Leadership New Jersey
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Introduction

Drug Courts are entities which fuse ongoing therapeutic measures with extended case processing in a justice system. They are not merely courts assigned to hear exclusively drug cases in a traditional criminal case processing model. Instead, they implement and supervise long-term probationary sentences (or other extended bouts of compliance with the dictates of courts in non-criminal matters) for specially selected offenders whose non-violent criminality or other anti-social behavior is drug-driven and which is conditioned upon continued compliance with rigorous treatment plans. They both monitor and mentor progress. Characterized by their relationships with participants rather than by the identities of the charges which brought those participants to them, Drug Courts try to firmly but fairly help drug-driven offenders stay the course of recovery.

Unlike traditional probationary or parole supervision, Drug Courts deliberately and directly take on the challenge of brokering actual change in offenders. By reducing a primary incentive to criminality - drug dependency - Drug Courts specifically target the predicate condition to a large proportion of today's criminality.

Drug Courts present an alternative to the high financial and societal costs of addressing addiction with punishment and incarceration. Actual reduction in drug-driven criminality has the potential to significantly improve the quality of community life and markedly enhance public safety. For these reasons, the 1998 Class of Leadership New Jersey has set out to explore here the past, present and future of Drug Courts in New Jersey.

I) WHY NEW JERSEY NEEDS TO CONSIDER THE DRUG COURT APPROACH

Time and again, and as acknowledged on October 23rd, 1999 in remarks made by New Jersey Department of Corrections Commissioner Jack Terhune during a "Leadership New Jersey" Seminar on Criminal Justice in New Jersey , it has been noted that somewhere between 60% to 80% of the inmates in New Jersey state prisons suffer from drug and/or alcohol dependency . The vast bulk of these offenders are non-violent . In the past generation both nationally and in New Jersey, the number of young citizens dependent on drugs and alcohol has multiplied , the rate of drug-driven criminality has exploded , and the expansion of prison beds and their cost has skyrocketed . The criminal recidivism of law-breaking alcohol and drug abusers is also chronic and primarily non-violent and has proven to be largely unaffected by routine probation or even one or more bouts of imprisonment , even when some form of treatment for addiction has been incorporated into the sentence.

It is thus apparent that the New Jersey Criminal Justice System's traditional methods of punishment and purported rehabilitation as a response to criminality do not achieve significant or sufficient reduction in the lawlessness in this state which is driven by substance abuse. Resorting to incarceration and generic probation as the remedies to non-violent addiction-driven crime appears to be a failure of public policy: these measures fail to protect the public from this kind of pathology; their cost is enormous; and they fail to transform these offenders into productive members of society. Being simply "tough" on this kind of crime has actually been self-defeating rather than effective.

As a potential antidote to this conundrum, "Drug Courts" have begun to be introduced in New Jersey. Deliberately aimed at the goal of actually inducing constructive permanent change in participants, these programs fuse criminal justice with treatment, and both direct and monitor the course of defendants' sentences. Interweaving long-term, specifically calibrated intensive addiction therapy with arduous probation requirements, they rely upon legal remedies developed to ensure programmatic compliance when necessary. In ongoing relationships, judge-led teams supervise and mentor carefully screened participants, making multiple demands and enforcing them through a wide range of sanctions and incentives.

In this paper, we will consider the landscape within which Drug Courts in New Jersey exist, explicate the concept of Drug Courts, review their history to date in the country and in New Jersey in particular, consider the implications of their present status in New Jersey, and make observations and recommendations about their future here.

II) UNDERSTANDING THE NEW JERSEY JUSTICE SYSTEM AND THE TRADITIONAL APPROACH TO ADDICTION-DRIVEN CRIMINALITY AND ANTI-SOCIAL BEHAVIOR IN ORDER TO ASSESS NEW JERSEY'S RIPENESS FOR A DRUG COURT APPROACH

To understand what a "Drug Court" is, it is helpful to first briefly review those structural, philosophical and operational aspects of "traditional" New Jersey criminal, family and municipal courts which could be impacted by the drug court model. In addition, the relationship between "traditional" probation or parole and substance abuse should be understood so that it can be compared and contrasted to what is offered in the drug court model . It is also important to understand that the settings for many of these components are in flux due to recent and ongoing changes in the administration of the judiciary branch, and that their parameters are also shifting due to considerable legislative activism.

A) Funding of the Judiciary Branch
The New Jersey court system is essentially funded by state money through its Judiciary budget, which supports, among many items, the budgets for trial court services, probationary services and the administration of the courts. Supplementing these expenditures to some degree are various federal monies that can be accessed through the grant process and applied to specially and discretely targeted areas of interest. Services which are financed by sources outside of the court budget - such as health care or school based programs, for example - may be accessed by the court for the benefit of those subject to its jurisdiction primarily via coordination with other entities. As in all governmental departments, there is significant competition for allocation of insufficiently available Judiciary dollars for the administration of the courts and court-related programs. Not every innovation that may deserve implementation can be or is funded. Thus, advocating for budget enhancement, prioritization of needs and allocation of resources are three of the consistently key stressors in the New Jersey justice system.

