Quiero Hablar Con Usted en Espanol,Juez

Abstract

We modified the participant perception survey utilized in the Multi-Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation and administered it to participants at a majority Hispanic drug court in south Texas. Results revealed generally positive perceptions of the judge and various measures of procedural justice. Results also revealed that participants perceived the ability to communicate with the (bilingual) judge in Spanish as important to their success in drug court and that this was true even of those participants who were fluent in English as well as Spanish. Our results generate an important policy consideration for these future courts, namely, the language abilities of the judge. We believe that judges at majority Hispanic drug courts will be most effective when they are bilingual in English and Spanish and we call on drug court planners to consider our findings as they develop new courts to serve this growing population.

Keywords

drug courts Hispanics participant perceptions Spanish

Introduction

In response to the large number of nonviolent drug offenders cycling through the criminal justice system in the 1970s and 1980s, several jurisdictions created drug courts. These drug courts were designed to provide offenders with drug and alcohol treatment in lieu of incarceration or other punishment with the hope that the treatment would result in fewer or no future contacts with the criminal justice system. The first drug court was established in Miami, Florida, in 1989 and they have proliferated since; as of 1999, there were 492 drug courts; as of 2012, there were 2,734 drug courts (National Association of Drug Court Professionals [NADCP], 2012); and as of 2013, there were more than 2,800 drug courts in operation across the United States (National Institute of Justice, 2013). The drug court movement has manifested internationally as well, with other nations including New Zealand, Australia, Jamaica, Bermuda, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and Canada having established similar specialized courts (Mitchell, Wilson, Eggers, & MacKenzie, 2012). Drug courts employ therapeutic jurisprudence, procedural justice, and deterrence in an effort to produce positive outcomes for their participants (Roman, Rossman, & Rempel, 2011).

Eligibility and Daily Operations of Drug Courts

Drug court eligibility varies from one drug court to another; nevertheless, it is more typical than not for a drug court to limit eligibility to drug-dependent, nonviolent offenders. This may be partially explained by the fact that federal funding is restricted to drug courts that emphasize the recruitment of nonviolent offenders who have not been previously charged with or convicted of a serious violent offense; drug courts may also prohibit offenders charged with drug trafficking offenses, three or more felony convictions, and/or who have serious mental health problems from enrolling (Mitchell et al., 2012).

Drug courts may operate as either diversion or post-adjudication programs. Diversion programs enroll eligible offenders in a drug treatment program and dismiss the offenders’ charges once they have successfully graduated from (i.e., completed) the program. Post-adjudication programs, however, defer sentences in exchange for successful completion of the drug treatment program. They retain the authority to reinstate the initial sentence if an offender fails to comply with the program’s conditions. In both diversion and post-adjudication drug courts, eligible offenders are offered an opportunity to participate. If they agree to enroll, drug court staff develop a treatment plan by which the participant is to abide; treatment plans typically focus on drug use as well as housing, employment, and educational needs, among others. Court staff then engage in frequent monitoring of drug court participants, most notably in the form of drug testing. Another component of the drug treatment program, and perhaps the most vital, are the periodic status hearings drug court participants have with the drug court judge. These hearings give the opportunity for participants to receive verbal praise and incentives for compliance. Noncompliance with court requirements, certainly including positive drug tests, can result in sanctions, which are issued by the judge and then carried out in an effort to punish noncompliance and encourage future compliance. As noted, failure to comply with court requirements may result in removal from the drug court and return to traditional criminal court, whereas compliance with court requirements can result in successful completion and deferred charges (Gottfredson, Najaka, & Kearley, 2003).

