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A Conceptual Framework for
Evaluating Juvenile Drug Courts
Jeffrey Butts
John Roman
Shelli Rossman
Adele Harrell
July 30, 2003
Presented to the
Annual Conference on Criminal
Justice Research and Evaluation
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of
Justice, Office of Justice Programs.
National Evaluation of Juvenile Drug Courts
A project of the National Institute of Justice (NIJ),
United States Department of Justice (DOJ)
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not
be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
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About the Project
The National Evaluation of Juvenile Drug Courts was funded by the
National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and conducted by the Urban Institute’s
Program on Youth Justice.
A conceptual framework was produced by the project to focus future
evaluations on key concepts in order to build a better knowledge base
about the effectiveness of juvenile drug courts. Researchers from the
Urban Institute worked with officials and practitioners in six jurisdictions
to develop the conceptual framework:
•
•
•
Orlando, Florida
Missoula, Montana
Jersey City, New Jersey
•
•
•
Las Cruces/Anthony, New Mexico
Dayton, Ohio
Charleston, South Carolina
The National Evaluation of Juvenile Drug Courts was managed by Janice
Munsterman at the National Institute of Justice, and guided by the
members of a national advisory committee:
•
•
•
•
Dr. David Altschuler
Dr. Steven Belenko
Judge Sharon Chatman
Dr. John Goldkamp
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not
be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
•
•
•
Dr. Doris MacKenzie
Dr. David Rottman
Dr. Howard Snyder
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Typical Drug Court Process
Juvenile drug courts emerged during the 1990s
as an alternative approach to dealing with druginvolved, juvenile offenders.
The programs supervise the court cases of these
offenders and ensure the delivery of drug
treatment and other services.
Juvenile drug courts handle youth who are
thought to have drug or alcohol problems,
whether or not they originally come to the
attention of authorities for drug-related reasons.
Juvenile drug court procedures are similar to
those of juvenile courts with two important
differences —
1) juvenile drug courts involve greater judicial
oversight of case progress, and
2) there are far more court appearances.
As with most delinquency proceedings, cases
referred to juvenile drug courts begin with an
arrest, followed by some form of screening and
assessment to determine program eligibility.
Youth deemed eligible for juvenile drug court are
offered referral to the program (often in lieu of
formal prosecution), and upon entering the
program they appear before the judge in a drug
court hearing and begin to work with the
program staff and treatment providers.
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not
be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Program
Entry
Client/Court
Contract,
Program
Orientation
Screening,
Assessment
& Referral
Judicial
Hearing
Sanctions,
Incentives,
& Rewards
Drug Court
Team Meeting,
Case Review
Case
Management
Drug Testing
& Other
Assessments
Treatment
& Collateral
Services
Arrest
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Typical Drug Court Process
In a traditional delinquency process, a short
series of court hearings is used to establish an
offender’s responsibility (or guilt) and the
juvenile court judge orders an appropriate mix of
sanctions and services, which would be
considered the final “disposition” of that case.
The juvenile drug court process is a repeating
cycle in which the court orders sanctions and
services, assesses their effectiveness, and then
makes needed modifications in the next court
hearing, which may occur one week later.
The process can be repeated as often and as
long as necessary (often for up to 12 months),
until the judge, the drug court staff, and all
treatment providers believe the young offender
has succeeded in changing his or her behavior.
If youth successfully comply with the drug court
program and modify their drug-related behavior,
the court holds a formal graduation ceremony to
celebrate this accomplishment.
If cases end unsuccessfully, with youth failing to
change their behavior, they will be terminated
from the program, usually to face prosecution on
the original charges.
