In an effort to bridge the worlds of research and practice at a critical moment in the life of drug courts, the Center for Court Innovation, working with the U.S. Department of Justice, brought together in November 2003 a select group of state administrators and drug court scholars to discuss a series of important questions: What can researchers tell state officials about drug court operations and impacts? What can’t they tell them that they need to know? Going forward, are there a handful of strategic investments in research that would reap significant dividends for the field as a whole? And how will state leaders know if their efforts to promote statewide drug court reform are successful?
One thing became quickly apparent during the conversation: as in many areas of social policy, researchers and practitioners rarely talk to one another. Indeed, the scholars at the table lamented that research had not played a particularly influential role in shaping drug court policy to date.
Why is that so? There were several reasons cited at the roundtable, but they all spoke generally to a single theme: the cultural divide between research and practice. This divide has several dimensions. One is philosophical: Urban Institute researcher Shelli Rossman summarized this neatly when she observed that “researchers start with the assumption that an intervention does not work and try to disprove it . . . . Practitioners, however, want to start from the position that they’re doing something that they already know works.”
Another dimension is practical: researchers tend to talk to one another, rather than to practitioners whose work they are studying, observed University of Pennsylvania scholar Douglas Marlowe. For Hennepin County, Minnesota Chief Judge Kevin Burke, the issue is the differing reward systems for both professions. While researchers worry about getting papers published, judges worry about getting re-elected and re-appointed.
Although research may not have been integral to drug court development to date, this may soon change. While the first phase of the drug court movement was dominated by individual judicial leaders at the grassroots level and the second phase by drug courts’ success at attracting the attention of decision makers at the federal level, the action seems to be shifting more and more to the state level. All across the country, states are increasingly assuming fiscal and programmatic authority over drug courts. Along with this new authority comes the pressure to document results—and to identify best practices, enforce quality standards and determine eligibility criteria (including whether drug courts should handle higher level offenders). Research can help administrators make better, more informed decisions in all of these areas.
Albeit frustrated by their lack of a voice in drug court policymaking decisions to date, scholars at the roundtable did report widespread consensus in the research community that, when properly implemented, drug courts offer a powerful means for changing the behavior of addicted offenders. As Doug Marlowe said, “There’s no room for debate: the application of certain, swift and appropriately modulated sanctions and rewards improves behavior over time.”
Participants around the table identified the following elements as crucial to successful drug court implementation:
- enrolling addicted offenders into treatment quickly;
- imposing sanctions and rewards swiftly and appropriately;
- bringing high-risk offenders back before the judge regularly;
- creating effective screening mechanisms to identify eligible cases;
- graduating a significant percentage of participants; and
- ensuring that drug court participants feel they are being treated respectfully by the judge and are being listened to in the courtroom.
At the same time, researchers also acknowledged that that there was much still to be learned about what makes drug courts work. “What we know [about drug courts] is very small and what we think we know is much bigger,” said Urban Institute researcher John Roman.
For researchers, the critical question is whether drug court implementation will heed the wisdom of drug court research, or if resource constraints will force administrators to cut corners and thus decrease the effectiveness of the drug court model. For example, roundtable participants raised questions about whether drug courts with heavy caseloads could afford to schedule weekly or bi-weekly judicial status hearings with the high-risk offenders who appear to benefit most from interacting regularly with a judge. In addition to resources, other participants raised concerns about a potential “novelty effect”: the idea that drug courts, like many demonstration projects, will show less positive results over time as the novelty wears off.
Both scholars and practitioners agreed that certain aspects of the drug court model needed improvement. Treatment emerged as a critical area of concern, with several roundtable participants noting that treatment programs in the field were slow to catch up with emerging best practice standards. While University of Maryland researcher Faye Taxman suggested that one obstacle to change was that these new treatment models appear to “threaten practitioner discretion,” other roundtable participants said that drug court judges could help move the process along, arguing (in Doug Marlowe’s words) that “if anyone is going to hold the treatment system accountable, it’s the court system.”
The issue of race also came up a number of times in the discussion, mostly by practitioners looking for guidance with regard to how to work effectively with minority populations. Hennepin County, Minnesota’s chief judge, Kevin Burke, said the key to working with this population was to “build a sense of hope. . . . If there’s anything a judge can do, it’s to convey to a young person that they can be something.” Taxman concurred, pointing out that research showed that young African-American males need “positive reinforce[ment]” from authority figures to succeed. However, Burke also raised concerns about fairness, contending that drug courts needed to be careful not to put excessive pressure on African-American defendants to forego an opportunity to challenge the constitutionality of an arrest in exchange for being offered drug treatment.
This roundtable was part of a series organized by the Center for Court Innovation and the Department of Justice. Previous roundtable events have addressed such topics as the reintegration of drug court graduates into their home communities, mental illness, community justice and due process in problem-solving courts.