Research on Drug Courts

These relatively recent additions to the criminal justice system have drawn researchers’ attention. Research during the first decade of drug courts’ existence highlighted retention in drug court programs as an important indicator of eventual success in the drug court. For example, studies in the 1990s found that participating in drug court treatment for 90 days to 1 year strongly predicted lower post-participation drug use and criminal reoffending (Anglin, Brecht, & Maddahian, 1989; DeLeon, 1988; Taxman, 1998; Taxman, Kubu, & DeStefano, 1999). Belenko (1998) estimated that drug treatment programs produced a substantially high 1-year retention rate of about 60% nationally. Such a high retention rate may be the direct result of legal coercion by the court system, which readily threatens return to traditional court and possible incarceration for those who are unsuccessful in the drug court. Nevertheless, studies have confirmed that greater legal coercion into the drug court leads to improved short-term, as well as long-term treatment outcomes (DeLeon, 1988; Hiller, Knight, Broome, & Simpson, 1998; Young & Belenko, 2002).

A large number of studies have found that drug courts are effective at reducing recidivism for participants (Finigan, 1998; Goldkamp & Weiland, 1993; Gottfredson & Exum, 2002; Harrell & Roman, 2001; Jameson & Peterson, 1995; Peters & Murrin, 2000; Wilson, Mitchell, & Mackenzie, 2006). As studies on drug courts’ effectiveness proliferated, meta-analyses began to appear in the literature. Both narrative literature reviews (Belenko, 1998, 1999, 2001; J. Roman & DeStefano, 2004) and those using formal meta-analytic techniques (Mitchell et al., 2012; Schaffer, 2006; U.S. Government Accountability Office, 2005; Wilson et al., 2006) revealed a reduction in recidivism for drug court participants. Similarly, statewide evaluations conducted in Indiana (Wiest et al., 2007), California (Carey, Crumpton, Finigan, Waller, & Byrne, 2005), and Washington (Aos, Phipps, Barnoski, & Lieb, 2001) revealed that a majority of drug courts in those states were effective at reducing recidivism for participants. Studies of the Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court (BCDTC) are particularly noteworthy, as they have included a well-designed and implemented randomized trial. Results indicated that there was a significant reduction in rearrests for those participants randomly assigned to drug court 1 year (Gottfredson & Exum, 2002), 2 years (Gottfredson et al., 2003), and 3 years (Gottfredson, Najaka, Kearley, & Rocha, 2006) after participation as compared with a similar group that went through traditional court.

Research on drug courts has focused on areas other than recidivism. An early study of the Maricopa County drug court found no difference in the number of positive drug tests for drug court participants and a comparison group (Deschenes, Turner, & Greenwood, 1995). Later studies revealed more positive impacts. Harrell, Cavanagh, and Roman (1999) found that those assigned to a program similar to a drug court had significantly fewer positive drug tests than those on the traditional court docket. Brewster (2001) found that drug court participants had lower rates of positive drug and alcohol tests than a comparable group on probation. Harrell, Roman, and Sack (2001) found that drug court participants self-reported significantly lower rates of drug and alcohol use at a 1-year follow-up. A more recent study by Rossman, Green, Rempel, and Downey (2011) that utilized both self-reports of drug and alcohol use and oral fluid swabs found that drug courts were effective at reducing substance abuse for participants at 6 and 18 months.

Finally, a number of studies have focused on participants’ perceptions of the drug court. Senjo and Leip (2001b) found that positive comments made by the judge and directed at participants were associated with negative drug and alcohol tests for those participants. Senjo and Leip (2001a) also found that more supportive comments from the judge were associated with successful completion of the drug court. Henry (2011) conducted a survey of 877 drug court participants at 23 different sites at baseline, 6 months, and 18 months of enrollment to gauge their perceptions of procedural justice (i.e., the perceived fairness of the adjudication process), distributive justice (i.e., the perceived fairness of the final case outcome), legal coercion (i.e., consequences of program failure), and threat of sanctions (i.e., the perceived consequences of noncompliance). She found that greater perceptions of procedural and distributive justice were significantly correlated with more compliance and less recurrent incidents of criminal behavior and drug use at follow-ups.