B) Judicial Shortage
The shortage of sufficient sitting judges occasioned by a chronic backlog in the New Jersey judicial appointment process adds an extra burden to the ability of the court system to administer justice fairly, completely and promptly. Furthermore, an ever-pressurized docket every year in the criminal branch of the court system places critical pressure on the justice system to "produce" results in a manner acceptable to the public.

C) Changes in the Management of the Judiciary
The consolidation of the New Jersey court system pursuant to constitutional amendment in 1992 has resulted in major ongoing shifts in the leadership and management of the judiciary, as well as transformation in the manner of policy development within this branch of government. An overall governing body has recently been established known as the Judicial Council, which is made up of the Chief Justice, the Director and Deputy Administrative Director of the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), the 15 Vicinage Assignment Judges (head judges of New Jersey's 15 previously autonomous court regions), and Chairs of the Conferences of Civil, Criminal and Family Division Presiding Judges.

The manner in which the Judiciary seeks to make innovations in established practice areas of the law as well as to study whether and how to implement new endeavors of sufficient magnitude has been via either standing Supreme Court Committees or ad hoc Supreme Court Committees and Task Forces. Among these have been two Supreme Court Committees on Efficiency.

As a result of recommendations in the 1996 report of the Supreme Court's Committee on Efficiency II, an initiative was undertaken by the Judiciary Strategic Planning Committee not only to identify the mission, vision and core values of the court system, but also to establish long-term goals, define performance objectives and determine resource needs. In a March, 1998 report specifying 44 particular recommended strategic initiatives, the Committee called for further strategic planning aimed at achieving 11 key goals. Based upon these recommendations, the Chief Justice has directed the Conferences of Presiding Judges of the various divisions and others within the judiciary to develop recommended sets of standard operating procedures based upon a "best practices" analysis of existing systems, routines and models.

D) Challenges Inherent in New Relationships Among Judiciary Employees, Court-Community Partnerships and Litigants Engaged in New Methods of Dispute Resolution
One of the 44 recommended strategic initiatives in the 1998 report of the Judiciary Strategic Planning Committee urged integration of the principles of Total Quality Management (TQM) into the structure of the trial courts, in recognition of the advisability of empowering all participants in a management structure to share in its mission by collectively contributing to the efficient and effective flow of a shared system. Some of the functions of the court system involve participation by those outside of the judiciary, however, and in these circumstances, it is unclear whether and to what extent those individuals can be included in the TQM loop.

Another recommended strategic initiative urged "statewide guidance, support, and direction for the court/community partnership efforts that have already been established at the local or vicinage level, particularly the court/community initiative." Programs which are located within the judicial system but cannot operate without collaboration with representatives of other institutions and which rely heavily on linkages with community resources suffer from lack of clarification of the extent to which non-judiciary personnel can influence outcomes as well as support from the community in some form of court/community partnership.

The guidelines and parameters of what is permissible in a New Jersey court/community partnership have never been explicitly defined, however , and are complicated by the existence of a strict and rigorously policed judiciary ethical code in New Jersey. Membership in the Committees on Minority Concerns which have been established in each vicinage, for example, comprises both employees of the judiciary branch and community representatives, and significant confusion abounds among such committees as to what constitute acceptable operations and programs for those court/community partnerships. Excitement generated in the community for court programs and initiatives tends to deflate over time due to the ambiguity of the boundaries of court/community collaboration, and the development of creative potential problem solving measures is often chilled as court/community coalitions remain unsure of their power and limits.

The continuing development and implementation of methods for Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) is also recommended in the 1998 Report of the Judiciary Strategic Planning Committee, which pledged in its "Vision Statement of the Court System" that that system would offer complementary methods of dispute resolution. Given the consistently crowded dockets of all branches of the legal system, methods of resolving conflict such as arbitration and mediation which rely upon a problem solving approach and consensus building in lieu of adjudication are rapidly gaining support by both purveyors and consumers of the justice system.

Considerably less expensive while also reportedly resulting in a higher degree of participant satisfaction than adversarial modes, ADR is now frequently resorted to in disagreements related to issues as diverse as custody and visitation, neighborhood disputes, business "divorces"or environmental contamination. Those who actively engage in conflict resolution proceedings enjoy the advantage of helping to solve their own problems and may well honor the solutions and accept the changes arrived through such a process more than if those same solutions were ordered by an outside authority. This orientation is highly consistent with the Drug Court approach, detailed infra.

E) Prevalence of Vicinage Local Cultures
Despite the existence of a state-wide AOC, a major current strategic planning process occurring within the judiciary with a goal of statewide consistency in practice from county to county, there remain leftover local "cultures" within each of the regional vicinages to the degree that each vicinage still operates with a distinct character that may vary considerably from that of its neighbors. Within each of the state's 15 court vicinages is a trial level Superior Court which is divided into various divisions , among them, a Criminal Division and a Family Division. The entire vicinage is presided over by an Assignment Judge, and each division within by a Presiding Judge. The designation of who will sit as an Assignment Judge of a vicinage is made by the Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court and tends to be a long-term position sometimes approaching "tenure". Much of the local character and culture of a vicinage is derived from the leadership style and substantive priorities of its Assignment Judge, who is a powerful figure. Notably, decisions as to whether a particular court pilot program or initiative will be supported in a particular vicinage or in what manner court/community partnerships can operate there rest ultimately with the Assignment Judge of that vicinage.

