Abstract
This book emerges at a time when the effectiveness of criminal justice interventions for treating drug-related offending is increasingly subject to research and debate. Drug courts have grown in popularity since their inception in 1989 as an alternative to traditional sentencing methods, diverting people toward multi-professional interventions to treat drug-related needs alongside a range of sanctions and rewards. In this edited collection, Drug Courts and the Criminal Justice System, Koetzle and Listwan bring together a wide range of empirical evidence and theoretical perspectives, making a useful contribution to the literature. The editors and authors offer a detailed examination of drug court dynamics, illuminating component parts, relationships, therapeutic approaches, and evaluation frameworks.
In the opening chapter, Koetzle and Listwan assert that while some drug courts remain true to the original model, others have become diluted; leading to variation in practice across contexts. The aim of the book is to create a practical evaluative framework that can standardize drug court practice. While some of the book’s chapters introduce concepts, others deconstruct the concepts themselves, offering a unique contribution to knowledge that is likely to be of interest to decision-makers, academics and practitioners alike. For example, in Chapter 3, Senjo introduces the theoretical premise of therapeutic jurisprudence, highlighting that the relationship between the drug court judge and the participant is pivotal. By Chapter 6, Marlowe deconstructs this and uses empirical evidence to suggest that how the role is enacted depends upon the character of the court, the judge’s personality, and the needs of the participant. He explores directive and non-directive approaches, where judges shift between a symbolic use of power in some circumstances, and a benevolent parental role in others, thereby oscillating between authority, power, inspiration, and hope.
Van Wormer and Lutze’s chapter explore the barriers to effective multi-professional collaborative teamwork. The chapter seeks to “lift the curtain” on team dynamics, highlighting that where team working presents significant challenges, collaboration can become tokenistic. Multi-agency teamwork is often cited as the corner-stone of effective drug court practice, making this chapter an important resource for practitioners. The chapter may helpfully provide “trouble-shooting” support to teams that have become “stuck” and are no longer collaborating effectively.
Throughout the book, the problem of drug use is associated with criminal behavior; the book explicitly aims to tackle the challenges that “substance-abusing criminal offenders” present to criminal justice systems. By contrast, a large body of evidence suggests that drug use should be reconceptualized as a chronic, relapsing health condition, rather than a matter of criminality (e.g. Pūras and Hannah, 2017; Stevens, 2010). It is widely acknowledged that drug use is often a symptom of a vast range of complex underlying issues ranging from childhood abuse and neglect to social isolation, physical health conditions, economic deprivation, and/or mental health issues (Csete et al., 2016). Drug Courts and the Criminal Justice System could have been improved by engaging with this literature and expanding its remit beyond criminality, control, and reoffending risks. This may have enabled an exploration of how drug court teams can work together to meet support needs that sit beneath participant’s drug use, to build foundations for sustainable harm reduction and improved lives. Instead, all chapters focus on the challenge that people who use drugs present to the criminal justice system, reflecting a particular ontological lens, embodied in symbolic language that may be unpalatable to some readers.
Constituting drug use as criminal behavior and/or deviance limits the scope of the solutions posed within the book. For example, in Chapter 10, Harbinson and Koetzle suggest that the best way to increase Drug Court effectiveness is to match “offender” need to the level of service provided, using actuarial assessment tools such as Risk-Needs-Responsivity and Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R). These actuarial assessments use metrics such as unemployment, relationships, family problems, and substance use as indicators of reoffending risk. Those deemed high-risk will, in theory, be given a higher intensity of intervention. This assessment approach focuses on criminogenic needs, rather than health and/or psychosocial needs. Those with dependent drug use are likely to score high on such ‘criminogenic factors,’ leading to high-intensity interventions with regular supervision schedules that may be unattainable for people in early recovery from dependent drug use. As approaches in the United Kingdom move toward placing human rights and participation at the center of drug treatment, both within and outside of the criminal justice system, it is difficult to see how the standards and framework advocated in Koetzle and Listwan’s book could be straightforwardly applied, leading to questions over the international translatability of some of the book’s chapters. Indeed, while some chapters are relevant across all contexts, some are contextually situated in the American court system, and cannot be considered internationally applicable.
Despite concerns over the cross-cultural/cross-national applicability of some chapters, this book provides a very detailed exploration of drug courts, with in-depth evidence from a vast range of sources, making it a very interesting and engaging read, likely to be of interest to a wide audience.