monitored treatment, but on average,

as has been mentioned, an estimated 60 percent of those who enter

courts remain in treatment for at least 1 year. Almost half of those

admitted end up completing the program. These retention rates are

much greater than the retention rates typically observed for criminal justice clients, specifically, and community-based treatment,

more generally.

Senator SESSIONS. Now, could you summarize that again? Community-based treatment is not as effective as—— Mr. BELENKO. Well, in terms of treatment retention, the retention rates that we see in drug courts, 60 percent—mostly it is outpatient treatment, 60 percent still in after 1 year, compared to one

49

of the national treatment evaluations generally of communitybased treatment find that—the most recent one—that 50 percent of

those who enter outpatient drug treatment are out of treatment

within 3 months. So it is a dramatically better retention.

Senator SESSIONS. When they are out of treatment. That means

they failed or haven’t complied with the program.

Mr. BELENKO. Either failed or completed, but they are not in

treatment.

Senator SESSIONS. Or they voluntarily dropped out.

Mr. BELENKO. Correct.

Senator SESSIONS. And so you have a twice as high completion

rate.

Mr. BELENKO. Roughly.

Third, the extent to which the rate—in terms of recidivism key

indicators for drug courts, the extent to which the rate of new offending is reduced following program participation is the most common outcome indicator used by drug courts, and their ability to reduce recidivism while under supervision as well as after finishing

the program is a key to long-term acceptance and viability of these

programs.

Drug courts hold some promise in this area, in large part because

of their ability to retain offenders in treatment and provide intensive treatment and supervision and other services, and from the research on drug treatment, we know that longer retention associated with the higher likelihood of treatment completion, which is

in turn predictive of reduced recidivism and drug use.

Most of the evaluations that have compared 1-year post-program

recidivism for all drug court participants with a comparison group

find a lower rearrest rate for the drug court group. Out of a total

of 21 studies that I have found, 15 have found a reduction in the

1-year rearrest rate. In rearrest rates after participating in drug

court, most of those are after 1 year. In four studies, four of the

21, the rates were similar between the drug court and comparison

group, and in two studies, the results vary depending on the measure used.

Unfortunately, in terms of other outcomes, there has been very

little substantive research to date about the impact of drug courts

on other key outcomes such as post-program drug use, employment,

family, and social stability.

Finally, an important question about drug courts is whether the

costs of operating these programs are lower than the economic benefits that may occur because incarceration time is reduced, because

recidivism is lower, or drug use is reduced. Research on treatment,

drug treatment in other criminal justice settings finds that generally these economic benefits are greater than the cost of operating the treatment programs, and several studies that I have reviewed do conclude that drug courts do generate cost savings, especially from reduced incarceration. Ms. Leary mentioned the study

in Multnomah County, Portland, OR, which was fairly comprehensive and found a substantial economic benefit for that program.

Senator SESSIONS. Did I hear you say that treatment as part of

a drug court is more effective than treatment not part of a drug

court?

50

Mr. BELENKO. In terms of retention, generally the treatment retention rates are better in drug courts. We don’t know yet enough

about the long-term impact.

Senator SESSIONS. For recidivist rates, you don’t have those numbers yet?

Mr. BELENKO. In terms of retaining offenders in treatment, drug

courts do seem to do better than other forms of supervision.

I want to talk for a couple of minutes about how we measure the

impact of drug courts on recidivism, and that is perhaps the key

performance indicator that most drug courts and policy makers and

funders are interested in. The existing research unfortunately has

a number of gaps in that area that relate, as mentioned before, to

the shortcomings of the information systems that exist in most

States and localities. As Senator Biden mentioned, many States

don’t even have Statewide computerized information systems.

There are also differences and difficulties in how we measure recidivism, and there needs to be, I think, a more common understanding about how we are going to measure recidivism that includes the time periods, the type of measure, whether it is reconviction, re-incarceration, or rearrest. Data quality is a big issue in

terms of the ability to access such information. Often, it has to be

done manually because of the lack of information systems. The

staff and funding is often not there to conduct this effort, and I

think a lot more needs to be done to encourage States and localities

to engage local researchers in that effort. Gathering this information can be very difficult, but as we all know, it is important.

Finally, let us jump ahead and talk about some of the conclusions that we can draw from this research and what we know

about best practices, just another minute. We know despite abundant research demonstrating that drug treatment can significantly

reduce drug use and crime, access to treatment is typically quite

limited for criminal offenders relative to the need for such treatment. This has important implications. Although some offenders

can overcome their drug problems without treatment or are able to

obtain treatment on their own or age out of drug use, most of them

have difficulty escaping from the cycle of drug use and crime without formal interventions imposed and supervised by the criminal

justice system.

My research on substance abuse and the criminal justice system

indicates that within this overall context, drug courts offer significant potential to effectively engage offenders into long-term treatment and related services. Though the drug court field has generally been very supportive of research and evaluation, drug courts

need to be encouraged to do a better job of collecting and maintaining consistent, complete, and accurate performance data. Key indicators such as clinical assessment information, program completion, services, drug use, criminal behavior, and health during program participation should be routinely collected, maintained in a

database, and reported out in a way that is useful for policy makers and funders.

After program participation ends, the periodic collection of official recidivism data should be encouraged for drug courts as well

as for other offenders that might serve as a comparison group, but

51

1 384 adult drug courts, 105 juvenile, 19 family, and 8 combination adult/juvenile/family.

the courts must recognize the need for confidentiality protections,

especially following drug court participation.

Drug courts are still relatively new, and a number of research

gaps still exist that I discussed in my previous work; however, the

field has advanced sufficiently, and there is other research on

criminal justice-based substance abuse treatment that can be applied to the drug court setting to suggest several key elements for

drug court structure and operations that are likely to be associated

with more effective programs. Those include adherence to the 10

key components that have been identified by OJP, clinical and

other assessment of participant problems and needs, case management, timely access to a range of services, adequate information

flow between the treatment provider and the drug court, comprehensive staff training that incorporates cultural sensitivity and

competence, measurable program objectives and targets with periodic review of achievements, adequate data systems that allow ongoing monitoring and evaluation, and an after-care component that

includes ongoing treatment services.

Finally, I believe that the question generally asked about drug

courts, which is, Do they work?, is not exactly the appropriate

question. There is sufficient research to suggest that criminal justice-based treatment of sufficient duration is effective. The more

useful research and policy questions center around understanding

how to develop the most cost-efficient treatment intervention of

substance to all offenders that maximize positive outcomes for largest number of participants and to isolate the operational staff and

individual client characteristics that predict successful completion

and positive outcomes.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Belenko follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF STEVEN BELENKO

My name is Dr. Steven Belenko, and I am a Fellow at The National Center on

Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with the Subcommittee on Youth Violence today about my work on

drug courts and give you my perspective on the development of performance indicators and outcome measures for drug courts. I have been studying the impact of drug

abuse and drug offenders on the criminal justice system, and the policy and programmatic responses to this problem, for more than 15 years. For the past eight

years I have had a particular interest in drug courts, and have visited many around

the country, studied their impact, and reviewed numerous research reports on their

effectiveness in reducing illegal drug use and crime.

My remarks today will center on three areas: (1) The lessons learned about the

impact of drug courts on crime and illegal drug use; (2) the need to identify and

develop more useful performance indicators for tracking drug courts’ impact on recidivism; and (3) what is known about best practices for drug court model.

THE IMPACTS OF DRUG COURTS

From the first program implemented in Dade County (Miami, FL) in 1989, the

current generation of treatment drug courts has established an importance presence

in America’s criminal court system. In many jurisdictions, drug courts have become

the intervention of choice for linking drug- or alcohol-involved offenders to community-based treatment and related clinical interventions. Although still only serving

a relatively small percentage of offenders with substance abuse problems, drug

courts have received considerable publicity, public support, and government funding.

According to the Department of Justice, there were 508 operational drug courts 1 as

of June 2000; an additional 281 were being planned. Drug courts are operating or

planned in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, two

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federal jurisdictions, and 54 Native American Tribal Courts; an estimated 200,000

drug offenders have entered drug court programs since 1989 and 55,000 have graduated.

The key goals of drug courts are to reduce drug use and associated criminal behavior by engaging and retaining drug-involved offenders in judicially-supervised

treatment and related services; to concentrate expertise about drug cases into a single courtroom; and to address other defendant needs through clinical assessment,

case management, and linkages to services in the community.

The key components of drug courts typically include: 1. judicial supervision of

structured community-based treatment; 2. a dedicated courtroom reserved for drug

court participants; 3. timely identification of defendants in need of treatment and

referral to treatment as soon as possible after arrest; 4. a team approach in which

all courtroom staff share the goal of assisting the participant to achieve sobriety;

4. regular status hearing before the judicial officer to monitor treatment progress

and program compliance; 5. maintaining defendant compliance through graduated

sanctions and rewards; 6. mandatory periodic or random drug testing; 7. structured

treatment phases; 8. establishment of specific treatment program requirements; and

9. dismissal of the original charges or a reduction in the severity of the sentence

upon successful treatment completion.

The structure and procedures of drug courts provide closer and more frequent supervision of offenders than typically seen under the standard probation or pretrial

supervision that most nonviolent drug offenders experience, especially earlier in

their criminal careers. The studies and data on drug courts that I have reviewed

indicate that court appearance, drug tests, supervision and treatment contacts are

much more frequent under the drug court model than under other forms of community supervision.

Drug courts trace their roots to a fairly lengthy history of various mechanisms to

link substance abuse treatment to the criminal justice process, with direct antecedents dating back nearly fifty years. The general concept of dedicating specified

courtrooms solely to drug cases is not new, and special drug case courtrooms operated both in Chicago and New York City in the early 1950s. In the early 1970s,

when heroin was the primary drug of abuse among offenders, New York City set

up special ‘‘Narcotics Courts,’’ in response to the passing of the punitive ‘‘Rockefeller’’ drug laws. Such narcotics courts, also established in several other jurisdictions, were designed to help ameliorate the anticipated impact on court dockets of

an influx of new drug cases and an increased demand for trials expected to be generated by the new laws. For the most part, however, these earlier efforts provided

only limited access to drug treatment for offenders, reflecting in part that they were

generally designed to process drug cases more efficiently, not to treat drug offenders

for their addiction problems. Other programs have been developed to engage defendants in treatment, such as Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime, limited diversion programs, conditions of pretrial release, conditions of probation or in conjunction with intermediate sanctions. However, these programs were often fragmented,

inconsistently or inappropriately used, or not viewed by the criminal justice system

as sufficiently effective. Supervision of treatment often rested on several agencies,

and consequently it was difficult to monitor treatment progress or compliance with

court-imposed conditions.

The drug court model incorporates a more proactive role for the judge, who in addition to presiding over the legal and procedural issues of the case, functions as a

reinforcer of positive client behavior. Although the judge is the central player in the

program, most drug courts seek to function as a team in which prosecutors, defense

attorneys and counselors work together to help offenders overcome their drug problems and resolve other issues relating to work, finances and family. Dr. Sally Satel

has noted how the personality and role of the judge is often seen as being a key

factor in the success of a drug court. Unlike the traditional courtroom role in overseeing court-mandated treatment, the drug court judge plays a much more direct

role in monitoring an offender’s treatment progress and compliance.

In the remainder of this section, I summarize what is currently known about the

impacts of drug courts on drug use and crime, gleaned from my review of some 60

drug court evaluations.