The effectiveness of drug courts at reducing both recidivism and drug involvement is well documented in the literature, though the universality of that effectiveness has been questioned. For example, some research has found that drug courts are unlikely to produce a reduction in recidivism (McKean & Warren-Gordon, 2011; Rempel & Green, 2011) or in drug and alcohol use (Rossman et al., 2011) for African Americans offenders; Dannerbeck, Harris, Sundet, and Lloyd (2006) found that African Americans were less likely to graduate from drug court than participants of other races. There appears to be even less research on the effectiveness of drug courts for Hispanic participants, though both Oberg (1996) and Rempel and DeStefano (2001) found that being Hispanic was associated with unsuccessful completion of the drug court process. Moreover, there appears to be no research on Hispanics’ perceptions of the drug court. The present study aims to overcome this void in the literature and provide policy considerations that stem from our findings for Hispanic drug court participants, particularly for those in drug courts that have a majority of Hispanic participants.

The Current Drug Court

The drug court in this study is located in south Texas on the border between the United States and Mexico. It was founded in 2009 and is one of two active specialty courts in the county; the other is a sobriety treatment court that accepts driving under the influence/driving while intoxicated (DUI/DWI) offenders only. The drug court offers both a pre-plea and post-plea path of entry, with the post-plea option typically offered to eligible offenders on probation. Participants’ compliance with their treatment plans are monitored by drug court staff, including case managers and drug court administrators. Drug tests are employed frequently and randomly using a changing color code system. In addition, participants have frequent status hearings with the judge in which they interact directly with him; weekly status hearings are required for at least the first 4 months of enrollment. Those who comply with drug court requirements receive praise from the judge as well as incentives for continued compliance, whereas those who are noncompliant, including those who test positive for drugs, receive increasingly harsh sanctions up to and including termination from drug court. There are about 90 active participants at this drug court who averaged 8.5 arrests in the adult lifetime prior to their enrollment. Since its inception, about 70 participants have successfully graduated from this drug court. Eight of these successful graduates have reoffended since graduation, most with minor offenses. Fifty-one participants have been removed from this drug court since its inception for new offenses, for ongoing noncompliance or for absconding. Participants in this court are young (85% are below the age of 34), Hispanic (96% of participants) males (85% of participants) whose criminal histories are comprised mostly of nonviolent drug-related charges and for whom the most common drugs of choice are heroin followed by cocaine. The judge in this drug court is bilingual in English and Spanish, as are 92% of those residing in the county where the drug court is located (U.S. Census, 2010).

Method

We began our investigation of the drug court in this study by observing drug court sessions. We believed that this would be a useful starting point to refine questions that could be answered with empirical investigations. We made six observations of drug court sessions between 2011 and 2012, and one of the most notable aspects of our observations across all six sessions was the interactions between drug court participants and the judge, which occurred in both English and Spanish; as noted above, both the judge in this drug court and more than 90% of people in the county where it is located are bilingual. Typically, the drug court judge would begin an interaction with a participant in English, then switch to Spanish if the participant responded in Spanish, though we did observe the judge initiating interactions in Spanish; a later in-depth interview with the drug court judge revealed that the judge learned, over the course of frequent interactions with participants, which participants preferred to interact in Spanish and he would accommodate that preference. We observed that approximately 30% to 40% of interactions between participants and the judge at this drug court contained at least some Spanish.

We believed that the ability to interact with the drug court judge in Spanish when desired could affect participants’ perceptions of the drug court experience. In addition, there is virtually no research on Hispanic drug court participants, save that mentioned above, and none that we could find on how Hispanic drug court participants perceive the court experience. With that in mind, we used a modified version of the survey Henry (2011) describes as part of the Multi-Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation (MADCE). As noted above, that survey was designed to measure perceptions of procedural justice, distributive justice, the consequences of program failure and interim sanctions. Procedural justice was subdivided into three areas of inquiry: the case manager, the judge, and the court experience; the latter was further subdivided into items about voice in the drug court process, understanding of the drug court process, neutral treatment in the drug court and treatment with dignity and respect in the drug court process. The MADCE survey was administered to 877 participants at 23 different drug courts at baseline, 6 months, and 18 months of enrollment. In addition, the MADCE survey measured a number of outcomes, including compliance with the drug court program, criminal behavior, and drug use, in the 12 months prior to the 18-month administration of the survey to predict what perceptions were associated with what outcomes.