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not
be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Graduate
Program
Entry
Client/Court
Contract,
Program
Orientation
Screening,
Assessment
& Referral
or
Terminate
Resume
regular
process
Judicial
Hearing
Sanctions,
Incentives,
& Rewards
Drug Court
Team Meeting,
Case Review
Case
Management
Drug Testing
& Other
Assessments
Treatment
& Collateral
Services
Arrest
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Conceptual Frameworks
Researchers are investigating whether this drug court process
is effective with juvenile offenders, but so far these studies
have not developed clear hypotheses of cause and effect
•
One reason is that researchers have not yet
developed an effective framework for evaluating
juvenile drug courts
•
As a result, evaluations of juvenile drug courts
(although few in number) have been highly variable
and not well focused
•
To identify and test hypotheses about program
effects, drug court evaluations should be guided by
theoretically-informed conceptual frameworks
•
Conceptual frameworks help researchers to isolate
elements of program effectiveness and to select the
best methods for measuring those elements
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Conceptual Frameworks
A conceptual framework is a formal statement of the chain of events generated by
an intervention program and how those events combine to create outcomes
Consider this simple example:
Background
Factors
Inputs
Outputs
Intermediate
Outcomes
End
Outcomes
are
orexpected to produce particular
associated with client effects,
that combine
or
to create the
shaped by certainProgram activities,
“inputs”
…
program effects, or “outputs”
“intermediate
…
outcomes”program’s
…
“end outcomes” …
background factors
…
* The terms input, outputs, intermediate and end outcomes are adapted from Hatry (1999).
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not
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Conceptual Frameworks
•
Of course, conceptual frameworks
must be more complex than this to be
applied in actual evaluations
•
Frameworks for evaluating juvenile
drug courts have to be especially
complex
•
•
Juvenile drug courts, like all drug
courts, involve both the justice
system and the service-delivery
system
Some drug court activities affect
youth directly while others are
designed to change service delivery
structures and agency arrangements
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not
be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
A useful conceptual framework for juvenile
drug courts would, at a minimum:
1.
Specify the most important elements of
drug courts and their relationship to
program outcomes –
•
2.
(i.e., not portray drug court as an
undifferentiated “black box” of activities)
Recognize that drug courts operate at
more than one level of intervention by –
•
overseeing organizational arrangements
and
•
using their legal authority to affect the
behavior of individual offenders
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Conceptual Frameworks
•
The following conceptual
framework was developed by the
National Evaluation of Juvenile
Drug Courts at the Urban Institute
•
It is not a definitive guide for
evaluating juvenile drug courts, but
one possible model for evaluation
•
The framework encourages
researchers to specify the
theoretical underpinnings of
program activities and program
outcomes
•
It also specifies the causal chain of
events leading from program
activities to program outcomes
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not
be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
On the following page, you may
click on each element of the
Conceptual Framework to read
more about each topic.
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Elements in the UI Framework
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Organization
• capacity
• coordination
• accountability
Program
Theory
Court / Jurisdiction
• politics / policies
• funding incentives
• legal culture
•
•
•
•
formality
consistency
transparency
engagement
Target Population
Outputs
Perceived
Legitimacy
• fairness
• proportionality
Therapeutic
Catalyst
Motivation to
x
Change
Intermediate Outcomes
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be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Behavior
Change
x
Perceived
Self-Efficacy
• information
• encouragement
• rewards
demographic
socio-economic
drug-use history
adjudication status
Inputs
Quality of Intervention
• comprehensiveness
• intensity / duration
• individualization
• family focus
• multi-problem focus
Perceived
Deterrence
• certainty
• celerity
• severity
Authority
Context
Key:
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Participation
in Treatment
Drug Court
Activities
•
•
•
•
End Presentation
Reduced
Delinquency &
Substance Abuse
End Outcomes
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Drug Court
Activities
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More about
this topic
The framework begins by identifying key program inputs, or the range of activities
pursued as part of juvenile drug court programs, both in and out of the courtroom.
Juvenile drug court activities are partly shaped by a theory of program impact,
whether implicit or explicit, and partly by local context, including funding incentives
and the client population being served. Identifying and disaggregating the individual
activities comprising juvenile drug courts is a critical task in evaluation research.
Each program component should be measured separately so that its relative impact
on program and client outcomes can be isolated and compared.
Key program components may include a wide variety of factors, including the
scheduling of courtroom appearances, courtroom dynamics, legal procedures, judicial
behavior, case management strategies, the delivery of treatment, the uses and timing
of incentives and sanctions, parental participation, the use of detention, and virtually
any other feature of the program believed to affect client outcomes.