The available research suggests several overall conclusions. First, drug courts provide closer and more frequent offender supervision (e.g. number of required court

appearances, drug tests, supervision and treatment contacts) than under the standard probation or pretrial supervision that most nonviolent drug offenders experience, especially earlier in their criminal careers. Second, program retention is substantially longer than typically seen in community-based treatment, whether or not

criminal justice-monitored. Third, drug use and criminal behavior are comparatively

reduced while drug court participants are under program supervision. Finally, most

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evaluations comparing one-year post-program recidivism rates for all drug court

participants and a comparison group find a lower rearrest rate for the drug court.

However, the magnitude of the effects on recidivism varies across drug courts and

several evaluations have found no post-program impact on recidivism. In addition,

studies vary in the type and appropriateness of the comparison group.

Retention in Treatment

Research on drug treatment outcomes has consistently found that a longer time

in treatment is associated with better outcomes. Retention rates for drug courts are

much greater than the retention rates typically observed for criminal justice clients

specifically and treatment clients in general. On average, an estimated 60 percent

of those who enter drug courts remain in treatment (primarily outpatient) for at

least one year. Although most drug courts require a minimum participation of one

year, the percentage of all admissions that actually graduate from drug court is

somewhat lower than the one-year retention rate. The 1997 General Accounting Office report on drug courts estimated a minimum 48 percent average program completion or graduation rate for those that enter drug court; that figure did not include

those who were still active in the drug court, so actual graduation rates may be

higher. These retention and completion rates are much higher than generally found

in community-based treatment programs. For example, in a recent national treatment outcomes study Dr. Dwayne Simpson and his colleagues at Texas Christian

University found that only half of those admitted to outpatient drug-free programs

stayed three months or longer. Another study of treatment retention among parolees

in New York State found that only 31 percent of parolees referred to communitybased treatment remained in treatment after six months.

Elements of the drug court model (such as graduated sanctions and rewards, judicial supervision, and responses to relapse) that account for increased retention in

treatment have not been studied but merit further research. Several recent drug

evaluations have analyzed the factors associated with program dropout; the predictors of dropout found in these studies (e.g., younger age, more prior polydrug use,

less employment) are similar to those found in the more general treatment retention

research. Factors found to affect successful program completion in specific drug

courts include having received a GED, having alcohol or marijuana rather than cocaine as the primary drug problem at admission, being employed full-time, being

charged with drug possession, number of group and case management counseling

sessions received, and having a stable residence and income source. A study of the

Multnomah County (OR) drug court found that longer time in treatment lowered

post-program recidivism. This finding is consistent with general findings in the

treatment outcome literature and suggests that the positive impacts of drug courts

may be increased by strategies and procedures that increase the length of participation in treatment.

Drug use and Criminal Behavior under Drug Court Supervision

Positive urinalysis rates are generally low for drug court participants. For the 13

courts reporting urinalysis test results in a 1998 national drug court survey, an average of 10 percent of the tests were positive for illegal drugs. In contrast, in the

same jurisdictions the average percentage of positive tests for similar defendants

not in the drug court but under probation supervision was 31 percent. For example,

only 5 percent of urine tests for Santa Clara County (CA) drug court participants

tested positive, compared to 10 percent of tests for non-drug court offenders in electronic monitoring, 13 percent of tests for offenders on Intensive Supervision probation, and 25 percent of tests for probationers under general supervision. Drug positive rates were 9 percent for clients in the Ventura County drug court program, 4

percent in Escambia and Okaloosa County (FL), 6 percent in three New Mexico drug

courts, and 6 percent in the 13th Judicial District (Tampa, FL) drug court. In the

Second Judicial District Court (NM), 21 percent of all drug court clients had a positive drug test compared with 38 percent of those on probation.

RECIDIVISM DURING DRUG COURT PARTICIPATION

Drug court evaluations have also found low rearrest rates during the drug court

program. For example, the reported incidence of rearrest was only 3 percent in

Santa Clara County (CA) and 12 percent in Ventura County (CA). Not surprisingly,

given that a new arrest is often a trigger for program termination, in-program rearrest rates are higher for program failures than for graduates. Seven percent of

King County (WA) graduates and 27 percent of failures had a rearrest during the

program, for a combined total of 20 percent. The percentages of clients rearrested

during the program were 12 percent of graduates and 52 percent of failures (32 percent overall) in Track 1 of the Delaware drug court, and 8 percent of graduates and

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41 percent of failures (20 percent overall) in Track 2. However, neither study included rearrest data for clients who were still active in the program at the time of

data collection. The average annual number of arrests per person in the Santa Barbara (CA) drug court decreased from 2.5 in the year prior to admission to 1.4 during

drug court participation.

Sanctions and Incentives

One of the unique components of drug courts is the use of ‘‘graduated’’ sanctions

and incentives to hold participants accountable for program noncompliance and to

reward them for positive achievements. Sanctions and incentives are viewed by drug

court practioners as crucial for maintaining compliance, treatment retention, and

achieving sobriety. However, although several drug court evaluations have examined the delivery of sanctions and rewards, little is known about their direct impacts

on client compliance or retention, or about the styles and behaviors of judges that

promote compliance and retention. Thus far, research in several jurisdictions has

simply enumerated sanctions and rewards. For example, 44 percent of the sanctions

imposed in the Cumberland County (ME) drug court were time in the jury box, 31

percent were some time in jail, and 7 percent were increased AA/NA meetings.

Among the incentives, 38 percent were advancement to the next treatment phase,

30 percent were other rewards such as gift certificates, and 16 percent were a reduction in the frequency of court status hearings. In the Washington, DC drug court

many participants were remanded to jail, primarily for testing positive for drugs:

50 percent spent three days in jail and 22 percent were ordered to spend at least

a week in jail during their drug court participation. Even successful participants are

likely to be sanctioned: a jail sanction was imposed for 46 percent of the graduates

(average 0.9 per graduate) and 77 percent of the nongraduates (1.6 per nongraduate) of the First Judicial District (FL).

However, these findings yield little information about the operational components

of a drug court-based sanctions and rewards system that are likely to result in higher compliance and completion rates. According to Dr. Douglas Marlowe, these components may include regularity and immediacy of sanctions, predictability, the ability of the drug court to detect undesirable behaviors, and the need for reinforcement

structures that will increase the frequency of desirable behaviors.

Post-program outcomes

Recidivism. As criminal justice-based interventions, it is not surprising that most

drug courts identify increased public safety as a primary goal. The extent to which

the rate of new offending is reduced following program participation is the most

common outcome indicator used by drug courts. Their ability to reduce participant

recidivism while under drug court supervision as well as post-program is a key to

the long-term acceptance and viability of these programs. Drug courts hold promise

in this area in large part because of their ability to retain drug-abusing offenders

in treatment and provide intensive treatment, supervision, and other services. Research on drug treatment indicates that longer retention is associated with a higher

likelihood of treatment completion, which in turn is predictive of reduced recidivism

and drug relapse, and increased employment and community reintegration.

A number of evaluations have compared post-program recidivism for drug court

graduates to a general comparison group, and found much lower recidivism rates.

However, it is more appropriate to compare outcomes between all drug court participants (whether or not they graduated) and a comparison group (unless comparison

subjects are specifically matched to graduates), although the differences would not

be expected to be as large as for graduates only.

Out of a total of 21 drug court evaluations that I have reviewed that examined

post-program recidivism with a comparison group, 15 have found that the drug

court reduced recidivism (usually after one year), in four studies the rates were

similar, and in two studies the results were mixed depending on the measure used.

The size of the reduction in recidivism varies across studies. The different results

may depend on the comparison group used, the length of the follow-up period, the

recidivism measure, differences in the drug court structure or quality of treatment

services, and variations in the target population served.

Other Outcomes. Several studies have examined outcomes other than recidivism,

based on follow-up interviews with samples of drug court participants and comparison sample defendants. For the Santa Barbara (CA) drug court, a study comparing

client problems at intake and after 12 months in the program found that the severity of drug court participants’ alcohol, drug, medical, legal, family, and psychological

problems were significantly lower than 12 months in the drug court.

In a study of the Madison County (IL) drug court, researchers conducted post-program follow-up interviews with a sample of 48 drug court dropouts and 50 compariVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
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2This is because estimates of the long-term economic costs of a drug-exposed baby vary widely, and the long-term impacts on the child’s development are uncertain. Second, attributing the

cost savings to the drug court assumes that the babies would have been born addicted had the

mother not been in the drug court. This is speculative, given that offenders outside of drug court

also may have access to treatment, and that mothers may stop using drugs in the latter stages

of pregnancy even without participating in a drug court or other treatment program.

son subjects (criminal justice clients who failed to complete a residential treatment

program). The results indicated that the drug court dropouts had more drug and

alcohol use and more days of illegal activity. Although based on a small sample,

these findings are consistent with several other drug court evaluations that have

found comparable or higher recidivism rates for drug court dropouts than comparison defendants.

Finally, a few evaluations have gathered employment data, and these generally

found that drug court participants are more likely to gain employment while participating and upon graduation. The limited data in this area make it difficult to draw

many conclusions about the employment effects of drug courts.

Economic costs and benefits

One important empirical question about drug courts is whether the costs of operating such programs are lower than the economic benefits that accrue because incarceration time is reduced, or because drug treatment reduces the likelihood of relapse

and recidivism. Research on treatment in other criminal justice settings has concluded that investments in treatment generate net economic benefits relative to

their costs. It could be reasonably hypothesized that economic benefits would result

from drug court operations, because some proportion of drug court clients would

have been incarcerated in the absence of the drug court. Other drug courts serve

a population that is primarily probation-bound, but even this group would likely

serve some time in pretrial detention awaiting case disposition, or receive short jail

sentences in addition to probation, in the absence of a drug court. Net cost savings

could also result from reductions in recidivism, drug use, use of entitlements, and

foster care, as well as increases in legitimate employment and improved health.

Several studies that I have reviewed concluded that drug courts generate savings

in jail costs, especially for pretrial detention. Cost savings have also been found in

probation supervision, police overtime, and other criminal justice costs. However,

studies that have factored in projected cost savings due to the births to female drug

court participants of drug-free babies probably have inflated the actual economic

benefits attributable to the drug courts.2

Dr. Michael Finigan has estimated that a one-year admissions cohort of 440 Multnomah County (OR) drug court clients reduced criminal justice system costs by

$2,476,760 over a two-year period (net of the annual $1 million cost of operating

the drug court program). Adding savings in victimization, theft reduction, public assistance and medical claims costs to the criminal justice costs, the drug court reduced estimates state costs by $10,223,532 over two years following drug court participation. Dr. Elizabeth Deschenes and her colleagues found that the operational

costs per client per day in four Los Angeles County drug courts ranged from $14.53

to $21.50. The average annual cost per client ranged from $3,706 to $8,924 for program graduates and from $1,599 to $3,290 for non-graduates, substantially lower

than prison ($16,500 per year in California) or residential drug treatment ($13,000

per year), but more costly than standard probation ($1,200 per year).

Finally, researchers at the Urban Institute estimated that the graduated sanctions track of the Washington, DC drug court cost an average of $10.78 per client

per day ($3,248 per participant) and the treatment track averaged $21.01 per day

($8,708 per participant). These rates are comparable to those found in Los Angeles

County, and are substantially lower than the daily cost of incarceration in the District of Columbia jail ($62.31 per day). The Washington, DC drug court’s sanctions

track yielded a net economic benefit of $1,493,194 from averted crimes. Subtracting

the program costs, this resulted in a net benefit of $713,570, or $2,973 per participant.