We modified the MADCE survey to accommodate our research question in several ways. We eliminated the case manager scale, as we wanted our survey to focus directly on what we had observed, namely, interactions between the judge and participants. Toward that end, we added a question to the judge scale on whether the judge speaks Spanish with respondents when desired to capture the importance to participants of what we had observed in the courtroom. We added a question about consistency to both the judge and court experience scales. Due to major administrative changes at the drug court that forestalled some of our research there, we were unable to conduct the survey longitudinally; for this reason, we were unable to collect outcome data in the same manner as Henry (2011). We added a helpfulness of services scale to determine which of the services offered by the drug court were perceived as most helpful to participants; items in this scale were derived from our observations of drug court sessions and our interview with the drug court judge. The helpfulness of services scale also gave us a second opportunity to inquire about the utility of speaking Spanish with the judge, this time in the context of services provided to participants. We added a question to the consequences of program failure on the likelihood that drug use would be detected in the first place. Finally, we added open-ended questions on the best and worst aspects of drug court in case our previous, closed-ended questions had failed to capture what participants perceived as most and least useful. Our modifications to the survey used in the MADCE had two major benefits, namely, it allowed us to add items relevant to our research question, and it permitted us to compare our results with those from the MADCE.

Importantly, we created both an English and a Spanish version of the survey, so that participants could complete the survey in their preferred language. The English version of our survey appears in full in the appendix. We provided the English and Spanish versions of the survey to the drug court administrator in late 2012 and requested that she encourage participants to complete the survey. The drug court administrator did ask participants to complete the survey during their visits to her office, and she assured them of the confidential and voluntary nature of the research by emphasizing that participants’ responses would only be seen by the researchers and not by drug court staff, that choosing to complete the survey would bring no benefit in drug court, and that choosing not to complete the survey would bring no detriment in drug court. We collected the completed surveys from the drug court administrator in early 2013.

Results

Thirty-two of the 91 participants enrolled in the drug court in late 2012 and early 2013 completed the survey for a response rate of 35%. The average age of survey respondents was 26.6 years with a standard deviation of 8.3 years and a range of 19 to 54 years. Twenty-eight (87.5%) respondents were male and four (12.5%) were female. All respondents were Hispanic. A public order charge, typically drug possession, brought 22 (68.8%) survey respondents into drug court, while seven (21.9%) had a property crime charge bring them into drug court; one survey was missing this information. Nine survey respondents (28.1%) reported heroin as their drug of choice, eight (25%) reported cocaine as their drug of choice, 10 (31.3%) reported marijuana as their drug of choice, two (6.3%) reported prescription drugs as their drug of choice, and two (6.3%) reported multiple drugs as their drugs of choice; one survey was missing this information. The average length of enrollment in drug court of survey respondents was 10.6 months with a standard deviation of 9.42 months and a range of 0.5 to 36 months. Twenty-nine (90.6%) survey respondents completed an English survey and three (9.4%) completed a Spanish survey.

To put our overall survey results in context, we compared them with those from Henry’s (2011) survey completed as part of the MADCE. As noted above, the MADCE participant perception survey was administered at baseline, 6 months, and 18 months of enrollment. Because the average length of enrollment of our respondents was 10.6 months, we believed that the most relevant comparison between our data and that from the MADCE participant perception survey was the 6-month administration of that survey. Table 1 reveals the comparison between our survey results and those from the MADCE at the 6-month mark on the judge scale, the procedural justice subscales, the distributive justice scale, and sanctions scales. It is clear from just a cursory glance at the comparison that survey respondents at the drug court in this study perceived the court similarly and similarly positively to MADCE survey respondents. In fact, respondents at the drug court in this study had more positive perceptions of all aspects of the drug court as compared with MADCE survey respondents, except for dignity and respect.

Table 1.

Comparison of Our Survey and the MADCE Survey at the 6-Month Administration.