By tracking how these key components vary, or how they are applied differently in
different cases, researchers will be able to identify which program components are
most closely associated with positive client outcomes.
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Drug Court
Activities
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The National Association of Drug Court Professionals (1997) developed a list of key
components for drug courts based upon the work of an inter-disciplinary committee:
1. Drug courts integrate alcohol and other drug treatment services with justice system
case processing.
2. Using a non-adversarial approach, prosecution and defense counsel promote public
safety while protecting participants’ due process rights.
3. Eligible participants are identified early and promptly placed in the drug court
program.
4. Drug courts provide access to a continuum of alcohol, drug, and other related
treatment and rehabilitative services.
5. Abstinence is monitored by frequent alcohol and other drug testing.
6. A coordinated strategy governs drug court responses to participants’ compliance.
7. Ongoing judicial interaction with each drug court participant is essential.
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Drug Court
Activities
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8. Monitoring and evaluation measure the achievement of program goals and
gauge effectiveness.
9. Continuing interdisciplinary education promotes effective drug court planning,
implementation, and operations.
10. Forging partnerships among drug courts, public agencies, and communitybased organizations generates local support and enhances drug court
program effectiveness.
The NADCP “key components” provided a good starting point for researchers, but
they are not theoretically derived, nor are they detailed enough to provide
guidelines for measurement. It is not possible, for example, to infer from the list of
key components exactly how each program mechanism is thought to affect client
outcomes, if at all.
Other frameworks have been developed specifically for juvenile drug courts.
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Drug Court
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In 2003, the National Drug Court Institute collaborated with the National Council of
Juvenile & Family Court Judges to draft a set of key components for juvenile drug
courts. Their work resulted in a list of 16 elements, or “strategies in practice” that
juvenile drug courts could include in their program operations.
In devising this list of strategies, the committee responsible for the reported noted that
there were at least three reasons why drug courts for adolescent offenders are
different from adult drug courts:
1) young people are usually not addicted to drugs (even if they might regularly
consume drugs) and treatment approaches used by juvenile drug courts need
to account for this difference;
2) an adolescent’s reasons to use drugs may be different from those of an adult,
and the court process needs to be cognizant of the complications introduced
by an adolescent’s ongoing intellectual, emotional, and social development;
3) juvenile drug courts serve young offenders and their families.
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The NDCI/ NCJFCJ framework listed 16 “strategies in practice” for juvenile drug courts:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
6)
7)
8)
9)
Collaborative planning
Teamwork, non-adversarial, focused
on youth rather than agency concerns
Clearly defined target populations
Judicial involvement and supervision
Monitoring and evaluation
Community partnerships to expand
options for youth and families
Comprehensive treatment planning
tailored to needs of youth & families
Developmentally appropriate services
Gender-appropriate services
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10)
11)
12)
13)
14)
15)
16)
Culturally competent services
Focus on strengths of youth & families
Engage families as valued partners in
all components of the program
Coordinate with school systems
Frequent, random, and observed drug
testing
Goal-oriented incentives and sanctions
designed to motivate offender change
Protect offender and family privacy
while allowing the drug court team to
access key information
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Drug Court
Activities
As with the adult drug court framework developed by the NADCP in 1997, the
NDCI/NCJFCJ framework for juvenile drug courts was not directly conducive to
evaluation and hypothesis testing. The framework did not suggest exactly how
each of the basic elements would affect offender outcomes, but it asserted that they
were related to program effectiveness.
The framework provided another important starting point, however, for investigators
who need to know what practitioners value the most about their programs and
which elements of the juvenile drug court process may be related to effectiveness.
The next step is for researchers and practitioners to work together to build the
empirical evidence needed to establish the causal pathways between the basic
elements of drug court programs and client outcomes.
Measurement of program activities will have to rely largely on documentation and
written descriptions, but whenever possible evaluators should include direct
observations of courtroom procedures and agency practices.
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Organization
• capacity
• coordination
• accountability
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Juvenile drug court programs produce two basic “outputs” – organization & authority.
