Recognizing this, drug courts order participants to begin treatment immediately after their court hearing. For the same reason, supervision and treatment should engage the offender early and often, giving the program and treatment the opportunity to take root. Coordinated, comprehensive supervision. If there are gaps in program supervision, the offender will find and exploit them. Therefore, supervision must be comprehensive and well-coordinated to ensure accountability.
Few offenders enter a court's program with rehabilitation on their minds.
They are in denial and are in a program mostly to beat the system and avoid incarceration. The challenge is to keep them in the program until sobriety and attitudinal changes can occur. This may be difficult to accomplish because drug offenders are often experts at avoiding responsibility, making excuses for their failures, and evading the court and its programs. Drug offenders must be held accountable for their conduct if rehabilitation is to be successful. The links of that fence consist of frequent supervision contacts and drug testing, direct access to full information on the offenders' progress, immediate responses to program failures, and frequent progress report hearings before a single drug court judge and staff.