Scales	Our survey	MADCE survey (6-month administration)
Judge (combined item index)	4.27	4.11
Voice (combined item index)	3.37	3.36
Understanding (combined item index)	4.41	4.21
Neutrality (combined item index)	3.84	3.77
Dignity/respect (combined item index)	3.19	3.94
Fairness of outcome^a	4.47	3.27
Certainty of detection^b	3.00	N/A
Certainty of sanctions^b	3.66	2.95
Any sanction was a surprise	34% yes	30% yes

Note. Except where noted, all items are on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is the most negative and 5 is the most positive perception. MADCE = Multi-Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation. N/A = not applicable.

On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is not fair at all and 5 is very fair.

On a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is highly unlikely and 5 is highly likely.

We also disaggregated our results by each item on both the judge and procedural justice scales. Table 2 displays survey responses to items about the judge and the various aspects of procedural justice at the drug court in this study. The responses are means on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is strongly disagree and 5 is strongly agree. Table 2 reveals that survey respondents have generally positive perceptions of the drug court judge and of the various aspects of procedural justice manifested in the drug court process. All items that are indicative of a positive experience with the judge were rated at least an average of 4 (agree) on the Likert-type scale. Note that the item “Speaks Spanish with you when you want/need to” is one of the most highly rated items on this scale, with only two other items rated higher. Note also the relatively high rating on the consistency item on the judge scale. Similarly, many items indicative of the manifestation of procedural justice in the drug court were highly rated by respondents, with the exception of influence and control over drug court sessions and equal treatment in the drug court; all three of these items had ratings less than 4, as did the consistency item.

Table 2.

Drug Court Participants’ Attitudes About and Perceptions of the Judge and Aspects of Procedural Justice.

The judge . . .	M response	Procedural justice	M response
Is knowledgeable about your case	4.26	You are able to express your views in the drug court sessions (V)	4.25
Knows you by name	4.16	You are too intimidated or scared to express your views in drug court (V)	2.13
Helps you succeed	4.38	You have influence over what is decided in drug court (V)	3.47
Emphasizes the importance of drug treatment	4.53	You have enough control over the way things go in drug court (V)	3.63
Is intimidating and unapproachable	2.41	You understand what happens during drug court (U)	4.41
Remembers your situations and needs from session to session	4.09	You understand what your rights are during drug court (U)	4.41
Gives you a chance to tell your side of the story	4.53	You feel the people who did the same things as you were treated the same way in drug court (N)	3.84
Can be trusted to treat you fairly	4.50	You feel pushed around during drug court (D/R)	2.09
Treats you with respect	4.66	You are treated unfairly by the drug court (D/R)	1.87
Communicates with you clearly	4.66	People in drug court are polite to you (D/R)	4.28
Speaks Spanish with you when you want/need to	4.56	You are treated with respect in drug court (D/R)	4.53
Listens and takes into account your input	4.53	You feel the same way about these things now as you did when you first enrolled in the drug court (C)	3.35
Is consistent with you over time	4.29

Note. V = voice; U = understanding; N = neutrality; D/R = dignity/respect; C = consistency.

As noted above, we added a helpfulness of services scale to our survey to determine which services respondents perceived as most and least helpful. Table 3 displays survey responses to items about the helpfulness of various services. The responses are means on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is very unhelpful, 5 is neither helpful nor unhelpful, and 10 is very helpful. The service perceived as most helpful in respondents’ success was support from friends and family. Strong attachment to family is emphasized in Hispanic culture (Allen, Svetaz, Hardeman, & Resnick, 2008; Desmond & Lopez Turley, 2009), so the importance of family support is unsurprising. The services offered by the drug court that were perceived as most helpful to respondents’ success were random drug tests and incentives for compliance with court requirements. Note that “Being able to speak Spanish with the judge” is rated 8 out of the 13 services on the scale. The services respondents rated as least helpful to their success in drug court were inpatient treatment, assistance with housing, education and employment and finally, sanctions.

Table 3.

Drug Court Participants’ Perceptions of the Helpfulness of Services.