Organization: Juvenile drug courts use judicial leadership and the court’s community
influence to improve the strength and diversity of drug treatment agencies and other
service delivery agencies in the juvenile justice system.
One of the principal ways that juvenile drug courts are different from traditional
juvenile courts is in the extent to which they extend their reach beyond the courtroom.
Juvenile drug courts, and especially the judges in juvenile drug courts, are often
deeply involved in the design, development, and management of service-delivery
systems for drug-involved juveniles.
Instead of merely selecting from available programs and ordering youth to participate
in them, juvenile drug courts work to develop needed resources and they hold
treatment providers accountable by frequently reviewing the individual progress of
court cases and determining whether each case is being properly managed.
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• capacity
• coordination
• accountability
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By actively supervising and overseeing the adequacy of drug treatment and service
delivery, juvenile drug courts ensure that clients receive whatever services and
supports they need to begin and sustain a process of behavioral change.
Some of the key elements in organizational oversight might include the frequency
and thoroughness of inter-agency client staffings, the quality and specificity of
communication between the court and other service providers, the interactions of
judges and staff during courtroom hearings, judicial responses to failed service
plans, and court management of the RFP process for new services.
Researchers could measure these elements in a variety of ways, but they should at
least assess the resource “capacity” of the service delivery system and how it
responds to court intervention, the “coordination” of services (from the perspective of
the judge, the youth, and the family), and the “accountability” of the entire system.
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Organization
• capacity
• coordination
• accountability
Capacity
The capacity of the service-delivery system refers to the size and diversity of treatment
resources available for drug court clients, as well as the intensity and adequacy of
treatment services. Measures of capacity could include the percentage of juvenile drug
court cases in which a service ordered by the court is actually available.
Coordination
The coordination of the treatment and services system refers to the strength and
frequency of inter-agency relationships among the network of service providers in the
community, and the extent to which they respond to the supervision of the court.
Accountability
Accountability refers to the accountability of the services system to the juvenile drug
court, whether drug court clients receive services as ordered by the court, and whether
the court possesses and actually exercises the authority to enforce its orders for
service.
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Authority
• formality
• consistency
• transparency
• engagement
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Juvenile drug court programs produce two basic “outputs” – organization & authority.
Authority: The defining characteristic of juvenile drug courts is the manner in which they
combine the authority of the court process with constructive social interventions and
effective drug treatment. The use of legal authority is hypothesized to encourage young
offenders to participate and remain in treatment, but it is also thought to exert an
independent effect on offender behavior. In particular, juvenile drug courts are designed
to motivate behavior change in offenders with dramatic, yet supportive courtroom routines
and close, repeated attention from the judge and other courtroom participants.
The ingredients of effective court authority are hypothesized to be:
Formality
Courtroom procedures and any other court activities witnessed by young offenders are
formal in order to impress upon each youth that the court possesses legitimate legal and
social authority to intervene and sanction their behavior.
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Authority
• formality
• consistency
• transparency
• engagement
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Consistency
The imposition of sanctions, the granting of rewards, and other court procedures are
as consistent and predictable as possible in order to shape offender behavior and to
demonstrate (to offenders, family members, and other participants) that the court
process is fair and equitable. Consistent implementation of court procedures also
indicates to offenders that the imposition of sanctions will be a reliable, or even certain
consequence of failures to follow program requirements.
Transparency
So that young offenders understand that juvenile drug court procedures are fair,
equitable, and certain, the process itself is clear and easy to follow, with a minimum of
legal jargon and procedural complexity. Decision-making about individual cases is
conducted in open court whenever possible, and offenders are encouraged to ask
questions in open court. Court sessions are held in groups, so that each participant
sees not only his or her own hearing, but those of other youth as well.
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Authority
• formality
• consistency
• transparency
• engagement
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Engagement
Juvenile drug courts are designed to be engaging, at times even entertaining for young
offenders and their families. This element of the drug court process is sometimes
referred to as “the theater effect.” The court process is designed to hold the attention
of offenders in order to facilitate behavioral change, and some researchers suggest
that the quality and intensity of interaction between judges and offenders has an
independent effect on offender behavior (Senjo and Leip, 2002).