MEASURING THE IMPACT OF DRUG COURTS ON RECIDIVISM

As mentioned earlier, a key performance indicator used to assess the impact of

drug courts is the extent to which participation in the program reduces criminal activity. As documented in various evaluations of individual drug courts, criminal activity tends to be relatively reduced while participants are engaged in the drug court

program. In addition, most studies have found that the prevalence of rearrests is

reduced in the year following program participation. More generally, because drug

courts have excellent retention rates, and because time in treatment is associated

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with more positive outcomes, it is reasonable to hypothesize that drug courts will

reduce criminal activity relative to standard criminal justice processing, in which

treatment access is much more limited and retention rates lower.

However, existing research on drug courts has several important gaps that limit

our deeper understanding of their long-term impact on crime. First, only a few studies have examined recidivism rates for longer than one year (these studies have

found a reduction in rearrests). Second, although it is clear that those who graduate

from drug courts have much lower recidivism rates than those who fail, there has

been little research on the individual or program factors that are predictive of rearrest. Finally, existing research often fails to adequately define data sources, recidivism measures, or follow-up period, making it difficult to interpret the findings.

There are two basic issues to consider. One is how to improve the measurement

of recidivism. Although most studies have relied on rearrests contained in official

criminal justice records, there are numerous ways to measure criminal activity.

Some examples include reconviction, reincarceration, jail beds or jail days used, probation and parole violations, and self reported criminal activity. With the exception

of the latter, these measures must be obtained from different official databases of

varying quality. One consideration of which measure to use centers around these

quality issues. Local (city or county) law enforcement databases may not have complete arrest information, especially when an arrest occurs in a neighboring county.

Multiple databases may need to be accessed, along with manual files, raising concerns about the validity and reliability of official records as measures of recidivism.

State criminal history systems are of varying quality and completeness, and some

states do not have a common fingerprint-based ID number that can be used to link

arrest events over time for the same offender. The main Federal criminal history

database (NCIC) contains arrest information from other jurisdictions but is thought

to be incomplete and to contain some inaccurate information. Rearrest information,

as well as probation violations, may be contained in the databases of individual law

enforcement agencies, requiring manual searches of multiple databases or paper

files in order to gather complete recidivism information. Conviction information may

not be routinely entered into law enforcement information systems.

Gathering such information can be very costly, requiring substantial staff time to

collect, code, clean, and analyze. Collecting self-reported criminal activity from drug

court graduates and failures, as well as comparison samples of offenders, while perhaps yielding more comprehensive data on criminal activity, is even more costly to

achieve. Such followup interviews require a substantial investment in research

funds, a long time period, and a need for strict confidentiality and due process protections.

The second issue revolves around the need for drug court programs to routinely

collect information on rearrest. Drug courts may do this as a requirement of federal

or local funding, to document their effectiveness, or to gain support from local policymakers. However, drug courts are rarely funded specifically to collect followup information on their participants. In addition, many drug courts lack adequate management information systems that would allow the routine tracking of rearrests.

The Drug Courts Program Office (DCPO) has undertaken several initiatives over

the past few years to encourage the development of better data tracking systems,

but as in much of the criminal justice system, there is still a long way to go in this

area. Adequate data systems are also important for program monitoring, process

evaluations, impact evaluation, and cost analyses.

The question of how long to track drug court recidivism is a difficult one. Although it is logical to think that longer followup is better, this is not necessarily

the case. It is also important to note that drug courts should not be held to an impossible or unrealistic standard. For example, why should we expect a one-year drug

court program to eliminate drug use and recidivism for all participants forever? The

important policy question is how drug courts do in relation to other programs, other

types of criminal justice supervision, and traditional sentences. Further, the broader

picture suggests that we look at post-program outcomes in the context of reduced

crime and drug use, and cost savings, during the drug court participation. That is,

the impacts of drug courts must be measured in terms of their total impact on client

behaviors and outcomes, both during and after program participation.

Drug addiction is a chronic, relapsing condition. Achieving long-term sobriety

often requires ongoing aftercare, additional treatment episodes, participation in selfhelp group such as AA or NA, or ‘‘booster’’ treatment sessions. Because of funding

and program capacity constraints, few drug courts are able to provide ongoing

aftercare treatment or other services once a participant leaves the program. Accordingly, it is unrealistic to expect that all drug court graduates, let alone drug court

participants in general, will avoid relapse or criminal activity for the rest of their

lives. Moreover, the population served by drug courts tends to have multiple probVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00056 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
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lems in addition to their substance abuse issues. Unless education, employment,

mental health, housing, and similar problems are dealt with over the long term, relapse is more likely over time.

It is also problematic to compare recidivism rates across different jurisdictions.

Local conditions vary greatly, as do law enforcement practices and the nature of

local illegal drug markets and drug problems. Accordingly, the significance of a 25

percent one-year recidivism prevalence for drug court participants may be quite different in County A compared with County B. If the ‘‘normal’’ recidivism prevalence

in County A for similar types of offenders not in the drug court is 40 percent, then

that drug court has had a substantial impact on recidivism. If the ‘‘normal’’ rate is

20 percent in County B, then that drug court has not been successful in terms of

the recidivism performance indicator. By similar logic, a drug court with a 30 percent recidivism prevalence may have achieved a much greater relative impact on reducing recidivism in the local jurisdiction than a drug court in a different jurisdiction with a 20 percent recidivism prevalence.

For a number of reasons outlined above, recidivism should and will remain a key

indicator of drug court performance, and drug courts should be encouraged to improve their collection and analysis of in-program and post-program recidivism. But

it is also important to be realistic about the costs and limits of collecting such data.

Few programs funded by the DCPO have allocated sufficient funds or staff resources

to developing, improving, and maintaining participant management information systems. Many drug courts do not receive DCPO funding, and state or local support

for collecting and analyzing recidivism data is limited at best. DCPO already seeks

some post-program recidivism data through its required reporting forms, but relatively few programs are able to provide such data. As drug courts expand, it will

be increasingly important to provide support and technical assistance to drug courts

to enhance their management information systems. But because of ongoing technical

problems with local court and criminal history databases, we should be realistic

about what we can expect drug courts to be able to achieve without an influx of substantial new resources for data collection.

Another area in which DCPO can be helpful is developing standards for measuring and reporting recidivism. Such efforts are already underway in conjunction

with the National Drug Court Institute and National Association of Drug Court Professionals and should continue to be encouraged. These standards should include

definitional guidelines, but also guidance for quality control, followup time periods,

data reporting, and statistical analyses.

Finally, although this discussion has centered on recidivism as a key performance

measure, drug courts should be assessed using other indicators as well. These include operational characteristics related to program goals and objectives, such as

number of clients enrolled, ability to reach the target population, treatment and

other service delivery, drug test results, number and frequency of status hearings,

and treatment retention. At the client level, important performance indicators include employment and income, vocational training, school enrollment, child custody,

health, number of days drug-free, and family stability. Although operational data

should be relatively easy for drug courts to collect and maintain, obtaining periodic

data on client activities and outcomes often requires client interviews. The latter are

costly, raise concerns about confidentiality and human subjects protections that

must be considered, and require trained research interviewers.

CONCLUSIONS

The enforcement of anti-drug laws and the consequences of drug abuse and addiction have impacted the nation’s criminal justice system in profound ways over the

past 25 years. Police departments and other law enforcement agencies have paid increasing attention to drug crimes, legislatures have passed more and more punitive

laws against the use and sale of illegal drugs, and access to treatment has been limited for those subpopulations of drug users who are most likely to be targeted by

the criminal justice system for drug-related offenses. As a result, burgeoning numbers of drug offenders have flooded jails and prisons, and court and probation caseloads have mushroomed.

Yet, despite abundant research demonstrating that drug treatment can significantly reduce drug use and related criminal activity for many offenders, access to

treatment is typically quite limited for criminal offenders relative to the need. This

is evidenced by treatment utilization data from the national Arrestee Drug Abuse

Monitoring system, surveys of offenders on probation, and data from prison and jail

systems. For example, only 12 percent of probationers who had ever used drugs

were currently in a treatment program when surveyed, and although as estimated

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75 percent of state prison inmates are in need of substance abuse treatment, fewer

than 20 percent actually receive such treatment.

Another problem is that aside from a few specialized programs such as drug

courts and prosecutorial diversion programs, the drug abuse problems of offenders

are rarely assessed until sentencing. Probation and parole departments and correctional systems may screen and assess for substance abuse problems, and judges may

order treatment as a condition of probation, but few actually receive such treatment.

Fewer still receive the long-term treatment and access to other services that this

population tends to need.

The lack of treatment opportunity for offenders has important implications. Although some offenders can overcome their drug problems without treatment, are

able to obtain treatment on their own, or age out of drug abuse, most have difficulty

escaping from the cycle of drug abuse and crime without formal interventions imposed and supervised by the criminal justice system. And offenders tend to be from

communities and families that have limited resources or insurance with which to

access treatment on their own.

My research on substance abuse and the criminal justice system indicates that

within this overall context, drug courts offer significant potential to effectively engage offenders into long-term treatment and related services. I believe that encouraging and expanding investments in court-monitored treatment models, and continuing to study their impacts, could yield a substantial reduction in crime and drug

use, and a concomitant reduction in taxpayer costs. Compared with the enormous

economic and social costs of building and operating the jails and prisons that house

hundreds of thousands of offenders with substance abuse and addiction problems,

programs such as drug courts have the potential to result in a greater impact for

much less money.

Although the drug court field has generally been supportive of research and evaluation, drug courts should be encouraged to do a better job of collecting and maintaining consistent, complete, and accurate performance data. Key indicators such as

assessment and clinical profiles, program completion, services received, drug use,

criminal behavior, and health during program participation should be routinely collected, maintained in a database, and reported on in a way that is useful for policymakers and funders. Both individual-level as well as aggregate data are needed.

After program participation ends, the periodic collection of official recidivism data

might be encouraged for drug courts (as well as for other offenders that can serve

as comparison groups). But the courts also must recognize the need for confidentiality protections, especially following drug court participation. Thus recidivism

rates should be reported in aggregate form, and understood in the context of the

expected long-term impacts of drug court programs, and relative to recidivism rates

for similar offenders who did not go through a drug court program. In addition, most

local jurisdictions will need significant new resources in order to be able to collect,

maintain, and analyze accurate and complete recidivism data.

Drug court and other relevant local staff need to be trained to accurately maintain

program and client records and conduct regular quality assurance reviews. Without

a substantial financial and philosophical commitment to maintaining accurate and

complete computerized information systems, it will be difficult to continue to document the impacts and costs of drug courts, or to determine how their operations can

be improved.