How helpful to your success in the drug court is the following?	M response
Random drug tests	9.00
Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous (AA/NA) meetings	8.68
Individual counseling	8.72
Group counseling	8.47
Inpatient treatment	7.00
Housing, job and education assistance	7.48
Contact with your case manager	8.84
Interactions with the judge	8.90
Being able to speak Spanish with the judge	8.53
Seeing other participants in drug court sessions	8.69
Incentives	9.00
Sanctions	7.90
Support from family and friends	9.38

Discussion

As seen in Table 1, it appears that the Hispanic respondents in the drug court in this study have similar and similarly positive perceptions of the drug court as the MADCE survey respondents. Although we were unable to measure legal and substance use outcomes for the reasons noted above, it is reasonable that positive perceptions of the drug court found in our survey would be associated with increased compliance with court requirements and reduced criminal activity and drug use for our respondents. These findings are consistent with drug courts as settings that employ therapeutic jurisprudence as well as with the burgeoning area of positive criminology. As implied in the name, positive criminology focuses on those factors which result in desistance from criminal behavior (Ronel & Elisha, 2011). Drug courts that cultivate a fair, neutral, and respectful experience and those with judges who manifest these values can improve outcomes for participants at all types of drug courts with all types of participants.

However, when we disaggregate results and examine each of the items on the judge and procedural justice scales (Table 2) and when we examine the helpfulness of the different services offered by the drug court (Table 3), a more nuanced picture begins to emerge for the drug court in this study; we believe that this picture provides useful policy considerations for drug courts with a majority Hispanic population. As noted above, the drug court in this study is 96% Hispanic (all survey respondents were Hispanic), and it is located in a county where 92% of the population is bilingual in English and Spanish; when we observed drug court sessions, we saw the judge and participants interact directly in both English and Spanish. On the judge scale, the item rated third highest was the ability to speak Spanish with the judge when desired or necessary. Twenty-two of the 32 respondents (69%) rated this item 5 (strongly agree) and only 2 of the 22 ratings of 5 came from Spanish language surveys. This indicates that the ability of the judge to communicate in Spanish is important to those participants who are fluent in English as well. On the list of services that respondents believe are helpful to their success in drug court, being able to speak Spanish with the judge is rated 8 out of the 13 services, though there is less than a one-point difference between this service and the most highly rated one (support from family and friends) and less than half a point difference between this service and the most highly rated services that are offered by the drug court itself (random drug tests and incentives). Twenty of the 32 respondents (63%) rated this item 10 (very helpful) and only 2 of the 20 ratings of 10 came from Spanish language surveys. This indicates that participants, even ones who are fluent in English, see the ability to speak Spanish directly with the judge as helpful to their success in drug court. Whether the ability to interact directly with the drug court judge in English and Spanish is placed in the context of the judge’s abilities or in the context of a helpful service, respondents at this drug court perceive it as important and helpful to their success. Other research has borne out the importance of direct communication with the judge to participants’ success (Roman, Yahner, & Zweig, 2011; Senjo & Leip, 2001a). What we have uncovered here, that Hispanic participants at majority Hispanic drug courts perceive the ability to directly communicate with the judge in both English and Spanish as important to their success in drug court, extends the earlier findings and adds an important new ethnic and linguistic dimension to them.

Limitations

While we do believe in the importance and the utility of these findings, we are cognizant of the limitations of the present study. The first of these limitations is small sample size. Small sample size can jeopardize both the reliability and generalizability of survey research results. The 32 respondents to our survey are but a small fraction of the 877 in Henry’s (2011) survey of participant perceptions as a part of the MADCE. It is an especially small total considering that we asked the drug court administrator to request that participants complete the survey. Drug court participants may view the administrator as their advocate or as a gatekeeper for necessary or desired services, and we were hopeful that being asked by her—someone the participants know and presumably like and trust—rather than us to complete the survey would have yielded a higher response rate. We believe that the aforementioned major administrative changes taking place at the drug court during the survey administration are partially to blame for the low response rate. Although drug court staff were (and are) enthusiastic about our investigation, the survey portion of our investigation happened at a rather inopportune time for the staff there. While our current 35% response rate is well within the range reported by Baruch and Holtom (2008) in their meta-analysis of recent survey research in the behavioral sciences, the reliability and especially the generalizability of our results would have been improved by administering the survey at a time more convenient for drug court staff or over a longer period of time and obtaining a higher response rate.