In juvenile drug courts, judges verbally praise or criticize offenders in open court, and
they behave in dramatic ways to reinforce a specific message. Some particularly
flamboyant judges have been known to jump on a witness table to announce to the
court audience that a youth has succeeded in graduating from drug court. Tangible
rewards are used to reinforce positive behavior. Graduates are brought to the front of
the courtroom to receive certificates of completion and a round of applause. The
process is designed to be memorable and visceral, both for successful youth and
those failing to be successful.
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Authority
• formality
• consistency
• transparency
• engagement
Measurement strategies for juvenile drug court evaluations must include a variety of
approaches. Particularly when measuring authority as a program output, researchers
must observe courtroom procedures directly, but they should also measure the
subjective perceptions of drug court participants.
Surveys and interviews should be used to detect not only how the juvenile drug court
process expresses legal authority, but how young offenders and their families
experience that authority and the extent to which the court’s intended messages are
received.
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be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
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Quality of
Intervention
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• comprehensiveness
• intensity / duration
• individualization
• family focus
• multi-problem focus
By leveraging or establishing adequate services and supervision for drug-involved
offenders, juvenile drug courts help to ensure that young offenders enter into, and
remain in treatment. Effective systems of intervention are believed to exhibit the
following characteristics:
Comprehensiveness
Services deal with all individual, family, and community problems thought to be
associated with each offender’s substance abuse problems.
Intensity / duration
The service-delivery system is equipped to work with young offenders as long as, and
as much as, each youth requires. Juvenile drug court judges do not routinely report an
inability to secure adequate services.
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Quality of
Intervention
• comprehensiveness
• intensity / duration
• individualization
• family focus
• multi-problem focus
Individualization
Providers are able to supply services and supervision programs that meet the
needs of a wide variety of individual offenders in varying family and community
contexts.
Family Focus
At least some of the service providers available to the juvenile drug court employ
methods with a family focus.
Multi-Problem Focus
Service providers employ methods that focus on range of potential problem areas
that may be related to each youth’s situation as well as the factors that directly led
them to become involved with the juvenile drug court program.
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Perceived
Deterrence
• certainty
• celerity
• severity
Classical deterrence theory suggests that sanctions and punishments will be more
effective when they are delivered with the proper combination of certainty, severity,
and celerity (or swiftness). To some extent, these elements can offset each other.
Sanctions that are very certain may not have to be as severe or swift, and those that
are very severe may not have to be as certain or swift, etc.
Deterrence theory is premised on the view that, by nature, people act to minimize pain
and are sufficiently rational to develop expectations about the consequences of their
actions. They weigh the expected benefits of criminal or deviant acts against expected
benefits and perform only those acts for which the benefits seem to exceed costs.
Thus, increasing the certainty, swiftness, or severity of punishment should affect the
cost-benefit calculus of would-be offenders and deter them from acting illegally.
In making an empirical connection between the elements of deterrence and the
outcomes of drug court programs, researchers must be careful to measure offender’s
perceptions of the certainty, severity, and celerity of sanctions.
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Perceived
Legitimacy
• fairness
• proportionality
To ensure their compliance with authority, individuals must perceive the exercise of
authority to be legitimate (Milgram, 1974). An authority is recognized as legitimate
when the person or agency of authority is seen as having a legitimate right to give
commands or directions to others, and those receiving the commands or directions
feel an obligation to obey.
In the context of juvenile drug courts, one important view of authority — procedural
justice — posits that the extent to which decisions are arrived at transparently and fairly
will determine the extent to which participants accept those decisions as legitimate.
Tyler (1997) identified four key dimensions of procedural justice: 1) trustworthiness of
the decision making authority, 2) opportunity for personal participation in the
proceedings, 3) being treated with respect/dignity by authorities, and 4) the neutrality
of authority.
Whether or not a court process (and the court’s authority) is perceived as legitimate
can only be assessed by measuring the attitudes and opinions of individuals subject to
the process. Thus, researchers must survey and/or interview clients to measure this
dimension of drug court program outputs.
