Juvenile Drug Courts

Juvenile drug courts are among the most recent innovations in the treatment of substance-involved adolescents in the justice system. Their emergence in the 1990s was driven by the rising rates of substance abuse among adolescents -- a 2000 report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, for instance, showed that substance usage among high school students had risen substantially in the 1990s, with almost 9.5% being cocaine users; a third being binge drinkers, and 14.6% being inhalant users (Office of Justice Programs, 2003).

In line with these statistics, the rate of juvenile crime rose by a massive 145% during this period compared to the rate reported in the last decade (Office of Justice Programs, 2003). Juvenile drug courts were established after it became apparent that the traditional juvenile court system did not deal effectively with substance abuse, mental illness and other related problems owing to its lack of specialization and family engagement. Today, there are over 200 juvenile drug courts across the country.

This text is focused on South Carolina's BRIDGE Program, which serves as the state's federal drug court. It details among things, how the program works, the target group, the team members involved, and the program's utilization of the case management approach. Juvenile Drug Court: Overview In its simplest form, a juvenile drug court is a section within the juvenile court system, where selected offenders struggling with addiction and substance abuse issues are referred by a designated judge for treatment and rehabilitation (Office of Justice Programs, 2003).

The court is headed by a juvenile drug court judge, who works together with other team members, including representatives from the defense, the prosecution, probation, law-enforcement, vocational and school training programs, social services, juvenile justice, and treatment in determining how best to address the drug-related issues of the youth and their families, which have brought the former into contact with the system (Office of Justice Programs, 2003).

The team members hold status meetings on a pre-determined basis, mostly weekly, to set rules, and at the same time discuss participants' problems, progress, and strategies that could be used to improve treatment outcomes. In the BRIDGE Program, team members meet semi-monthly, and although participation in the program is voluntary, participants are required to abide by the set rules throughout the course of the program (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015).

For this reason, they are often required to sign a written argument (co-signed by their attorney, and the supervising probation officer), affirming their willingness to abide by the rules of the program (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015). Target Group Generally, juvenile drug courts are meant to serve juvenile offenders who demonstrate moderate to heavy use of substances, and pose little or no danger to the society (Cooper, 2001).

To be eligible for the BRIDGE Program, an offender must satisfy the aforementioned conditions, and must be either a post-conviction or a pretrial defendant (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015). Pretrial defendants are eligible for admission if they have entered a guilty plea, and are awaiting sentencing (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015).

Post-conviction defendants, on the other hand, can be admitted if they have been charged for violating the terms of their supervised release, but have not yet been sentenced for the same (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015). Pretrial defendants who complete their programs successfully could have their charges dropped or reduced to a lesser offence by the United States Attorney's Office (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015).

The specific service areas covered by drug court programs include education, family, primary care, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and the overriding goal is to improve treatment outcomes for participants, and equip them with life skills that could increase their chances of becoming productive and healthy adults (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015).

How the Program Works From a general perspective, juvenile drug courts assist in the rehabilitation of substance-abusing juvenile offenders and their families by providing judicial supervision and interventions in levels not available in the traditional court process (Office of Justice Programs, 2003). The drug court team identifies and enrolls participants to treatment programs, and then continually monitors them throughout the course of the program to ensure compliance with the program's pre-determined goals.

In addition to offering intensive supervision, drug courts also offer support services designed to address the specific problems that drive adolescents to get involved with the justice system (Cooper, 2001). The most common support services include court-ordered family education services, vocational training, mentoring, literacy building skills, and family therapy. The specific strategies and methodologies used in the treatment of participants differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

In the case of the BRIDGE Program, once the juvenile drug team receives a referral from a designated judge, it (the team) subjects the referee to the eligibility criteria outlined earlier on to determine their qualification to join the program. In testing whether a referee is a moderate to heavy user of substances, the team employs a range of assessment strategies including drug-testing, chemical testing, and assessment instruments. If the referee satisfies the eligibility criteria, they are accepted into the program, and begin phase 1 of the same.

Treatment is achieved through three major phases, each of which is designed to allow participants to establish a law-abiding and sober lifestyle (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015). All the three phases are focused on encouraging participants to acknowledge the impact of their use of substances on the community, their families, and themselves. They are encouraged to recognize their pattern of use as well as the specific individual and familial factors that drive them into substance use and abuse (U.S.

District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015). In order to graduate from the program, a participant is required to successfully complete all the three phases of treatment. Phase One: The Early Recovery Phase This phase runs for a period of four months, during which participants are required to abstain from the use of alcohol and other drugs and to establish the specific familial and individual factors that drive their substance abuse issues (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015).

Moreover, they are required to establish what they think needs to be done (and what they themselves are doing) to facilitate their recovery, and to present verification of the same in all their scheduled meetings with the drug court team. In this phase, the drug court team will usually organize self-help groups, and the participant is supposed to attend three of the same every week.

The supervising probation officer will often conduct unannounced home visits to assess participants' progress and subject them to a drug test to determine their compliance with the abstinence requirement. Upon completion of the phase, participants are required to submit to the supervising officer, a phase report detailing their progress, and their goals for the next phase of treatment.

Phase Two: The Primary Treatment and Continued Care Phase This lasts for approximately five months -- participants are required to maintain the abstinence culture and are encouraged to begin understanding the adverse effects of substance abuse and to consequently take responsibility for the same (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015).

