Governing addiction: The Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Court in New Zealand

<p>The New Zealand Alcohol and other Drug Treatment Court (AODTC) is an innovative approach to addressing offending by people with an alcohol or other drug addiction. Based on the United States Drug Treatment Court model, the AODTC aims to reduce reoffending, reduce addiction and support offenders’ health and wellbeing. Most studies of DTCs are quantitative and focus on recidivism rates and cost-effectiveness. There have been relatively few in-depth studies of how DTCs operate and even fewer that focus on the offender’s experience. This thesis is a critical study of the Auckland and Waitakere AODTCs and is the first study of its kind in New Zealand. Conducted over seven months, the fieldwork involved 536 hours of observations, interviews with offenders and informal conversations with court workers, treatment providers and offenders’ families. The research also included extensive analysis of documents produced by and about the AODTC pilot and the US counterparts. The research found that the AODTC operates in a largely unregulated problem-solving court zone. The wide discretion of judges and collaboration with community treatment providers, lauded by proponents of the AODTC as key to its therapeutic effectiveness, were found to create a number of significant harms for participants. In addition, the focus on addiction as a disease and abstinence as a goal and measure of progress invites judicial subjectivity and places considerable burdens on participants. The research also found that the AODTC metes out punishment under the guise of treatment, preventing participants from accessing treatment and breach the principle of proportionality in their responses to offending and non-compliance. The competing goals of treatment and punishment also prevent participants from receiving adequate support in the AODTC programme. In particular, Māori, women, transgender, offenders with a coexisting disorder and brain injury are less likely to have access to the right treatment and proper support. These findings challenge the assumptions that the AODTC therapeutic mandate treats AOD related offending and supports offenders’ health and wellbeing. In order to protect AODTC offenders, a series of recommendations for change are made to constrain judicial involvement in treatment, to provide better options for community-based treatment and to ensure appropriate addiction treatment services. Overall, the thesis provides valuable empirical insight into how the AODTC and the criminal justice system constitute AOD offending, addiction treatment policies, and manage the addicted offender to accomplish recovery. It also adds important data to the international pool of DTC ethnographies and problem-solving court literature, providing a point of focus from which to consider broader policy and evaluative criteria of people’s experiences of treatment in the problem-solving court. It is hoped that this research is able to contribute to law reform involving specialist problem solving courts in New Zealand.</p>

Governing addiction: The Alcohol and Other Drug Treatment Court in New Zealand

<p>The New Zealand Alcohol and other Drug Treatment Court (AODTC) is an innovative approach to addressing offending by people with an alcohol or other drug addiction. Based on the United States Drug Treatment Court model, the AODTC aims to reduce reoffending, reduce addiction and support offenders’ health and wellbeing. Most studies of DTCs are quantitative and focus on recidivism rates and cost-effectiveness. There have been relatively few in-depth studies of how DTCs operate and even fewer that focus on the offender’s experience. This thesis is a critical study of the Auckland and Waitakere AODTCs and is the first study of its kind in New Zealand. Conducted over seven months, the fieldwork involved 536 hours of observations, interviews with offenders and informal conversations with court workers, treatment providers and offenders’ families. The research also included extensive analysis of documents produced by and about the AODTC pilot and the US counterparts. The research found that the AODTC operates in a largely unregulated problem-solving court zone. The wide discretion of judges and collaboration with community treatment providers, lauded by proponents of the AODTC as key to its therapeutic effectiveness, were found to create a number of significant harms for participants. In addition, the focus on addiction as a disease and abstinence as a goal and measure of progress invites judicial subjectivity and places considerable burdens on participants. The research also found that the AODTC metes out punishment under the guise of treatment, preventing participants from accessing treatment and breach the principle of proportionality in their responses to offending and non-compliance. The competing goals of treatment and punishment also prevent participants from receiving adequate support in the AODTC programme. In particular, Māori, women, transgender, offenders with a coexisting disorder and brain injury are less likely to have access to the right treatment and proper support. These findings challenge the assumptions that the AODTC therapeutic mandate treats AOD related offending and supports offenders’ health and wellbeing. In order to protect AODTC offenders, a series of recommendations for change are made to constrain judicial involvement in treatment, to provide better options for community-based treatment and to ensure appropriate addiction treatment services. Overall, the thesis provides valuable empirical insight into how the AODTC and the criminal justice system constitute AOD offending, addiction treatment policies, and manage the addicted offender to accomplish recovery. It also adds important data to the international pool of DTC ethnographies and problem-solving court literature, providing a point of focus from which to consider broader policy and evaluative criteria of people’s experiences of treatment in the problem-solving court. It is hoped that this research is able to contribute to law reform involving specialist problem solving courts in New Zealand.</p>