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Perceived
Self-Efficacy
• information
• encouragement
• rewards
Social psychological theory asserts that individuals attempt to shape their environment
through action, and their willingness to engage in that action depends on their
subjective beliefs about the likelihood of success. Bandura (1999) describes the role
of “efficacy,” or the belief that a desired outcome can be achieved through a particular
action. Perceived self-efficacy is the foundation of human agency. A person who
believes that action will dependably produce a desired outcome is more likely to act.
Perceived self-efficacy would naturally be associated with motivation, goals,
aspirations, outcome expectancies, and perceptions of opportunity in the social
environment (Bandura 2000).
This theory might posit that the clients of a juvenile drug court will be successful in
changing their behavior (reducing their use of drugs and alcohol), when they:
• have information supportive of making changes;
• believe that they have the ability to change;
• are encouraged and supported in making change; and
• receive timely and tangible inducements or rewards for making change.
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Motivation
to Change
Behavior specialists once viewed the motivation for behavioral change as an
inherently internal phenomenon, coming solely from within the individual. Failure
to change, therefore, was entirely the responsibility of the person attempting to
change, and there was little reason for social programs to seek change other than
through individual-level, internally focused assistance.
More recent thinking accepts that there are two types of motivation, intrinsic and
extrinsic, and that either may suffice for achieving change. Extrinsic motivation
comes from forces outside the individual. These forces can be positive (e.g.,
rewards for participation in treatment) or negative (e.g., jail for refusing to
participate). Juvenile drug courts employ both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to
foster behavior change.
Researchers must specify the form of motivation that is the target of particular
drug court activities. By establishing the connection between those activities and
changes in individual behavior, evaluations will begin to identify the most effective
pathways to behavior change.
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Participation
in Treatment
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The principal goal of the juvenile drug court process is to ensure that clients
persist through the stages of change. When effective systems of intervention
are employed, the treatment and service-delivery system as a whole should be
able to ensure that young offenders participate and remain in treatment.
Coerced treatment is often the vehicle by which juvenile drug court clients
reach the goal of behavioral change. Miller and Flaherty (2000) defined
coerced treatment for substance abuse and addiction as treatment with
“alternative consequences” — e.g. loss of rewards and benefits, legal penalties,
incarceration. Coercion is rarely effective on its own, but coercion can entice
or restrain a client to continue in a program of treatment, and the longer a
client remains in treatment the greater chance the treatment has to facilitate
and sustain the process of change.
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Participation
in Treatment
Researchers seeking to measure the influence of client participation and
retention on behavioral change should collect detailed, event-level tracking
data that follows each client through various levels of agency involvement and
that identifies each client’s attendance and engagement in drug treatment and
other service delivery.
Evaluators should also assess the extent to which coercion plays a role in the
treatment experiences of each client, and whether the strength of coercion
varies according to the client’s position in the stages of change. For example,
justice programs would traditionally increase the severity of coercion with
each successive attempt at coercion, but the stages of change model
(Prochaska et al.) may suggest the opposite — individuals at the latter stages
of change may require less, not more severe coercion, as their motivation
becomes more intrinsic.
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Therapeutic
Catalyst
For some offenders, the effective exercise of the court’s authority may be
sufficient to motivate behavioral change. For such offenders, regular
appearances in juvenile drug court will serve as an effective catalyst for
change, independently of any treatment regimen provided by the program.
For other offenders, the court process may not be enough to begin and
sustain change. They will require the additional catalyst of the therapeutic
services provided by the intervention system.
To measure the influence of treatment participation as a therapeutic
catalyst, evaluators must measure each client’s subjective experiences and
beliefs about treatment and how they compare with the client’s beliefs and
experiences about the courtroom procedures in which they participated.
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The primary goal of juvenile drug court is to facilitate behavioral change. This
may involve several cycles of success and relapse as offenders move through
the process of change. Experts in substance abuse once believed that the best
way to promote behavioral change was an aggressive process to break through
“denial” and confront individuals with the consequences of their behavior. In
practice, however, this technique usually accelerated the process of failure and
withdrawal for most clients (perhaps 80%), while only those remaining were
defined as successful.