They are required to continue with substance abuse treatment, attend self-help group meetings three times a week, identify personal wellness activities and participate weekly in the same, attend (as required) the full-time court-ordered vocational or educational program, and participate (as part of the full-time program) in the U.S. Probation Office's 'Making it Work' and 'Money Smart' Programs (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015).

The self-help groups and educational programs are meant to allow participants ample time to interact with their therapists, and learn from each other through group psychotherapy. Phase 3: Relapse Prevention Phase This is the final phase of the program, running for three months, during which participants develop their individual relapse prevention plan (based on the risk factors identified in phase and secure their long-term recovery needs.

Just as is the case with the other two phases, participants abstain from alcohol and drug usage, attend court hearings, participate in weekly wellness activities, and attend self-help groups three times a week. However, differently from the earlier phases, participants take part in full-time employment or community service commitments. The employer stays in constant communication and collaboration with the supervising officer and the drug court team as a way of ensuring that the participant is under constant monitoring.

The constant monitoring and supervision of participants in a non-controlled setting helps to instill a culture of doing the right thing at all times. Upon completion of this phase, participants present their relapse prevention plan detailing how they intend to deal with the risk factors present in their environmental settings (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015). One is only allowed to graduate if they are able to abstain for a period of five months upon completion of phase 3 (U.S.

District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015). Throughout the program, the treatment team offers a number of support interventions to minimize the risks of relapse and non-compliance. These include: Family education and support: family support interventions are offered as a way of minimizing participants' risk of relapse. These interventions are geared at educating families, and equipping them with skills on how to foster a recovery environment. The services offered are designed to i) improve family functioning and strengthen parenting skills, ii) developing social support networks for parents.

By including parents in its court hearings, the drug team tries to minimize the influence of familial factors by helping parents become more useful resources in the lives of their adolescent children (South Carolina DAODAS, n.d.). Rewards and Punishments: punishments such as revocation are used to minimize participants' risk of noncompliance with program rules and court expectations. In the same way, incentives and rewards are used to foster positive performance, and ensure that participants do exactly what is expected of them.

Incentives particularly work effectively with the current generation of juveniles, popularly referred to as the 'trophy generation' (members are motivated by trophies and rewards for participation on a constant basis). In the case of the BRIGHT Program, rewards often take the form of acknowledgement by the presiding judge, certificates of achievement, reduced drug testing, a graduation certificate, vouchers and gifts, and promotion to the next phase of treatment (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015). Challenges in Implementation Juvenile drug court programs are effective for two reasons.

First, unlike the traditional juvenile court mechanism, they recognize the crucial role of family as the primary support system for adolescents. By including family in the treatment of juvenile offenders, therefore, such programs provide a flexible, wrap-around approach to treatment. Secondly, unlike juvenile incarceration and inpatient treatment, drug court programs give participants a chance to live their daily lives in a natural, uncontrolled setting, and thereby learn the culture of doing the right thing even when no one is watching. However, two core challenges limit the strategy's effective implementation.

First, it is difficult to accurately assess the danger posed by an offender to the community. To be safe in this regard, drug court teams need to establish a standard criterion for assessing 'danger' - in the case of the BRIDGE Program, for instance, an offender is ineligible for the program if they suffer from severe mental health conditions or if they have a history of sex offences and violent crime (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015).

A second challenge is the risk that participants could fall back to their pre-treatment tendencies upon graduation, when they are no longer under judicial monitoring. Chassin (2008) was able to show that most drug court participants relapse after graduation owing to the lack of supervision and monitoring. For this reason, it is prudent that drug court teams put in place effective measures for the development of aftercare programs designed to offer support to participants even after they have successfully graduated from the drug court program (Chassin, 2008).

This will require them to adopt a case management approach, where they understand the specific unique risk factors in each participant's individual environment, and then determine the aftercare methodology that would best respond to the same (Cooper, 2001). An umbrella aftercare program may not work effectively in this case because participants encounter different risk factors. The Drug Court Team The presiding judge is the head of the drug court team (Cooper, 2001).

His main role is to chair court sessions and guide the team towards the successful accomplishment of its treatment goals (Cooper, 2001). With input from the rest of the team, the presiding judge imposes sanctions upon violators and motivates through verbal recognition, well-performing participants (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015).

Decision-making in the team is collegial, and for this reason, the judge is required to stay in constant collaboration with the rest of the team members, who generally include the defense counsel, the assistant federal public defender, the assistant U.S. Attorney, the supervising probation official, and the treatment provider (who is most often a therapist) (Cooper, 2001; U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015).

The treatment provider is basically responsible for assessing participants, determining their appropriate substance abuse treatment level, providing treatment, and drafting progress reports (U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, 2015). Communication, Collaboration, and Cooperation among Members of the Treatment Team It is quite evident, from the membership of the drug court team (discussed above) that such programs bring together different organizations that may not have worked together on such a scale in the justice system before.

The treatment provider, for instance, may never have interacted with the public defender on the same platform before; in the same way, the defense attorney and the public defender may never have worked towards the same common goal before. Towards this end, the risk of internal conflict may be relatively high; and such conflict could be harmful to the effective operation of the team.

If there is internal conflict, members may not be willing to communicate with each other and collaborate their efforts to the benefit of the team; and in the absence of communication, failure is almost inevitable. Communication, collaboration and cooperation are important for a variety of reasons.