Drug Court Research Paper

Why Drug Court?
The purpose of Drug Court is to address addiction/ substance use problems of criminal defendants through an intense supervision treatment program and develop productive, healthy members of society, rather than criminals. Offenders who remain incarcerated may or may not get the help or intervention they need. In many cases, the help they do receive is often limited depending on the facility or jurisdiction they are in. However, more and more correctional facilities are focusing on addiction and substance use and abuse rehabilitation and treatment programs. An excellent example of a program in a correctional facility and something, a tool, that Drug Court uses as a sanction is a program at Henrico County’s Jail East called

The inmates in the RISE program are housed separately from general population. It is a four-phase program that requires 42 days in each phase. The R.I.S.E. program often times plays a role in Henrico’s Drug Court. If a client has not been to the RISE program and are struggling with recovery/ treatment, often the Drug Court team will sanction the client to complete the RISE program, and sometime just the first phase. By sending a client from Drug Court to the RISE program, it separates the client from environmental factors that might have caused a relapse or urge to use. The client has to go to class every day for 12 hours until the program is complete. This also gives the client time to “dry out” before returning to the program. Once the client completes RISE, the client then returns to the Drug Court program and resumes with his/her intense supervision. This may potentially motivate the participant to

The demographics were a mix of age groups from 22 to 55, a mix of African American (41) and Caucasians (15). There were 28 males and 28 females. All of the fifty-six graduates had one or more felony convictions prior to entry into Drug Court. For the purpose of the study that was conducted, recidivism is a conviction of an offense, within three years after entry into Drug Court, which can be punished by incarceration (Hammond & Shaw, 2012, p.3). This study was on graduates who completed the entire program. It was found that twelve out of the fifty-six participants were convicted of new offenses that can be punished by incarceration. The crimes that the participants committed and were convicted of were larceny, possession of narcotics, Driving Under the Influence, Failure to appear, Prostitution, Trespass, Identity Fraud, Driving without Authority, and Driving After Habitual Offender Adjudication. There were no violent offenses or burglary. Only two of the twelve participants were convicted of narcotic offenses. However, it is known the crimes that participants were convicted of are often drug or substance abuse related (Shaw & Hammond, 2012). Again, these numbers indicate participants who completed the entire program. The average number of graduates from the program per year when this study was conducted was fourteen. At any given time, there is anywhere from fifteen to thirty