Cultural Competency in
Your Drug Court
Joe Lunievicz, BA, RYT
Director Training Institute/Executive Director
NDRI-USA, Inc. – www.training.ndri.org
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Agenda
 Cultural
Competency/Proficiency
 Cultural Assessment
 Simulation
 Case: African American
Young Adult
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Key Component 4
Drug courts provide access to a
continuum of alcohol, drug, and other
related treatment and rehabilitation
services.
 Treatment designs and delivery systems are
sensitive and relevant to issues of race, culture,
religion, gender, age, ethnicity, and sexual
orientation.
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Key component 10
Forging partnerships among drug
courts, public agencies, and
community-based organizations
generates local support and enhances
drug court program effectiveness.
 The drug court hires a professional staff that
reflects the population served, and the drug court
provides ongoing cultural competence training.
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Culture
'Culture' refers to integrated patterns of human
behavior that include the language, thoughts,
communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values,
and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social
groups.
US Department of Health & Human Services, Office of Minority Health,
http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=2&lvlid=11
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Cultural Competence Model
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Cultural Competence
Cultural competence is a
set of congruent
behaviors, attitudes, and
policies that come
together in a system,
agency, or among
professionals that
enables effective work in
cross-cultural situations.
US Department of Health & Human Services, Office of Minority Health,
http://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/templates/browse.aspx?lvl=2&lvlid=11
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Lunievicz TM & culture
Cultural Proficiency

A systems level approach that adds to the knowledge
base of culturally competent practice by conducting
research, developing new service delivery
approaches, and disseminating results of
demonstration efforts.

Team members are culturally competent; teams are
culturally proficient
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Why Cultural Competency?
Higher retention rates
Higher graduation
rates
Enhanced quality
assurance
Lower attrition rates
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Competency Assessment
 On the practitioner/client level, assessing the
client’s cultural perspective is pertinent to their
engagement and motivation to succeed in the
program.
 Cultural competence is a process that involves
continual self assessment.
 Consciousness of one's personal reactions to people who
are culturally different.
 Social science research indicates that our values and
beliefs may be inconsistent with our behaviors, and we
ironically may be unaware of it.
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Dyad: Cultural Competency SelfAssessment
 Fill out assessment
 Score assessment
 Talk to you partner
about
 How did you do?
 How would the other
members of your team
score?
 Where do you need help?
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
What is Privilege?
 An unearned right, advantage or immunity granted to or
enjoyed beyond the common advantages of all others; an
exemption in many certain cases from burdens of
liabilities.
 Those with privilege rarely understand it’s full impact on
those who do not have privilege.
 When only certain members of society enjoy privileges, it
creates inequities.
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
White Privilege
1. I can move wherever I want to move
2. I can do well in a challenging situation without
being called a credit to my race
3. I can go into a supermarket and find the staple
foods which fit my cultural traditions
4. I can take a job without my coworkers
suspecting I got it because of my race
5. My medical provider will be aware of cultural
values and traditions related to my healthcare
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Male Privilege
1. When competing against a female for a job, the
odds are probably in my favor
2. My odds of being raped are low
3. I can be assertive without being called a b*&%#
4. If I have sex with a lot of people, it will not make
me an object of contempt or stereotyping
5. I am not expected to spend my entire life 20-40
pounds underweight
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
What is the
Dominant
Culture in the
US?
What is the impact
of this on the judicial
system?
Drug Treatment?
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Case
Example
Young Adult African
American Male
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Drug Court YA challenges
 Little motivation to succeed
 Denial of drug abuse
 Low frustration tolerance
 Minimal family support
 Negative peer influences
 Lack of role models
 High rates of trauma &
victimization
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
These lead to…
 Young adults stay in the first phase of treatment
longer than other drug court participants
 More court sanctions and incarcerations
 Higher rate of placement in treatment facilities than
level of addiction
 Less positive outcomes
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
“No matter how articulate the practitioner may be,
the words may not be comprehended if the
speaker lacks understanding of the effects of
drug use on adolescent cognitive development
and the individual’s ability to comprehend the
court proceedings in which he/she is involved, to
comply with court orders and conditions of
release, and most important, to be motivated to
change his/her behavior over the long term.”