Drug courts are still relatively new, and a number of research gaps still exist that

I have described in more detail in my previously published reviews. However, the

field has advanced sufficiently (and other research on criminal justice-based substance abuse treatment can be applied to the drug court setting) to suggest a number of key elements for drug court structure and operations that are likely to be associated with more effective programs. These ‘‘best practices’’ include:

• Adherence to the 10 ‘‘Key Components’’ of drug courts outlined in the 1997 OJP/

DCPO monograph

• Clinical and other assessment of participant problems and service needs

• Case management

• Timely access to a range of drug treatment and related services

• Adequate information flow between treatment provider(s) and drug court

• Comprehensive staff training (cross-training) that incorporates cultural sensitivity and competence

• Measurable program objectives and targets, with periodic review of achievements

• Adequate data systems that allow ongoing monitoring and evaluation

• An aftercare component that includes ongoing treatment services as needed,

employment and educational services

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Finally, I believe that the question generally asked about drug courts (‘‘Do drug

courts work?’’) is not the appropriate question. There is sufficient research to suggest the effectiveness of criminal justice-based drug treatment of sufficient duration

that adheres to research-based practice (see the NIDA publication Principles of Drug

Addiction Treatement). The more useful research and policy questions center around

understanding how to develop the most cost-efficient treatment interventions for

substance-involved offenders that maximize positive outcomes for the largest number of participants. For example, what aspects of drug courts work best for which

clients under what conditions? What is the ideal drug court program structure for

which target population? How can treatment retention be maximized? How can

treatment and related services be delivered most efficiently and with the most impact? What are the characteristics of clients who complete the program? What are

the characteristics of clients who remain drug- and crime-free?

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you.

Dr. Goldkamp.

STATEMENT OF JOHN S. GOLDKAMP

Mr. GOLDKAMP. Mr. Chairman, greetings from Philadelphia, and

especially we would like to give our regards to our honorary third

Senator from Pennsylvania, Senator Biden.

It is a pleasure to be here. I have been involved in research on

drug courts and on the impact of drug courts on the system and

on participants for about a decade, starting with the first evaluation NIJ funded with the State Justice Institute in the early 1990’s,

continuing with the long-term evaluations of the Las Vegas and

Portland, OR, drug courts, two of the oldest and longest operating

drug courts, continuing also with the evaluation of the Philadelphia

drug court, and helping with the planning of the evaluation of the

San Francisco drug court.

In addition, through the funding from the Drug Court Program

Office of OJP, we have conducted focus groups with drug court participants in six cities around the country from San Bernadino, Portland, Las Vegas, Miami, and Seattle to Brooklyn. So we have captured the views of those who have gone through and asked them

if they are experiencing what everybody thinks that they are experiencing. We found that to be very valuable.

So my comments come from this background of being familiar

with the field and engaged in research from the beginning. I am

much older now, but I have had a long time to think about these

as these charts have grown.

Drug courts can and do work, but not all drug courts and not

under all circumstances. I would like to focus my comments on sort

of an agenda for research and what we have been learning from

our research. As I see it, the job of drug court research involves

three components: first, to understand clearly what drug courts

are, what they mean to accomplish, and that differs widely across

the country; second, to assess whether they work in a general sense

and if they are cost effective in doing so and their effects on larger

systems in which they are located; and, third, if they work, how,

when, and why they work, and if they don’t, why not.

In our research, we have been pursuing these questions through

the use of the drug court—I am afraid to say it—typology that focuses on—focuses the research on the key structural ingredients of

the drug courts so we move beyond the general to the specifics so

that we can begin to learn what works.

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Drug courts differ in a number of ways. They differ in the target

problems they are designed to address and the target populations

they choose to enroll, in the extent to which they enroll their target

populations or hit the targets, in the ways in which they modify

normal court processes, the question of diversion versus post-conviction and so forth. We are beginning to get some evidence on

that, I believe. They differ in the structure and content of the treatment services that they deliver. They differ in the responses to performance of participants and the accountability that they employ in

their courts, incentives as well as sanctions, and they differ in productivity, and by productivity I mean crime reduction, substance

abuse reduction, costs, employment, return to the justice system,

results per resources expended. Finally, they differ in the extent to

which they have system support, not only among criminal justice

and health and other Government partners, but within the judicial,

executive, and legislative branches.

You have seen from Mr. Belenko’s review that there is plenty of

evidence to suggest the support of the notion that drug courts can

work. I agree—as a researcher who has conducted and is conducting studies of drug courts, I agree in a general sense, but we

are now learning about the conditions, thanks to the NIJ, more recent NIJ-funded research, the conditions of their effectiveness. This

requires attention to the interplay of the dimensions that I just

listed. We are now at a more complex level of investigation, and I

think Assistant Attorney General Leary was alluding to the work

now that is underway and perhaps not completed.

It is also clear that drug courts have had a major—in style, philosophy, and method, have had a major effect on many other justice

procedures. It has stimulated a wave of innovation that has spread

to other areas where a helping and problem-solving approach has

been seen to be useful and appropriate. This now includes domestic

violence courts, family courts, community courts, and, now more recently, mental health courts and reentry courts, all of which could

not have happened without drug courts. So it is the principal innovation, and so in that sense, asking now whether drug courts work

is irrelevant to the reform that has followed. That genie is out of

the bottle. There is a new way of doing things that has enough of

a foothold around the country that we have a new paradigm, new

methods, and new approaches to some of the problems of people

who are in the criminal justice system.

I have to say that under the leadership of Marilyn Roberts, the

Drug Court Program Office of OJP has played a major and appropriate role in giving leadership to the development of drug courts

in several ways: first by requiring minimum standards of operation

in awards made to new and existing courts; second, by providing

high-quality technical assistance and training for developing courts

and supporting and encouraging peer networks; and, third, by encouraging evaluation results as a part of the drug court process on

the local and national levels, separate from and in collaboration

with the National Institute of Justice. And Director Roberts has

done this at the DCPO all while respecting the local origin of drug

courts, respecting the diversity of drug courts around the country,

and resisting playing the heavy role of we are the Federal Government and we will tell you how to be a drug court. I believe this

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is in part due to the fact that Attorney General Reno had a hand

in developing the first drug court in the country in Miami back

when she had another job in 1989, and she has been sensitive to

the issues of drug courts and their promise, I think, since that

time.

But because the drug court model has great promise reflected in

the growing track record in the United States—and abroad, by the

way—does not now mean just because there are hundreds of them

that all drug courts in all situations are appropriate. The need now

is to develop clearer notions of best practices in drug courts. What

about them really makes a difference and what about them

doesn’t? This requires research that moves beyond the generalities,

as Mr. Belenko said, of do they work, which is still a relevant question, to more specifically how and why, and I think that in our research in Portland and Las Vegas, taking a longitudinal approach,

looking at drug courts over a long period of time, seeing their ups

and downs, linking that to outside factors that the Assistant Attorney General was talking to, such as changes in prosecutorial policies, jail overcrowding, moving away from the single drug court

model for judges, all have an impact.

The courts we studied have really been very, very tough and

have held participants to sort of a tough standard of accountability.

Graduation rates are reasonably low. It is not a walk. Graduates

always do better than non-graduates in looking at rearrests over

1-, 2-, and 3-year periods. In our use of comparison groups, we find

generally lower rates of rearrest over 1-, 2-, and 3-year periods,

particularly for drug offenses; however, the significance and the

magnitude of differences varied by the time periods studied from

year to year as different internal and external changes affected the

courts’ operations.

Our focus groups with drug court participants have reviewed

some important consonance between what drug court participants,

drug addicts believed and what drug court designers believe. First,

in our focus groups, we have seen that they are very tough populations who have lots and lots of problems. They look at this as an

opportunity that they have never had before. They find it hard to

believe that somebody in the justice system is giving them an opportunity to try. They believe the single judge is God’s gift to drug

treatment. They very much recommend strict accountability and

drug testing. They hate drug testing, but they say, You take drug

testing away and we will beat you. This is what they say. They are

strongly motivated by both incentives and by sanctions, not just

sanctions and not just jail. The rewards for forward progress and

the sense of achievement is something that seems very important

to them, but they particularly wanted to avoid jail, and the loss of

employment and custody of children associated with conviction and

imprisonment are great deterrents to them.

An important finding that emerges from our research is that

downtown drug courts are really addressing a collection of principal

neighborhoods in urban settings and that this suggests the drug

courts might enhance their effectiveness by developing links to specific neighborhood settings, for example, collaborating with other

community justice initiatives, community policing, community

court or community prosecution, and community health.

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Issues for court research that I think are the most important remaining, I have nine of them, and I can do it quickly. First of all,

the multi-year studies have revealed a great deal about the changing dynamics of drug courts and the variation of their impact over

time. We should build on these longitudinal findings. Second, yes,

we need more studies, more in-depth studies, but we need to focus

to mind the studies that we have now in more depth. Third, we

need to now understand the influence of extant contextual factors,

prosecutorial policy in Las Vegas, taking a judge out of a drug

court and assigning other kinds of officials in Portland, and to understand the impact of the ingredients of the drug court model on

its effectiveness.

We should follow up with individuals, but it is very expensive

and very difficult. When we are looking at drug-addicted, mentally

ill, and often homeless participants, it is a real assignment, and it

is very difficult and raises all sorts of issues. Focus groups are a

tool that should be used more frequently. They have a lot to say

about our understanding of drug courts.

Finally—not finally. Two more points: Drug court research

should focus on aspects of the drug court typology to move beyond

the general question of studying if it works to increasingly studying

how and when and under what conditions it works. The variation

depends on external factors and internal factors, and we are learning about them, and it is important.

Our Phase II research tries to look into the box of drug court

treatment now to determine the relative importance of some of the

ingredients of the drug court model, going to drug court, attendance at treatment, the duration and type of treatment, the use of

incentives and sanctions, the impact of the jail sanction. All of

these are assumptions the drug court model makes. We are only

beginning now to tease out the relative effects. This should be increasingly a focus of research.

Drug court research should expand to follow participants and

comparison groups through the other social services involved here,

including welfare, public health, treatment, and other primary

health care and other systems. And, finally, drug courts have an

important community justice implication. Drug court effectiveness

would be enhanced if they incorporated this knowledge to develop

linkages to these principal neighborhoods that would support successful treatment under sometimes very difficult circumstances.

Research should turn to the assessment of innovative courts that

forge these community linkages.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Goldkamp follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN S. GOLDKAMP

The effect of the drug court movement on courts and the justice system over the

last 11 years may turn out—with more historical distance—to have been one of the

major justice reforms of the last part of the 20th century in the United States. Its

impact on treatment systems that have traditionally failed to address the needs of

criminal justice populations may also prove to have been powerful, as the movement

compelled them to reconfigure and redirect resources to the most challenging populations of substance-involved citizens. Since the pioneering efforts of Miami justice

officials establishing the nation’s first drug court in the summer of 1989, the growth

of the drug court movement—with upwards of 400 courts reportedly now in operation in the United States alone—has been extraordinary by any measure.

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1This term was employed by John Feinblatt of the Center for Court Innovation in New York

to refer to the growing family of innovations in court systems deriving from the drug court

model. See New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye’s commentary in Newsweek, October 11, 1999. 2These elements on which drug courts differ include (1) Target problem, (2) target population;

(3) screening—reaching the target; (4) modification/adaptation of court processing and procedures; (5) structure and content of treatment; (6) responses to performance in treatment—participant accountability; (7) productivity of the drug court; (8) extent of system-wide support. (See

Goldkamp, 2000.)

To the traditional criminal court and drug treatment practices that drug courts

were designed to improve upon, the substance of the drug court model of court innovation represents paradigm shift away from a predominantly punitive orientation

toward substance abuse and drug-related crime of the last decades to one that focuses on treatment, investment in human potential, second (and third) chances and

restoration. Although there are common elements shared by most drug courts, proliferation of the drug court model is not explained by the wholesale adoption of a

fixed, ‘‘cookie-cutter’’ approach in the many jurisdictions across the nation. Predictably, the original Miami model evolved in its successive applications to other settings, and was itself transformed in substance and procedure as the basic model

traveled across the United States and to locations abroad. The drug court methodology has been adapted to grapple with other problems associated with criminal

court populations, including community issues, domestic violence and mental health.

