Organizational Interpretations of Drug Test Results

The U.S. courts consistently have upheld the constitutionality of laws regarding mandatory drug testing policies in the workplace and schools; these policies were designed to detect individuals' drug use that could compromise public safety. Yet looking at the uses of drug test results in another setting-the justice system-reveals one aspect that goes largely unaddressed in these laws and prior research on drug testing: the organizational context surrounding the administration of drug tests that shapes how their results are understood. In response, this article uses ethnographic methods to analyze the ways that staff at a juvenile drug court in southern California interprets drug test results. The article demonstrates that the staff's understandings of drug testing results involve interactional and institutional processes, dependent upon meanings constructed and situated in local organizational contexts. Mandatory drug testing in America has become an increasingly prevalent way to monitor people's "drug-free" behavior in many facets of everyday life. Institutions now require people to submit to drug testing as a condition of their employment, participation in sports, schooling, public housing, probation, or parole. While seemingly innocuous in intention, drug testing can have quite severe implications, as a failed drug test could lead to a loss of employment, suspension from school, loss of government entitlements (e.g., welfare, housing), revocation of parole or probation status, or in some instances, a termination of parental rights. The increased demand for drug testing is nowhere more evident than in the U.S. justice system, given the huge influx of nonviolent drug users in its jails, courts, and prisons after the passage of strict drug laws and mandatory sentencing policies. Two interesting trends become apparent when considering how the justice system utilizes drug testing to monitor defendants. First, since drug use is seen as a correlate of other criminal and deviant behavior (e.g., aggravated assault, burglary, domestic violence, child neglect), the justice system requires drug testing for a wide swath of defendants, even if they are not being processed for a drug-related offense. Drug tests can be seen as a contemporary intersection of science and law; a positive drug test "proves" people's guilt or criminality, given that they are supposed to abstain from any drug use as part of their court obligations. Courts no longer need defendants to attest to their own compliance; rather, courts can determine their deviance biologically through urine, sweat, or hair. Drug tests, in short, enable courts to see what could not be seen previously about people's deviance. second, under the rubric of "therapeutic jurisprudence" (Corvette 2000; Nolan 2001, 2002; Wexler & Winick 1991), the justice system is diverting more people with drug-related offenses into court-mandated drug treatment programs instead of traditional case processing. The goal of therapeutic jurisprudence, as Steen (2002) suggests, is to engage offenders in the court's moral project of adopting new forms of behavior such as being drug-free to become "productive" citizens. Yet it is often difficult to measure the effectiveness of that legally mandated treatment, especially for drug users (Goldkamp et al. 2001; Fox 1999, 2001; Paik 2006; Weinberg 1996; Wiley 1990). Drug testing becomes the "objective" measure of the defendant's "progress" in drug treatment programs that are varied in intensity and modality. In these settings, drug testing becomes more than simply an intersection of science and law; it can be seen as representing the intersection of science, therapy, and the law. If drug courts rely upon their legal authority to motivate people's engagement in drug treatment programs that are complicated to assess in a standardized manner, then drug tests provide the scientific proxy or bridge that helps drug court staff evaluate people's efforts in those programs. …