Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Juvenile Drug Court: Comparisons to Traditional Probation

Background/Purpose:

Juvenile Drug Court (JDC) utilizes a multidisciplinary team approach to provide intense supervision and therapeutic interventions for juvenile offenders with a significant history of substance abuse. Developed under the construct of “therapeutic jurisprudence”, these courts attempt to address the legal concerns of the court while also responding to the needs of the offender, thus leading to more effective outcomes.  Adjudicated youth with a documented history of substance abuse may be referred to JDC, and all adjudicated youth returning successful from a residential substance abuse treatment center are referred to JDC for aftercare services.

Methods:

 This research examined if the The Jefferson County Drug Court (JJDC) intervention had a positive impact on recidivism rates among adjudicated youth.  Participants were selected from records provided by the Jefferson County Juvenile Probation Department and a quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group design was used.  A five-year review of all JJDC clients was completed to measure recidivism rates over time. The comparison group of youth on probation in the same five-year review period was closely matched with the drug court participants on race, gender, age, and initial criminal offense at time of program entry.  An independent-samples t-test compared the means between the two unrelated groups on the same continuous, dependent variable (recidivism score). The t-test was conducted to test the hypothesis- that the drug court youth are less likely to engage in recidivism than probation only youth.  

Results: 

Results of the two-independent samples t-test demonstrated that there is a statistically significant mean difference between the groups, indicating that drug court youth tend to have lower recidivism scores than probation only youth. This same analysis was repeated with youth who had infractions. The results were similar in that both overall and in those youth with infractions, the JDC group had lower recidivism scores.   A logistic regression was conducted to examine the binary success variable.  The only significant predictor was recidivism score. The odds of a youth with lower scores completing either program were .909 less than the odds for a youth with a high score of recidivism.  Results indicate that the recidivism rates of participants in the Juvenile Drug Court were lower than the comparison group, suggesting that the Drug Court intervention was successful.  These findings suggest this JDC is a moderator for recidivism scores in these samples. 

Conclusions / Implications:

JDC offers an effective and highly supervised milieu for youth with a specialized focus on the treatment of substance abuse issues within the restorative justice system.  The findings of this research support the use of JDCs as an effective alternative to the traditional discipline/consequence construct of the juvenile justice system.  Lower recidivism scores can ultimately lead to fewer incarcerations, less time in the adjudication process, and reduced number of arrests which have the potential to lower the judicial costs.  Furthermore, implementation of JDCs suggest both reduced amounts of crime and improvement in outcomes for substance abuse treatment.  Specific limitations and implications of this research will be presented.