The substance of the drug court movement has directly and indirectly spawned a

variety of related innovations, so that one can now speak of ‘‘problem-solving’’ or ‘‘problem-oriented’’ courts 1 to refer to a more active, ‘‘hands-on’’ judicial and justicesystem philosophy.

The challenges for research in gauging the full impact of drug courts on the philosophy of justice, the operations of the justice system, the function of the criminal

and civil courts, not to mention the health and behavior of addicted criminal offenders are simply huge. In earlier discussions, we have argued that evaluation of drug

courts should be tied to a clear understanding of their goals and that assessment

of their impact can best be understood through a conceptual framework—a working

typology—that identifies key ingredients thought to be responsible for their advertised results. Recognizing their diversity, we have argued that meaningful assessment of impact must be guided by a clear understanding of what drug courts ‘‘are’’ and ‘‘what they are not’’. Without such a framework to isolate the critical instrumental elements of the approach, findings from scattered evaluations will accumulate like apples and oranges

and other ingredients for a mixed fruit salad of research. The result is that the practice-oriented consumer of the research is then left to weed through diverse findings

from disparate studies to identify directions or themes relating to drug court effectiveness. With these challenges in mind, we organized our recent research

(Goldkamp et al., 2000) studying the evolution and impact of two of the earliest and

longest-operating drug courts in Portland, Oregon, and Las Vegas, Nevada, according to the elements of the drug court typology.2 In this fashion we hoped to produce

findings with both a high degree of internal validity, as we seek to know what

makes a particular drug court work, and sufficient external validity, as we seek ambitiously to test the effects of the structural elements of the innovation across settings.

The need to sort out the effects of the critical operating components of the drug

court model in widely different settings around the nation (and abroad) and the contextual dynamics of growth and change make the evaluation research task complex.

Its apparent complexity, however, should not serve as a distraction from the need

to answer some very basis questions, such as ‘‘Do drug courts work?’’ and ‘‘if so,

how?’’

WHAT IS A DRUG COURT?

The problem of answering the drug-court effectiveness question must begin with

an understanding of what a drug court is. We have described its basic elements as

involving a new working relationship between the criminal court and health and

treatment systems carried out within the boundaries of the criminal court’s jurisdiction. In comparison with methods previously in existence in the justice system, the

aims of the drug court model are much less punitive, and more healing and restorative in nature. Its unorthodox and, in historical context, iconoclastic methods have

been characterized as an informal operation of the courtroom, where direct exchanges between the participant and the judge are common and between counsel

for the state and the defense are non-adversarial. The courtroom was conceived as

a therapeutic vehicle (a theatre in the ‘‘square’’) with the judge at the center leading

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the treatment process. Under this model, it was widely believed that the role of the

judge, with its symbolism and authority, would serve to galvanize the treatment

process into a more powerful and accountable form of rehabilitation than previously

(or recently) available in the criminal justice setting. The drug court model’s emphasis is not on the disposition of the criminal case, but instead on the treatment of

drug-addicted offenders whose cases, when treatment was successful, could often be

dismissed. The ‘‘key components’’ of the drug court model identified by practitioners

are well laid out in a monograph sponsored by the Drug Court Program Office of

the U.S. Department of Justice (NADCP, 1997) and described in a host of brochures

produced by the National Association of Drug Court Professionals.

POSITIVE FINDINGS OF DRUG COURT IMPACT

I understand you heard testimony by Dr. Stephen Belenko who has reviewed

studies of drug courts, large and small, to identify common themes in their findings.

You are aware, then, that he believes that the thrust of findings from assorted studies is generally supportive of the drug court innovation and points to positive results. Although the body of research is growing, the research process is still in its

relatively early stages—after all the drug court movement itself is only 11 years

old—and has only begun to move beyond considerations of general impact (lower

crime rates among participants) to examination of the specific impact of ingredients

of the drug court model.

As one who has been conducting drug court research in the field for a decade, my

conclusion is that drug courts can and do have an important impact on substance

abuse and offending and represent an important new direction in criminal justice,

drug treatment and health. My focus has been on understanding how they work and

under what circumstances they best realize their impact. Because the drug court

model has great promise, reflected in its growing track record in the U.S. and

abroad, does not mean, now that there are several hundreds of them, that all drug

courts in all situations are effective—or even appropriate. The need to develop clearer notions of ‘‘best practices’’ in drug courts—what about them really makes a difference and what doesn’t—requires that research move beyond the generalities of

asking ‘‘do they work?’’ to move specific consideration of ‘‘when they work, under

what conditions, how and why?’’

LEADERSHIP OF THE DRUG COURT PROGRAM OFFICE OF THE OFFICE OF JUSTICE

PROGRAMS

The history of the impressive development of the drug court movement has been

strongly influenced by congressional funding of drug courts and the effective leadership demonstrated by the Drug Court Program Office of the Office of Justice Programs under the current its director Marilyn Roberts and, in its early days, under

Timothy Murray. The DCPO has structured the funding of new programs to require

some basic standards of operation and has supported high-quality training and technical assistance programs to ensure that strong drug courts would result. That office

has not only encouraged strict standards in the development of the ‘‘key components’’ guidelines for drug courts but has emphatically stressed the importance of

evaluation by offering training to local evaluators in drug court issues and practices,

by requiring local evaluation to be linked to newly funded programs, and by working

with the National Institute of Justice to sponsor major, national-level formal evaluation of drug courts.

OUR DRUG COURT EVALUATION RESEARCH

As one of those involved in drug court research on all levels over time, my research at the Crime and Justice Research Institute in Philadelphia has sought to

understand the workings of the basic drug court model and its variations (employing

a drug court typology of critical elements as a helpful framework) and to asses the

impact of drug courts. More recently we have begun to sort out the relative contribution of elements thought to be critical in their operation, so that the further

development of drug courts can build on a knowledge base of most effective practices.

Our large-scale evaluations of drug courts have focused on drug courts in Miami,

Portland, Las Vegas and Philadelphia. I conducted the first in-depth evaluation of

a drug court, the nation’s first drug court in Miami, in the early 1990’s. Since then

we have assisted in the development of drug courts and provided training, in particular we have assisted in the planning and evaluation of the Philadelphia Treatment Court led by the Honorably Louis Presenza, and are currently completing a

long-term study funded by the National Institute of Justice of two of the nation’s

oldest and longest operating drug courts in Las Vegas, Nevada, (under the direction

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of the Honorable Jack Lehman with the assistance of one of the nation’s drug court

treatment leaders, John Marr), and Portland, Oregon (in collaboration with the

Honorable Harl Haas, District Attorney Michael Schrunk and Metropolitan Public

Defender Him Hennings).

In addition, through funding from the Drug Court Program Office of the Office

of Justice Programs, we have conducted focus groups with drug court participants

in six cities (San Bernardino, Portland, Las Vegas, Miami, Seattle and Brooklyn) to

capture the views of the citizens who have first hand experience in drug courts as

participants. My comments about drug courts and how they work, then, come from

this background of research in the field and close familiarity with the development

of the drug court movement from its beginnings in Miami in 1989.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PORTLAND (MULTNOMAH COUNTY) AND LAS VEGAS (CLARK

COUNTY) DRUG COURTS (NIJ NATIONAL DRUG COURT EVALUATION I)

Much of the knowledge we gained derives from our long-term study of the Portland and Las Vegas drug courts under the National Institute of Justice ‘‘National

Evaluation of Drug Courts (I). The scope of evaluation of these two drug courts, two

of the oldest and longest operating courts, extended from their beginnings (Portland,

1991; Las Vegas, 1993) through 1997 with follow-up of one, two and three years (depending on the years studied). The in-depth longitudinal approach to the study of

drug courts—the first time ever—has provided an opportunity to examine these

courts as they began implementation, developed and matured, and then faced

changes over time in aspects of the basic drug court model. The Phase I findings

show not only that, when the core elements of the drug court model were effectively

implemented, the drug courts had the impact anticipated, but also that their effectiveness was influenced by outside factors (such as changes in drug laws, emergency

jail crowding decrees, prosecutorial policy and judicial staffing of the drug courts).

• In both sites graduates consistently were rearrested less frequently during one-

, two- and three-year follow-up periods than non-graduates overall and during each

year studied.

• When contrasted with the performance of comparison group drug defendants,

drug court participants produced generally lower rates of rearrest in the one, two

and three year follow-up period, particularly for drug offenses; however, the significance and the magnitude of the differences varied by the time period studied (from

year to year) as different internal and external changes affected the courts’ operation.

FOCUS GROUPS OF DRUG COURT PARTICIPANTS

Focus groups of drug court participants in each site confirmed several important

assumptions of the drug court model:

• Challenging target populations: that the participants were generally very seriously involved in substance abuse, often having long histories of abuse and failure

in treatment;

• Multi-problem treatment needs: that they often suffered from co-occurring disorders (e.g. mental illness);

• Accepted the opportunity: that they saw the drug court experience as a unique

opportunity, were impressed that ‘‘someone would want to help,’’ and were responsive to positive incentives offered by the drug court treatment process;

• Critical importance of the single drug court judge: that they viewed the single

drug court judge as the main and most important element of the treatment experience that made it different from other experiences in court or treatment;

• Accountability and Responses to Performance: that participants considered drug

testing and accountability it provided as key to the treatment process; and that they

were strongly motivated both by incentives (rewards for progress and the sense of

achievement that came with it) and sanctions employed by the drug court. They particularly wanted to avoid jail, convictions, and the loss of employment and custody

of children associated with conviction and imprisonment.

DRUG COURTS AND SPECIFIC NEIGHBORHOODS

Both the longitudinal study and discussions with drug court participants in the

focus groups revealed that ‘‘downtown’’ drug courts deal with residents of several

distinct principal neighborhoods within each jurisdiction that differed by race/ethnicity and the drug and crime problems associated with them. This suggests that

drug courts might enhance their effectiveness by developing links to specific neighborhood settings, for example, in collaboration with community policing, community

court or community prosecution initiatives.

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SELECTED FINDINGS FROM THE SITES

Portland

• The Multnomah County Drug Court (the S.T.O.P. program) enrolled about 4,620

participants from 1991 (its pilot year) through 1998, an average of about 577 per

year. From 1995 through 1998, enrollments exceeded 600 per year, peaking in 1997

at 734 participants. • 36 percent of enrolled participants graduated within two years overall, although

this rate varied by time-period cohort. • Drug court graduates were rearrested notably less frequently than non-graduates over the entire study period and when each yearly cohort was examined during one-, two- and three-year follow-up periods; 35 percent of graduates were rearrested within three years compared to 61 percent of non-graduates. The differences were largest when rearrests for drug offenses were examined. • When contrasted with the records of comparison group drug defendants, drug

court participants showed generally lower rearrest rates at over the one year followup period and lower rearrest rates at the three-year mark for three of the four timeperiod cohorts studies. The magnitude and significance of the differences, however,

varied by time period. • The most difficult (less effective) periods for the drug court were during the initial start-up period (1991–92), when an initial treatment provider had to be discarded and a new provider adopted, and from 1996 through 1997, when the chief

judge dropped the core drug court judge approach and assigned non-judge personnel

and/or frequent rotation of many different judges into the drug court.