The impact of Juvenile Drug Treatment Courts (JDTC) implementing Federal Evidence-Based Guidelines on recidivism and substance use: multisite Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) and Regression Discontinuity (RDD) Designs

Background Juvenile drug treatment courts (JDTC) have struggled to define themselves since their inception in 1995. Early courts followed a format similar to adult drug courts, but these did not address the unique needs of juveniles, which led to the creation of 16 Strategies by a consensus panel of practitioners and researchers. But, like the first JDTCs, research with courts following these strategies failed to provide convincing evidence that this “model” was associated with significant reductions in recidivism or drug use. More recently, a new set of evidence-based guidelines were developed through meta-analyses commissioned by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP, 2016). Method OJJDP provided funding for a rigorous multi-site evaluation of the guidelines. This study protocol paper for the Juvenile Drug Treatment Court (JDTC) Guidelines Cross-Site Evaluation presents research designs for the comparison of youth outcomes from 10 JDTCs compared with 10 Traditional Juvenile Courts (TJCs) in the same jurisdictions. Two sites opted into a randomized controlled trial (RCT) and eight sites chose to follow a regression discontinuity design (RDD). Youth data are captured at baseline, and at 6- and 12-month follow-ups using an interview comprised of several standardized assessments. The youths’ official records also are abstracted for recidivism and substance use information. The degree to which the evidence-based guidelines are implemented at each site is assessed via an in-depth court self-assessment collected at baseline and again 2 years later and via structured site visits conducted once during implementation. Discussion As a field-based trial, using both RCT and RDD designs, findings will provide important, policy-relevant information regarding the implementation of the OJJDP evidence-based guidelines, including the degree to which JDTCs adopted and/or modified these practices, their relative impact on recidivism and substance use, as well as the degree to which JDTCs differ from TJCs. Specific inferences may be drawn about whether following or not following specific guidelines differentially impact youth outcomes, yielding recommendations about the translation of this information from research-to-practice for potentiating the broader adoption of these guidelines by JDTCs nationwide. Clinical trials registration This was not an NIH supported trial. The funder, OJJDP/NIJ, instead required publishing the design with even more information at https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/juvenile-drug-treatment-court-jdtc-guidelines-cross-site-evaluation.

The Effects of Race and Ethnicity on Admission, Graduation, and Recidivism in the Milwaukee County Adult Drug Treatment Court

Drug courts play a key role in the criminal justice system by diverting individuals from incarceration and providing them with resources to address substance use issues and reduce criminal recidivism. However, it is unclear whether drug courts reflect—or even exacerbate—preexisting racial/ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system. While prior literature has offered some insight into the influence of race and ethnicity on drug court success, much of the focus has been on outcomes (i.e., program completion and recidivism) rather than disparities at earlier stages (i.e., referral to admittance). The current study adds to this body of research by evaluating the Milwaukee County Adult Drug Treatment Court to examine whether racial/ethnic disparities exist at several stages of the drug court process: (1) referral to admittance, (2) likelihood of graduation, and (3) likelihood of recidivism. Results of the analyses determined racial/ethnic disparities in the likelihood of admission to the drug court, as well as the likelihood of graduation. There were no racial/ethnic disparities found in the likelihood of recidivism. The analyses also identified several additional variables that were influential in the likelihood of admission (risk score, prior record), likelihood of graduation (age, prior record, custody sanctions), and recidivism (drug court outcome).

An Exploratory Study Examining Differences in Drug Court Graduation Rates for Black and White Women

This exploratory study examined factors potentially associated with graduation for White and Black female Drug Treatment Court participants. Multiple logistic regression models for predicting program graduation were employed using an administrative data set ( N = 1,093). Race was significant in a combined model. Age, prior felonies, employment, and negative peer associations predicted graduation for White women, whereas negative peer associations was the only predictor of graduation for Black women. Consideration of other factors that are not typically collected through administrative screenings is needed to better understand the strains typically experienced by Black women in Drug Treatment Court.