Current thinking accepts the cyclical nature of change and sees treatment as a
method of moving clients through the stages of change — often several times —
on their way to lasting improvement. A recurrence of unwanted behavior (i.e.,
relapse) is not seen as “failure,” but as the end of one cycle and the beginning of
the next. By moving young offenders through the stages of change with a
combination of services and sanctions, juvenile drug courts work to achieve their
ultimate goal of reducing delinquency and substance abuse.
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Behavior
Change
In their “Transtheoretical Model of Change,” Prochaska and his colleagues
describe how people go through several stages on their way to lasting change:
Pre-contemplation
No intention to take action to achieve long-term change.
Contemplation
Intending to take action in the near future.
Preparation
Intending to take action immediately and already taking
some steps in that direction.
Action
Completed changes in overt behavior during recent past.
Maintenance
Completed long-term changes in overt behavior.
Termination
Overt behavior will never return and individuals have
can function without fear of relapse.
Some practitioners have cautioned that the stages of change may be slightly
different for chemically dependent populations, but the Prochaska model is a
useful framework for considering the cyclical process of behavior change.
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Fishbein (1997) focused on the relationship between intentions and
behavior since intentions are the underlying fabric of behavior. An
individual’s intentions, in turn, are determined by three factors: 1) attitudes
toward the behavior; 2) norms (i.e., societal constraints) concerning the
behavior; and 3) perceived behavioral control (i.e., self-efficacy beliefs, or
one’s confidence in his or her ability to perform the behavior).
Fishbein suggested that intentions could be an accurate predictor of
behavior if an actor perceives the behavior to be reasonable and
achievable, but intentions may be a less-than-accurate predictor if an actor
believes he or she cannot or should not perform the desired behavior for a
variety of reasons (e.g., lack of ability; negative environmental factors).
An effort to change behavior needs to start by changing intentions, but it
must also recognize whether those intentions involve normative, attitudinal,
or self-efficacy considerations. For example, intentions that spring from
personal attitudes may be easier to modify than those rooted in societal
norms or cultural expectations.
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Other models could serve as a lens with which to view the behavioral
change goals of juvenile drug courts. Rosenstock, Strecher, and Becker’s
(1988) health belief model, for example, sees perception as a key factor in
behavior change. The first stage in the model starts with a person who may
or may not have concern about a health issue or health-related behavior. A
specific and salient motivator (either internal or external) is necessary to
make a potential health issue relevant.
The second stage begins with the onset of risk perception, when either the
individual (or someone close to the individual) becomes aware that a
specific issue makes the individual vulnerable to illness or harm. For
example, a perceived threat of illness often galvanizes people to assist their
loved ones to lose weight, stop smoking, or quit drinking alcohol.
Finally, the third stage in the model emerges with the belief that a given
plan of action will be sufficient to reduce the perceived threat at a
subjectively acceptable cost (i.e. perceived barriers that must be overcome
to reach the health goal).
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Behavior
Change
Each of the preceding models includes some notion of self-efficacy, or the
subjective belief in one’s ability to change. Successful change efforts
depend on each individual receiving considerable support and
encouragement to change, as well as direct experience in making
successful (often incremental) changes.
Another key concept in each model suggests that individuals are more
likely to succeed when they believe they will get some tangible benefit
from changing. These “outcome expectations” can be defined as a
person’s estimate that a given behavior will lead to a particular outcome.
Each model has something to offer practitioners seeking more systematic
methods of conceptualizing the change process for program design and
client impact assessment. Regardless which model seems to fit best, it is
important that conceptual frameworks include some formal model of
behavior change and that evaluators measure the components of that
model at the individual client level so that variations in the model can be
tied to variations in client outcomes.
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References
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
Bandura, Albert (1977). Social Learning Theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Bandura, Albert (1999). A sociocognitive analysis of substance abuse: An agentic perspective. Psychological Science, 10(3), 214217.

Bandura, Albert (2000). Exercise of human agency through collective efficacy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 9 (3),
75-78.