Las Vegas

• The Clark County Drug Court enrolled 3,364 participants from 1993 through

1998, an average of about 556 per year. From 1996 through 1998, enrollments exceeded 600 per year, peaking in 1998 at 755 participants. • 34 percent of enrolled participants graduated within two years overall, although

this rate varied by time-period cohort; it was lowest when the court shifted toward

guilty plea cases. • Drug court graduates were rearrested notably less frequently than non-graduates over the entire study period and when each yearly cohort was examined during one-, two- and three-year follow-ups; 46 percent of graduates were rearrested

within three years compared to 76 percent of non-graduates. The differences were

largest when rearrest for drug offenses were examined. • When contrasted with the records of comparison group drug defendants, drug

court participants showed generally lower rearrest rates at over the one year followup period and generally lower rearrest rates at the three-year mark; overall 65 percent of drug court participants had been rearrested three years after entering drug

court compared to 79 percent of comparison group drug defendants. The magnitude

and significance of the differences, however, varied by time period.

• The most different period for the drug court was beginning in 1996 when prosecutorial policy changed from encouraging diversion to requiring guilty pleas from

participants to enter the drug court. This not only changed the kind of participant

entering drug court to a higher risk participant with more extensive prior histories,

but also appeared to reduce the participant’s incentive to successfully complete

court. Charges could not be dismissed at the end of the process as they previously

could be when the main emphasis was on a pre-conviction diversion approach.

ISSUES FOR RESEARCH

• Drug Court Performance over Time: The multi-year study of drug courts has revealed a great deal about the changing dynamics of drug courts and variations in

impact over time. Single time-period studies generalize from a single time period,

which may produce misleading results (depending on whether it was a particularly

good or bad year). We should build on these longitudinal findings.

• The Importance of Contextual Factors. External, contextual factors, such as

prosecutorial policy regarding drug court entrance (requiring guilty pleas) in Las

Vegas and judicial staffing (moving away from the dedicated drug court judge) in

Portland—have important impacts on the effective operation of the drug court and

need to be studied more closely.

• Follow-up of Individuals: Individual follow-up of participant and non-participants (control group defendants) over time is desirable but very difficult and expensive because of the challenges associated with locating people over time and the

sample attrition that occurs.

• Focus Groups of Drug Court Participants: Focus groups of drug court participants represent a plausible, low cost and more immediate—though less systematic—

67

method of gaining feedback on the drug court experience and from the point of view

of those who experience the programs. This approach to gathering knowledge about

the actual (as opposed to the intended) effects of drug courts should be given a higher priority.

• The Framework of the Drug Court Typology: Drug court research should focus

on aspects of the drug court typology to move beyond the general question of studying only ‘‘if it works’’ to increasingly studying how and when it works, as effectiveness appears to vary over time and circumstance in these two sites. The variation

depends on external factors as well as the relative deployment of important elements of the drug court model.

• Studying the Effects of Elements of the Drug Court Model: Our phase two research tries to look into the ‘‘black box’’ of drug court treatment to determine the

relative effects, for example, of drug court appearances, treatment attendance, duration and type, use of incentives and sanctions, and, particularly, the impact of the

jail sanction on outcomes. Examination of the relative impact of these ingredients

can explain how drug courts work and why, and facilitate efforts to build on the

effective elements.

• The Community Justice Implications of Downtown Drug Courts: Downtown drug

courts (like the Portland and Las Vegas Courts studied) have clear implications for

community justice efforts, as analysis shows they disproportionately deal with participants from several principal neighborhoods within the cities. These neighborhoods differ in race and ethnicity, in crime and the kinds of problems prevalent.

Drug court effectiveness would be enhanced if they incorporated this knowledge to

develop linkages to these neighborhoods that would support successful treatment

under sometimes very difficult circumstances.

• Added Emphasis on In-Depth Analysis of Current Data: Research should not

only add to the long-term changes and effectivenes of established drug courts, but

should look at existing data from long-term studies in more in-depth.

REFERENCES

2000—Goldkamp, John S. ‘‘The Drug Court Response: Issues and Implications for

Justice Change.’’ 63 Albany Law Review 923–961. Appended to testimony.

2000—John S. Goldkamp and Cheryl Irons-Guynn. Emerging Judicial Strategies

for the Mentally Ill on the Criminal Caseload: Mental Health Courts in Fort Lauderdale, Seattle, San Bernardino, and Anchorage. A Report on Community Justice Initiatives. (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance.)

2000—Goldkamp, Michael D. White and Jennifer Robinson. Retrospective Evaluation of Two Pioneering Drug Courts: Phase I Findings from Clark County, Nevada,

and Multnomah County, Oregon. An Interim Report of the National Evaluation of

Drug Courts. (Philadelphia: Crime and Justice Research Institute.) Executive Summary appended to testimony.

2000—John S. Goldkamp, Michael D. White and Jennifer Robinson. ‘‘Do Drug

Courts Work: Getting Inside the Drug Court Black Box,’’ submitted to the Journal

of Drug Issues. Appended to testimony.

2000—John S. Goldkamp, Michael D. White and Jennifer Robinson. ‘‘Context and

Change: the Evolution of Pioneering Drug Courts in Portland and Las Vegas (1991–

1998),’’ submitted to the Journal of Law and Policy. Appended to testimony.

2000—John S. Goldkamp, Michael D. White and Jennifer Robinson. Participant

Perspectives: Highlights from Focus Groups or Drug Court Participants in Brooklyn,

Miami, Seattle, Las Vegas, Portland and San Bernardino. Unpublished report submitted to the Drug Court Program Office, U.S. Department of Justice, Appended to

Testimony.

1999—Goldkamp, John S. ‘‘When is a Drug Court Not a Drug Court?’’ in C. Terry

(ed.), The Early Drug Courts: Case Studies in Judicial Innovation. Beverly Hills,

CA: Sage Publications. Appended to testimony.

1999—Goldkamp, John S. ‘‘The Origins of the Treatment Drug Court in Miami.’’

in C. Terry (ed.), The Early Drug Courts: Case Studies in Judicial Innovation. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Appended to testimony.

John S. Goldkamp, Ph.D.—Dr. Goldkamp is Professor of Criminal Justice at Temple University and heads the Crime and Justice Research Institute in Philadelphia.

His research focuses broadly on discretion in criminal justice and innovation in the

courts, with a special emphasis on treatment and alternatives to confinement. Over

the last decade some of his research has dealt with the drug court movement, beginning with the first comprehensive evaluation of the nation’s first drug court in

Miami, Assessing the Impact of Dade County’s Felony Drug Court (with Doris

Weiland), and a Department of Justice white paper, Justice and Treatment InnovaVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
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tion: The Drug Court Movement (1994). Since this time he has assisted in the planning and evaluation of Philadelphia’s Treatment Court, The implementation of the

Philadelphia Treatment Court: A Descriptive Analysis of Early Stages of Implementation. (1997), has written on the drug court movement and its evaluation (‘‘The Origins of the Treatment Drug Court in Miami’’ and, ‘‘When is a Drug Court Not a

Drug Court?’’ in C. Terry (ed.),, The Early Drug Courts: Case Studies in Judicial

Innovation, 1999); ‘‘The Drug Court Response; Issues and Implications for Justice

Change,’’ 63 Albany Law Review 923–961, 2000), and two recent articles (‘‘Do Drug

Courts Work: Getting Inside the Drug Court Black Box,’’ submitted to the Journal

of Drug Issues, Summer 2000; ‘‘Context and Change: the Evolution of Pioneering

Drug Courts in Portland and Las Vegas (1991–1998),’’ submitted to the Journal of

Law and Policy, Summer 2000). He serves as a drug court evaluation resource for

Pennsylvania’s emerging drug courts through the Pennsylvania Commission on

Crime and Delinquency. With his colleagues (Robinson and White), he has recently

completed a first report on the NIJ-sponsored retrospective evaluation of two the nation’s oldest and longest-operating drug courts in Portland and Las Vegas (Retrospective Evaluation of Two Pioneering Drug Courts: Phase I Findings from Clark

County, Nevada, and Multnomah County, Oregon, 2000) and has conducted focus

groups of drug court participants in six jurisdictions in the United States. He is assisting the San Francisco Drug Court in planning in evaluation. He is conducting

a five-year evaluation of Philadelphia’s Criminal Justice Treatment Network for

Women through CSAT and has recently completed a BJA monograph (with Cheryl

Irons-Guynn) on the nation’s first mental health courts (Emerging Strategies for the

Mentally Ill in the Criminal Caseload: Mental Health Courts in Fort Lauderdale, Seattle, San Bernardino, and Archorage). He serves as the law reporter for the American Bar Association Pretrial Release Standards Task Force as it revises it standards relating to pretrial release, detention and adjudication alternatives, including

drug courts and other problem-solving courts, such as community, mental health

and family courts.

Senator SESSIONS. Thank you, Mr. Goldkamp. I appreciate those comments, but

we are under a rule. We have gone a tad over. I hope we won’t go to jail for it.

We will keep the record open for any other statements or questions that may be

offered.

An objection has been made. Members of the other side have been objecting to

committee hearings during this Senate session. You can hold a hearing for 2 hours,

but then you have to stop. So that rule has been invoked. It is part of an unfortunate obstruction around here and makes life more difficult in my view, but we live

with our rules as we find them.

So we will adjourn, but I would appreciate it and think it appropriate that we

can continue to discuss matters in a non-hearing context. I see there is a table over

there. If this panel would join me at the table, and if anybody wants to stand

around and pull up a chair and listen, I would like to continue this discussion. We

had one good hearing here, and I met back in my office with some people, and we

learned more discussing in my office than we did in the 2 hours in the panel.

So if you will join me if you have time, I would appreciate it. We are adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 11:37 a.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JUDGE JEFFREY S. TAUBER, ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL

DRUG COURT INSTITUTE

INTRODUCTION

The importance of a substantial federal presence in providing training and assistance to the drug court field cannot be underestimated. Due to the limited but critical resources provided to the drug court field through the federal government, we

can point to unprecedented growth in the number of drug courts, from approximately 50 when federal assistance began in 1995, to over 700 drug courts in existence or being planned today. Truly, the Drug Courts Program Office (DCPO), Office

of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, in collaboration with other federal

agencies, has done a remarkable job in providing technical assistance and funding

to the field. Federally funded technical assistance and training are necessary as

DCPO funded programs bring the knowledge and expertise of the best practitionertrainers to drug courts throughout the nation.

Not only are the trainings themselves highly effective, but they prove cost effective as well. The sharing of information, experiences, and lessons learned is an invaluable cost and time saving tool in and of itself. Developing the curriculum and

then training the trainers who will teach their colleagues in workshops around the

country saves valuable resources. Individual state organizations and administrative

offices do not need to search out and develop trainings and seminars for practitioners in their area and unnecessarily expend resources and duplicate efforts. Rather, the extraordinary expertise and experiences developed locally in specific jurisdictions may be showcased on a national level and shared among colleagues. What is

most important to remember, however, is that the sharing of information, lessons

learned, innovative curricula, and the expertise of highly effective practitioners has

happened only through the advent of federally funded workshops and trainings.

Therefore, increased federal funding for training and technical assistance must be

the highest priority for federal assistance to this rapidly expanding field.

STANDARDIZATION

Technical assistance and the funding that makes this assistance possible is critical to the development of effective, standardized drug courts. Although drug courts

are unique to each jurisdiction, the development of nationally recognized standards

across drug court programs is necessary in order to insure the effectiveness of drug

courts nationally. For example, through technical assistance provided at regional research and evaluation workshops like those conducted by NDCI, drug court

practioners and evaluators are able to learn from the experiences of their colleagues

who have already conducted drug court evaluations, and discuss standards and definitions of terms such as success, failure, retention, recidivism, and cost analysis.