Cooper, Adolescent Drug Users, 2008
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Brain changes in Young Adulthood
 Maturation of brain from back
to front
 Prefontal Cortex
 Myelination: adding white
matter
 Synaptic Pruning: decreasing
number of connections
 Connections among regions
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Prefrontal Cortex Executive Suite
 Matures last (ages 25-26
for full maturity)
 Calibration of risk & reward
 “On second thought… ”
 Problem-solving
 Prioritizing
 Thinking ahead
 Self-evaluation
 Long-term planning
 Regulation of emotions
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Racial Disparities
Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Human Rights Watch, World Report 2011: United States
Given…
 Blacks and whites engage in drug offenses at equivalent
rates
 Blacks constitute 13% of the population
Why?
 Blacks 34% of drug arrests (2-11x higher)
 Blacks 44% of convicted drug felonies in state court
 Blacks make up 56% of people in state prisons for drug
offenses
 60% of people in prison are racial/ethnic minorities
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Attitudes & Behaviors Which Might be
Presented by African Americans Entering
Drug Court:
(Darryl Turpin, Director, Jefferson County Drug Court)
Behavior
Perception
Sloppy dress
Refusal to look in the eyes
Tardy, no show, incomplete
tasks/assignments
Non-verbal
War stories
Disrespectful
Anger/hostility
Resistant/lack of commitment
Refusal to develop rapport
Defeatist attitude
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Applying Experience into Practice
Practitioner:
a. perceived client behavior and sanctions
Communication:
a. translations and interpreter
b. materials
Treatment
a. engagement and program retention
b. individual and group sessions
Support systems
a. 12 step
b. family
c. spiritual
ID of Personal Cultural
Characteristics
Cues
Filters
Perception
Assumptions
Behavior
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Staffing
 What percent of the program/agency/organization’s staff
reflects the composition of the population(s) served?
 What percent of the staff is bilingual or multilingual?
 What percent of minorities or persons representative of
the dominant cultures in your community are on the
program’s/organization’s board of directors/advisory
committees?
 What percent of minorities or persons representative of
the dominant cultures in your community hold
administrative or management positions in the
program/organization/agency?
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Prior Experience
 What linkages have been made with minority organizations,
churches, NGO’s, and other institutions in the community that
serve the same groups?
 Have contracts been awarded to diverse cultural service
providers who specialize in issues or needs of minority
populations? If not, do you know why?
 Do the clients have input into or give feedback to the
program/agency’s management team about design issues
and effectiveness?
 Is the program located in the community it serves or is it is
accessible to its target population?
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Prior Experience
 Are needs assessments and issue identification strengthbased and culturally specific?
 Does the program/agency environment/offices reflect an
appreciation of the culture of the target populations?
 Does the program/agency have its materials translated into
the dominant languages of the target populations?
 Has an independent evaluator/researcher ever analyzed the
program/agency’s outcomes by race, gender, ethnicity,
sexual orientation, education, etc.?
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
NREEP: SAMHSA National Registry of
Evidence Based Programs and Practices
 Moral Reconation Therapy
 Helping Women Recover and Beyond Trauma
 Brief Strengths-Based Case Management for Substance
Abuse
 Dialectical Behavior Therapy
 Motivational Enhancement Therapy
http://www.nrepp.samhsa.gov/AdvancedSearch.aspx
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Cultural Competency - Lunievicz
Selected Resources on Cultural
Competency
 The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander, 2012
 Cultural Competence: The elements of Culture that Affect
Treatment Outcomes, Suzette E. Brann
(http://www1.spa.american.edu/justice/documents/199.pdf)
 Core Competencies Guide Adult DCPI Trainings
 NDRI: Cultural Proficiency for Drug Court Practitioners Training
Curriculum, (updated 2010)
 The Sentencing Project, Racial Disparities
(http://www.sentencingproject.org/template/page.cfm?id=122)