Fishbein, Martin (1999). Predicting, understanding, and changing socially relevant behaviors: Lessons learned, in Craig McGarty
(ed.), The Message from Social Psychology: Perceptions on Mind and Society , 77-91. Malden, MA. Blackwell Publishers, Inc.

Hatry, Harry (1999). Performance Measurement: Getting Results. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

Milgram, Stanley (1974). Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View. New York: Harper and Row.

Miller, Norman S. and Joseph A. Flaherty (2000). Effectiveness of coerced addiction treatment (alternative consequences): A
review of the clinical research. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 18, 9-16.

Prochaska, James O., & Carlo C. DiClemente (1982). Transtheoretical therapy toward a more integrative model of change.
Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 19(3), 276-287.

Prochaska, James O., Carlo C. DiClemente & John C. Norcross (1992). In search of how people change: Applications to addictive
behaviors. American Psychologist, 47(9), 1102-1114.

Prochaska James O., John C. Norcross & Carlo C. DiClemente (1994). Changing for Good. New York: William Morrow and
Company, Inc.

Rosenstock, Irwin M., Victor J. Strecher, and Marshall H. Becker (1988). Social learning theory and the health belief model. Health
Education Quarterly, 15(2), 175-183.

Senjo, Scott R. and Leslie A. Leip (2002). Testing and developing theory in drug court: A four-part Logit model to predict program
completion. Criminal Justice Policy Review 12(1).

Tyler, Thomas R. (1997). Social Justice in a Diverse Society. Boulder, CO: Westview.
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not
be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
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For More Information
A Conceptual Framework for
Evaluating Juvenile Drug Courts
by
Jeffrey A. Butts
John Roman
Shelli B. Rossman
Adele V. Harrell
About the Authors
A product of the
URBAN INSTITUTE’S
Program on Youth Justice
http://youth.urban.org
To receive monthly email updates of research from the
Justice Policy Center, send an email to jpc@ui.urban.org
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About the Authors

Jeffrey A. Butts is director of the Program on Youth Justice in the Justice Policy Center at the Urban
Institute. In addition to the National Evaluation of Juvenile Drug Courts, his recent work has included
projects on the effectiveness of teen courts, methods used to anticipate the demand for bed space in
juvenile corrections facilities, and community-wide initiatives to improve services for drug-involved
juvenile offenders. Before joining the Urban Institute in 1997, he was a senior research associate at
the National Center for Juvenile Justice in Pittsburgh. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon
and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

John Roman is a research associate in the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center, where his work
focuses on evaluating criminal justice policies and programs. He was the principal investigator for a
national study of drug court recidivism rates, and worked on evaluations for the Jefferson County
(Birmingham, AL) Drug Court, the Fulton County (Atlanta, GA) Drug Court, and community court
programs in Portland, Oregon. Mr. Roman prepared a systematic review of drug court research for
the Campbell Collaboration’s Crime and Justice Group, and has participated in developing curricula
for the National Drug Court Institute’s research and evaluation workshops. He is a graduate of
Kenyon College, holds a Masters of Public Policy from the University of Michigan, and is pursuing a
Ph.D. in public policy at the University of Maryland.

Shelli B. Rossman is a senior research associate in the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center,
where she works on projects dealing with at-risk youth, substance abuse, community intervention
strategies, and prevention programs. She directed the national evaluation of the SafeFutures
initiative for the U.S. Department of Justice as well as the impact evaluation of Opportunity to
Succeed (OPTS), a program of community-based aftercare services for substance abusing adult
offenders. She is a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and holds an MA in sociology from
Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Adele V. Harrell is a principal research associate at the Urban Institute and was the founding director
of the Justice Policy Center. Her recent studies have included an evaluation of the Brooklyn
Treatment Court services for female offenders, an evaluation of the "Breaking the Cycle" program
that links the court process with treatment services for drug-involved defendants, a five-year
experimental evaluation of the Washington, D.C. Drug Court, and an experimental evaluation of
Children at Risk, a comprehensive drug prevention program for youth ages 11 to 13. Dr. Harrell
earned the Ph.D. in sociology from George Washington University.
The views expressed are those of the authors and should not
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