DCPO has taken the lead in supporting and promoting standardization projects

in order to provide jurisdictions with the tools necessary to sustain their programs.

Previously under a grant from DCPO, the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) convinced the National Association of Drug Court Professionals

Drug Court Standards Committee, which produced Defining Drug Courts: The Key

Components, in January 1997. The Key Components provide guidelines, or 10 components, that are central to the drug court model and implementing an effective

drug court. The Key Components have become a national model for drug courts, and

promote competency that is available to practitioners across the nation. It should

be noted that many state judiciaries, including California and Florida, have adapted

the Key Components in their rules and court. Additionally, the Conference of Chief

Justices, representing all 50 chief justices, recognized the effectiveness of the 10 Key

Components of drug court in its resolution of August 19, 2000, endorsing drug

courts and other problem solving courts. Still, it is important that performance

standards are developed and the Key Components are revisited to include ‘‘best

practices’’ for drug courts.

NDCI has also sought to identify standardization needs that are critical to the advancement and future of evaluation. A meeting of the drug court research advisory

committee, held in partnership with the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

in September 1998, identified several critical and immediate needs of the research

and practitioner communities in relation to drug court research and evaluation. The

following standardization needs are among those identified by the committee: StandVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00143 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
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ardization and research terms (Data Dictionary); Standardization of minimum data

sets; Definition of characteristics of target populations; Definition of research variables needed for local drug court jurisdictions; Definition of differences between fine

level data (court information) and program data (evaluation data/information) for

local jurisdictions; Definition of process evaluation vs. outcome evaluation (what

questions should they answer). Increased funding for DCPO technical assistance

and training must be provided to support the development of standards and best

practices for drug court research and evaluation.

RESEARCH & EVALUATION

NDCI and DCPO realize that continued research and program evaluations are

crucial; in short, drug court programs must be able to justify their program’s utility

in order to sustain it. Drug courts often have very little funding for evaluation because they are unable to demonstrate the program’s effectiveness, even though the

very future of drug court programs depend upon it.

Many drug court programs currently struggle with their evaluations. Practitioners

need to recognize the importance of evaluation and the costs associated with it.

Practitioners also need to know what to look for in an evaluator, what to expect

from an evaluator, the importance of developing a good working relationship with

an evaluator, the elements of data collection, and the development of a credible data

collection system. In turn, evaluators need to be educated about the program, management, communication, problem solving, team building, organizational skills, data

collection, needs assessment, case management, intensive substance abuse treatment skills and offender supervision are all important to the drug court team member. The range of required skills and the diversity of education and experience histories of incumbents support the need for the NDCI comprehensive drug court practitioner training series designed and delivered by experienced practitioners.

Each training provides an innovative, interactive framework for education and an

important new tool for educators to use during the training. For example, while traditional judicial training provides information on substantive law and court procedures, the NDCI comprehensive judicial training design focuses intensively on the

judges’ communications skills and his or her ability to positively impact the offender’s drug usage and criminality in the drug court setting.

Over 100 video segments (typically running between one and three minutes) of

30 different drug courts have been integrated into the training curriculum, and are

the cornerstone of NDCI comprehensive drug court practitioner trainings. In small

facilitated group discussions as well as in plenary sessions, participants review and

analyze drug court situations on video tape, as real drug court judges deal with such

critical issues as implementing sanctions and dealing with relapse.

To date, NDCI has trained 312 drug court practitioners from 47 states and Guam,

Puerto Rico, Ireland and Australia. By the end of 2000, that number may be us

many as 600. On a scale of one to seven, 96% of judicial participants rank the training as a six or seven and 67% rank the training with the highest possible score.

The mean score thus far for the four NDCI judicial trainings is a 6.57 out of a possible score of 7.

Due to NDCI’s successful skills-based, discipline specific training program for

drug court practitioners, NDCI has embarked on a new training project for DCPO.

DCPO provided the funding for a series workshops for recipients of DCPO planning

grants, and has collaborated with the NDCI to provide 25 workshops for 59 (45

adult drug courts, 14 DUI drug courts) grantee jurisdictions. Next year NDCI, in

collaboration with DCPO, intends to provide jurisdictional trainings for over 100

drug court programs nationwide.

All of the workshops discussed above are held at NADCP Mentor Court sites and

are designed to provide planning grantee jurisdictions with the tools necessary to

plan and implement an effective drug court. The first in the series, the ‘‘Introductory Workshop,’’ focuses on educating the judge and coordinator about drug court

fundamentals, respective roles and responsibilities from the planning process

through implementation and operation as well as team building and team leading.

The second in the series, the ‘‘Skills-based, Discipline Workshop,’’ focuses on comprehensively educating the entire jurisdictional team on specialized drug court

issues and how they relate to the individual disciplines of the drug court team.

Focus is also given to the roles of each discipline and those functions through the

drug court planning, implementation and operation phases. Finally, the workshop

enables the team to begin a Jurisdictional Action Plan Outline. The final workshop,

the ‘‘Operational Workshop,’’ focuses on the Jurisdictional Action Plan and the tasks

therein, set by the jurisdiction, outlining the plan to implement a drug court.

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NADCP MENTOR COURT NETWORK

Established in partnership with DCPO in 1996, the NADCP Mentor Court Network provides a cost-effective approach and relies on locally or regionally centered

education rather than on-site technical assistance. Local practitioners volunteer

much of the resources and expertise used in the network. The Mentor Court Network is comprised of a number of effective teaching sites and trainers whose practitioners have proven expertise, teaching experience, and organizational skills. The

sites are presently selected through a collaborative process by which DCPO and

NADCP visit mentor site candidates and reach agreement as to the appropriateness

of individual sites as mentor programs. Potential mentor sites are reviewed for competence and cost effectiveness, geographic and ethnic diversity, population density,

drugs of choice, and community participation and support.

By relying on broad-based regionally centered networks, NADCP avoids the expense of flying consultants around the country. Instead, it nurtures local and regional leadership, moving the focus away from the national to the local level where

the practitioners and most of the resources are found.

Since its inception in 1996, the Mentor Court Network has:

• Grown from seven sites to 25 in 2000; • Expanded to include Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) sites, which

are courts that have innovative linkages with law enforcement; • Been the primary training network for DCPO planning and implementation

grantees;

• Trained nearly 5,000 practitioners since the Network’s inception; and

• Gained international recognition from and provided training to delegates from

other countries.

SCHOLARSHIP

DCPO and ONDCP support a variety of publications and the distribution of other

information through NDCI and other organizations. NDCI has developed the National Drug Court Institute Review (NDCIR), a journal published twice per year,

that provides technical, scientific, and legal articles to the drug court practitioner

in a clear and understandable form. NDCI is also known for its monograph series,

focusing on specific topics in order to bring a discussion of the issues to practitioners

across the country. NDCI’s monographs include DUI/Durg Courts: Defining a National Strategy, Development and Implementation of Drug Court Systems, and Reentry Drug Courts. NDCI also publishes The Institute, a technical assistance and

training newsletter, three times a year. Finally, NDCI disseminates the Drug Court

Practitioner Fact Sheet series, which provides a one page brief focused on issues important to the practitioner such as evaluation, coercion in drug courts, methamphetamine, buprenorphine, and juvenile and family drug courts, among others.

CONCLUSION

Whether trainings and workshops have been developed and put on by NDCI, or

by NDCI in collaboration with organizations such as SEARCH, the Justice Management Institute (JMI), the Drug Court Clearinghouse and Technical Assistance

Project at American University, or the National Council of Juvenile and Family

Court Judges, the common thread and ingredient for success has been the financial

support and commitment of federal agencies such as DCPO and ONDCP. Federal

funding provided by DCPO has provided the backbone of technical assistance in the

areas of research and evaluation, drug court practitioner training, and standardization in critical areas of the drug court field.

Standardized practices in research and evaluation will provide the basis for

ascertaining which drug court programs, and which components of drug court programs, are most effective, and which need improvement. Standardized practices in

the training of drug court team members will insure that those team members are

equipped with the knowledge and skills necessary do not only administer an effective program, but also use evaluation findings to recognize the need for, and implement, improvements in that program. Finally, standardized practices made possible

through increased federal support for technical assistance and training saves limited

resources and allow those resources to be focused on providing critical assistance to

as many drug courts and drug court practitioners as possible throughout the United

States.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL DRUG COURT INSTITUTE

Historically, education and training in the drug court field has only been available

at regional workshops and national conferences, where analysis and commentary

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were limited to anecdotes and personal accounts. The newness of the field and the

lack of resources inhibited the development of a drug court institute.

That situation has changed. Hundreds of programs have been implemented over

the last several years. Scholars and researchers have begun to apply the rigors of

scientific analysis to the drug court model, and now evaluations exist on dozens of

drug court programs.

Recognizing that in order to survive the drug court field needed strong educational, research and scholarship components, the Office of National Drug Control

Policy (ONDCP) provided initial funding for a drug court institute. On December 13,

1997, ONDCP Director General Barry McCaffrey announced the creation of the National Drug Court Institute (NDCI) in the Roosevelt Room at the White House.

In collaboration with ONDCP, the Drug Courts Program Office (DCPO), Office of

Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice, has been instrumental in the development of NDCI, which provides training, scholarship, and research skills to the

field.

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PREPARED STATEMENT OF SUSAN TURNER, PH.D., ON BEHALF OF THE RAND

I have been asked to prepare a written statement on drug court research for the

Subcommittee on Youth Violence. I serve as the Associate Director for Research and

the Director for the Sentencing and Corrections Center for RAND Criminal Justice.

Our mission is to conduct research, analysis, and demonstrations that help policymakers and communities reduce violence and substance abuse. Over the past 10

years, I have been involved in a number of evaluations of drug courts across the

country; currently RAND Criminal Justice is conducting a national evaluation of 14

drug court programs. The 14 drug court programs were funded by the Drug Courts

Program Office (DCPO); the evaluation is funded by the National Institute of Justice with funds transferred from the Drug Courts Program Office. My statement will

focus on two major themes: (1) what we have learned to date from the national evaluation and our plans for continuing that work and (2) an assessment of the current

state of research on drug courts.

THE 14-SITE NATIONAL EVALUATION

The national evaluation was designed as a two-phase effort. We have just completed the first phase. We anticipate beginning the second phase later this year. The

first phase was designed to (1) develop a conceptual framework of drug courts; (2)

describe program implementation of the 14 drug courts; (3) determine program

‘‘evaluability’’ (the extent to which programs can support a strong evaluation) for

each participating jurisdiction; and (4) develop specific plans for a Phase II evaluation of each program’s impact and success. I discuss three of these below that are

directly relevant to my statement: the framework, program evaluability, and the

Phase II evaluation.

NEED FOR A DRUG COURTS FRAMEWORK FOR EVALUATION

Today approximately 500 drug court programs are operational nationwide. These

programs differ in terms of target populations, treatment programs, drug testing regimes, sanctions imposed, etc. And because drug courts differ on these dimensions,

it is important to know whether particular drug court characteristics are more or

less effective than others. Despite ongoing surveys of drug program characteristics

conducted by the American University, the development of the ‘‘key drug court elements’’ (Drug Court Program Office), and a working typology of drug courts for research purposes developed by Dr. John Goldkamp, we argue that drug court research currently has no unifying perspective regarding the structural and process

characteristics of drug courts that can be used to link drug court components with

outcomes. We propose a framework to assist researchers in this effort.