The second of these limitations is selection bias. Selection bias is a perennial risk of survey research, wherein those who feel strongly about expressing their opinions complete a survey, skewing the results and again jeopardizing reliability and generalizability of results. Our mode of administration wherein we asked the drug court administrator to provide surveys to participants and request their completion had the potential to introduce serious selection bias. Participants may have viewed survey completion and moreover, providing positive perceptions of the drug court as a way to gain favor with drug court staff or other benefits in conjunction with their enrollment. As noted above, the drug court administrator was careful to explain the confidential and voluntary nature of the survey research in an effort to reduce selection bias, emphasizing that only researchers would see the completed surveys and there would be no benefit or detriment for survey completion or noncompletion, respectively. Furthermore, we believe the responses to our open-ended survey questions about drug court indicate that the participants who did respond felt free to express both the best and worst things about drug court with minimal if any concern about potentially positive or negative consequences of their responses. Twenty-eight of the 32 respondents commented on the best thing about drug court; these comments included “It helps me get sober,” “The support, the praise,” “They listen to me, treat me with respect,” “Being around others in the same situation,” and “It is better than jail.” Twenty-seven of the 32 respondents also commented on the worst thing about drug court; these comments included “Too many groups and classes to attend, I cannot work very much,” “Sanctions, including jail,” “Rehab” and “Losing my freedom.” Although we believe that emphasis of the voluntary and confidential nature of the survey was important safeguard against selection bias, we acknowledge that a different mode of administration, namely, direct administration of the survey by us rather than through the drug court administrator, may have better eliminated selection bias.

Policy Considerations

These findings yield two principal policy considerations. The first of these policy considerations applies directly to those drug courts with a majority Hispanic population, including the court at which the present study was conducted, at least one other drug court in south Texas and at least three courts in California (Carey et al., 2005). We believe that these courts are ripe for further investigation of the importance of direct communication with the judge in English and Spanish as a potential best practice for participants in majority Hispanic drug courts. These courts are also ideal settings to uncover other best practices for participants in majority Hispanic drug courts. As noted above, earlier findings (Oberg, 1996; Rempel & DeStefano, 2001) indicate that being Hispanic is associated with unsuccessful completion of drug court, so determining what works for this population in these courts is crucial to facilitate greater success of the participants and of the courts themselves.

The second and perhaps more important policy consideration revealed by our findings applies to those drug courts yet to come into existence. Hispanics are now the largest racial or ethnic minority in the United States, comprising 17% (53 million) of the country’s population. Moreover, nearly three quarters of Hispanics in the United States speak Spanish at home, with half of this group bilingual in English (U.S. Census, 2013). With this growth in the number of Hispanics in the United States, the continued commitment to establishing drug courts as noted above and the recently published drug court best practices that include provision of opportunities to participate in drug court to disadvantaged groups (NADCP, 2013), it is reasonable to expect that more majority Hispanic drug courts will be created in the near future. Our findings indicate that when these courts are created, careful consideration must be given to the language abilities of the judge. Even when participants in these future drug courts are fluent in English, they may want or need to speak Spanish with the judge on occasion and, consistent with both therapeutic jurisprudence and especially with positive criminology and its focus on cultural sensitivity, the judges at these courts will be most effective when they are bilingual in English and Spanish. We call on drug court planners to take into account the importance of a bilingual judge at future majority Hispanic drug courts.

Footnotes

Appendix

Acknowledgements

We are tremendously grateful to the staff and participants at the drug court where this research was conducted. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of a previous version of this article for their insightful and helpful suggestions for changes and improvements.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received an internal grant from Texas A&M International Univeristy in support of this research.

Author Biographies

Kelly Frailing is an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminal justice program director at Texas A&M International University in Laredo. Her research interests innclude specialty courts, reducing students’ bias against offenders with mental illness and applying criminological theories to crime in short and long term wake of disaster.

Diana Carreon is a visiting instructor of criminal justice at Texas A&M International University in Laredo. Her research interests include federal level law enforcement initiatives’ impact on southern border security as well as border security measures and their impact on fear of crime.

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