Building on previous work in the field, our analysis of the 14 courts and their operating environments results in a framework with five dimensions: leverage, population severity, intensity, predictability, and rehabilitation emphasis. The first two

dimensions are structural characteristics of drug court. The other three dimensions

are process characteristics. They describe what happens to participants as they proceed through the drug court program.

Leverage refers to the nature of consequences faced by incoming participants if

they later fail to meet program requirements and are discharged from drug court.

Thus leverage depends, perhaps heavily, on the court’s entry point—pre-plea, postplea, or probation. In pre-plea or deferred prosecution courts, entry to the program

occurs before an offender is required to enter a plea. Upon completion of all program

requirements, the charge is reduced or dropped. Pre-plea courts may have limited

leverage because participants have not pleaded guilty and may have no sentence

pending. Moreover, after pre-plea participants are discharged for noncompliance, the

case may be too ‘‘cold’’ to reopen. In post-plea or deferred judgment courts, however,

entry to the program occurs only after an offender pleads guilty. Upon program completion, the plea can be stricken and the case dismissed. But if an offender fails the

program, his/her case moves directly to sentencing and possible incarceration. Thus

the stakes are high, and leverage strong, in a post-plea drug court.

Population severity refers to characteristics of offenders deemed eligible to enter

drug court. This dimension is based on a distinction between drug courts set up to

target a hardcore population of addicted and persistent offenders (one extreme) and

drug courts dealing with lightweight offenders, whose offense history is short and

relatively minor and whose drug use is ‘‘recreational’’ (the other extreme). The latter

may be routed to drug court not so much because they need intensive treatment/

supervision but because the local criminal justice system views the drug court as

a welcome new resource for processing cases. This possibility is perhaps most apparent when the target population is first-time or lightweight offenders, system reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00164 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
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sources are stretched thin, and prosecutors are using the drug court essentially as

a way to move cases through the system. Of course many drug court populations

fall between the high- to low-severity extremes. Because eligibility for drug court

and, more importantly, the participants’ likelihood of success may depend on lifetime patterns of drug use and crime as well as on the instant offense, we believe

that both current and lifetime indicators of misconduct should be used in gauging

population severity.

Intensity refers to requirements for participating in and completing drug court.

These always include urine testing, court appearances, and drug abuse treatment.

Other obligations may be imposed as well, such as employment, suitable housing,

completion of a G.E.D., and payment of fines or restitution. It is important to note

that intensity does not refer to requirements actually met by the participant. That

is affected by self-selection. Neither does intensity refer to what happens to the noncompliant participant. That too is affected by self-selection in a sense; additional requirements are triggered by actions of the participant. Instead, we focus on a dimension of drug court itself: what participants understand to be the minimum requirements for program completion.

Predictability reflects the degree to which participants believe their behavior will

be detected by the court, and know with high probability how the court will respond

to their behavior. For example, courts with less variability in their response to each

positive drug test are more predictable; participants are more likely to know what

will probably happen to them if they test positive one, twice, and so on.

The final dimension in our framework is the emphasis placed on rehabilitation as

against other court functions, including case processing and punishment. This dimension takes on particular significance in light of legal philosophies known as restorative justice and therapeutic jurisprudence, in which criminal justice is viewed

more as a therapeutic tool and less as a formalistic and essentially punitive one.

To a greater or lesser degree, most drug courts reflect these philosophies.

Our hypotheses regarding the linkage between these dimensions and outcomes for

drug court are straightforward. Those programs that exert more leverage over their

participants, target offenders with less severe problems, provide intensive services,

are more predictable in their rewards and sanctions and provide a more rehabilitative focus should show more favorable outcomes. Additionally, our framework provides a wide range of indicators, currently collected in the field, for each dimension.

EVALUABILITY OF 14 PROGRAM SITES

Our Phase I was designed to assess each of the 14 participating jurisdictions to

determine whether they could support solid evaluation. In other words, can we compare outcomes for drug court participants with outcomes of similar offenders who

did not participate in the program? Does the program routinely gather information

on drug court participation, treatment, sanctions, and outcomes? Are these data recorded in a consistent and accessible fashion? To answer these questions, researchers made site visits to each of the 14 programs, interviewed staff and judges, observed drug court programs, visited treatment programs, and gathered information

on data management information systems.

Ideally, each drug court would have been able to meet the requirements of process

and outcome collection specified in the DCPO ‘‘Program Guidelines and Application

Information.’’ These include the collection of information on drug court participants

(and to the fullest extent, non-participants) including: demographic characteristics,

substance abuse history, vocational and educational status; mental health history,

criminal justice history, treatment needs, etc.; measures of program implementation

and process, including program intervention receive, participation in treatment (including motivation and actual attendance records for each program component), status at completion of drug court, service needs at discharge from program, etc. Programs were strongly urged to design, implement and maintain an automated database for recording these variables.

In addition, programs were alerted to the requirements of a national evaluation.

Drug court programs were instructed to anticipate providing the following additional information for an national evaluator: substances abuse treatment and support services completion rates, counselor ratings of extent of participant attendance

and engagement in treatment, program components and improvement over time in

life skills acquisition, psychological and emotional functioning, educational and employment status, participant satisfaction with the treatment program, reports of

substance abuse, results of urinalysis, data and nature of violations and arrests,

positive social adjustment, and counselor ratings and extent of participant attendance and engagement in aftercare components and referrals services following completion of the drug court program.

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Our site visits revealed that programs staff were unaware of the federal requirements to collect the data for evaluation—original grant writers did not share application requirements with program staff. Site visits and analyses revealed that none

of the 14 programs has gathered the full range of measures specified by DCPO in

a single database for both the drug court and a comparison group of offenders. This

is not to say that sites were uninterested in gathering information or in evaluation

or their drug courts. To the contrary, all were keenly interested in determining

whether or not their programs were effective. However, it appears that a great deal

of staff time is devoted to the day-to-day operations, coordination among agencies,

provision of services, etc., leaving little time for staff to develop database systems

and record a vast array of measures for participants. In addition, program staff

often do not have the training or backgrounds in research and must contract out

the work to outside evaluators.

Looking across programs, we found that in several sites, no local evaluation of the

program had been conducted; in half the sites, no MIS system recorded the required

data elements—records were maintained solely on paper. In terms of classic process

and outcomes studies, most sites could offer the following types of data using quasiexperimental evaluation designs that could only be accomplished with fairly intensive data collection effort: • Background characteristics. Often computerized, sometimes paper and pencil

screening and/or treatment files provide these characteristics for drug court participants; generally less complete paper and pencil data would be available for comparison groups.

• Process data. Urinalysis results are generally available and often computerized

(particularly if TASC is part of the team); services received are computerized in

about half the sites. In many sites, detailed information about treatment participation and activities would need to be gathered from individual treatment program

files—not necessarily kept by the drug court itself.

For process measures, virtually all information currently available is official

record; no data on participant’s self-reported satisfaction, perceptions or other behaviors are available; information on counselor perceptions is also not available. In

general self-reported process variables would need to be collected by external evaluators—they are not being collected by the sites. These measures are necessary for

testing theoretical hypotheses about why the drug courts may be effective. Without

them, we can’t tell why the drug court did or did not produce the effects it desired.

• Outcome data. All sites are able to report the termination status of drug court

participants, although this is not automated at all sites. The most frequently used

outcomes are officially-recorded recidivism, gathered from criminal history databases or probation files. Remaining drug free, as measured by negative urine tests

is another commonly used outcome measure. Referral to and completion of programs

after drug court termination are not available.

PHASE II PLANS

The original intent for Phase II was to conduct separate outcome evaluations in

each of the 14 sites. However, given the large effort that would be required to conduct such evaluations; the limited amount of routinely collected data, and the real

possibility of noncomparable comparison groups, we have decided this may not be

the best way at the present time to advance the state of knowledge on drug courts’

effectiveness. Rather, we propose to pool existing data from drug court programs to

examine the relationship between program characteristics, participant characteristics and outcomes. Using only drug court program data (not comparison groups since

they are few, often poor and require a great deal of work to construct), we hope to

identify as many data sets as possible from a representatives set of drugs court programs and conduct exploratory analyses to answer a slightly different question. Instead of the question typically asked in a traditional outcome research design—does

a drug court reduce use and crime compared to routine criminal justice processing,

we have turned the question slightly to ‘‘what are the characteristics of drug courts

that seem most able to reduce drug use and crime?’’ With this approach, we can

also test out our framework components of leverage, severity, predictability, intensity and rehabilitation and their relationships to drug court participant outcomes.

To the best of our knowledge the proposed study is the first of its kind in which

data re pooled from a moderate to large number of drug courts across the country

to examine overall effects on drug court outcomes.

CURRENT STATE OF RESEARCH ON DRUG COURTS

Over the past several years, Dr. Steven Belenko has compiled findings from drug

court evaluations. According to his 1999 review, drug courts: • handle serious ofVerDate 11-MAY-2000 01:38 Nov 14, 2001 Jkt 074754 PO 00000 Frm 00166 Fmt 6602 Sfmt 6621 E:\HR\OC\A754.XXX pfrm03 PsN: A754
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fenders with multiple problems, • provide more comprehensive supervision and

monitoring, compared to other treatment programs, • increase treatment retention,

• reduce drug use and criminal behavior while offenders are in drug court • reduce

recidivism following program completion • generate savings in jail costs, especially

for pretrial detention

At the same time, however, we don’t understand very well the impact of specific

drug court components for a number of reasons. First, many evaluations do not use

strong research designs. Few have incorporated random assignment—a design in

which we can be assured that observed differences between drug court participants

and other offenders are the direct result of drug court participation—and not due

to characteristics of the offenders themselves. Rather, quasi-experimental designs

are used in which it may be difficult to parse out effects due to offender characteristics from the drug court program itself.

Second, drug courts as implemented, are a ‘‘package’’ of treatment, sanctions and

incentives, drug treatment, judicial involvement, etc. When we observe a positive

outcome for the court, we have logical inference problem—was it the treatment, was

it the judge, was it the sanctions? Unless research designs do a better job of testing

the impact of individual drug court components, we cannot know for sure how key

elements impact offender outcomes.

Third, the richness of process and outcome measures needs to be improved. Many

studies have used a limited range of ‘‘implementation’’ and ‘‘success’ measures, with

recidivism being the most frequently outcome measure. Knowing two- to three-year

outcome information on not only recidivism, but actual drug use, employment and

job skills, and other psycho-social measures would greatly improve our knowledge

of the impact of drug courts on offender’s lives.

Finally, as indicated earlier, drug court programs themselves do not often have

the ability to conduct ongoing evaluations of their programs. MIS are often not well

developed nor capture consistent data across programs. Program staff are not

trained in evaluation; many programs must rely on assistance from outside researchers to gather both process and outcome measures, often on a ‘‘one-shot’’ effort.

Continuing evaluation is beyond the ability of most programs, given current expertise and resources.

Many of these issues are not unique to drug courts. We face the same constraints

in understanding the effectiveness of many criminal justice innovations, from intensive supervision probation, to universal drug testing and sanctions, to programs for

the mentally ill offender. However, given the widespread adoption of drug courts

across the country and resources devoted to their operation, we must be able to conduct credible evaluations on their impacts to help inform the policy debate about

their place in sentencing and corrections.

[Submissions for the record follow:]

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