F) Judicial Assignments in Superior Court
The designation of those who will sit as presiding judges of the divisions of a particular Superior Court is made by its vicinage Assignment Judge, and carries much less expectation of permanence. The Assignment Judge also determines in which division and for how long each individual Superior Court judge in that vicinage will sit. Typically, both the Assignment Judge and Presiding Judge of a given division determine together the specific assignment of a given judge within that division. Thus, for example, Judge A could be assigned for a two-year term to the Family Division, during that period spend the first year hearing divorces and the second year hearing juvenile delinquency matters, and thereafter be assigned to a two-year term in, say, the Criminal Division hearing indicted criminal matters. Rotation among the various divisions and cross-training of Superior Court judges is routinely favored, although a judge with a particular demonstrated expertise or an enthusiasm for a traditionally unpopular assignment may be consistently retained in a particular assignment.

G) Judicial Training
Training of New Jersey Superior Court judges is conducted primarily through seminars and retreats sponsored by the AOC, supplemented by attendance at various regional or national conferences and judicial education "schools". Not every judge is trained about the same topics or in the same programs, nor does he or she necessarily learn or understand the same material.

H) Structure of Criminal Courts
The Criminal Division of a New Jersey Superior Court hears and disposes of felonies which have been charged against defendants in that vicinage. Activities of judges in these courts typically include duties and responsibilities such as: setting bail, considering requests for reductions or increases in bail, hearing numerous motions such as those seeking the suppression of evidence, presiding over trials and/or guilty pleas, sentencing convicted defendants, hearing petitions alleging violations of probation which has previously been imposed on certain defendants, and considering requests of various kinds for post-conviction relief. The division's caseload is generally divided into separate lists of cases which are assigned to each judge to handle to completion, and judges must "manage" their lists with the aid of trained managers within the court system. Judges determine issues such as whether requests by attorneys for postponements will be granted and, together with their court managers, they determine issues such as the assignment of trial dates. Unless it is diverted into a program limited to first-time alleged offenders charge with less serious matters, a felony matter on a judge's list will be resolved by one of the following methods: dismissal for lack of prosecution, withdrawal from prosecution by the Prosecutor's Office with the permission of the court, trial resulting in an acquittal, trial resulting in a conviction which will then be followed by a sentencing, or a guilty plea which will then be followed by a sentencing.

I) Traditional Relationships between Superior Court Judges and Defendants
Contact between a defendant and a judge in a Superior Court criminal matter is typically fairly limited. The defendant will hear conversations between the judge and that defendant's defense counsel and might be addressed by the judge during those conversations. If a trial occurs, the defendant will hear the judge preside over it and may be addressed by the judge occasionally during the course of the trial. If a plea offer is made by the Prosecutor's Office to a defendant and the defendant declines to accept it, eventually the judge will have a brief dialogue with the defendant to make sure that s/he understands that the opportunity to plead guilty in exchange for the offer is cut off at a certain point, and the judge may express an opinion to the defendant about that decision. If a defendant enters a guilty plea, the judge will have a specific dialogue with the defendant to ascertain whether s/he understands the nature and consequences of the guilty plea and whether s/he is, in fact, guilty of the charge(s) to which s/he is pleading guilty. Finally, the judge will address the defendant at sentencing if sentencing occurs.

If a defendant is sentenced to a prison term, the sentencing experience will ordinarily constitute the last meaningful contact between the defendant and the judge. Usually, the defendant will go off to prison, will eventually be paroled and assigned to the supervision of a parole officer and will either successfully complete parole or fail on parole and be returned to prison. The sentencing judge plays virtually no role in the parole process. If a defendant is sentenced to a term of probation instead of a term of imprisonment, a probation officer will be assigned to supervise him or her and if probation is completed successfully, no further contact will occur between the judge and the defendant. If a probationer is not faring well on probation, the probation department will draw up a petition alleging that the probation has been violated, and the probationer will be returned to court for a hearing before the original sentencing judge to determine whether further probation is still appropriate, or whether the probation has failed to such a degree that imprisonment must follow as a consequence. Following this determination by the judge, again no further contact will typically occur between the probationer and the judge.

Contact between a Superior Court judge in the Family Division and one accused of an act of delinquency as a juvenile is generally no more extensive than that between an adult defendant and a judge. Typically one or more judges (depending upon the size of the vicinage) sitting in the Family Division of that Superior Court will have the responsibility of presiding over delinquency matters. The usual points of contact between a judge and a juvenile could consist of an initial hearing or two to consider whether the juvenile will be or remain detained pending the outcome of the case, a "pre-trial" hearing at which the juvenile will either admit or deny the charges, a trial if one is called for, and one or more dispositional (sentencing) hearings. Generally, a larger range of diversionary options and social service supports are available to offenders subject to the delinquency process, and although the juvenile may not see a judge much more than just outlined, s/he may come into contact with a variety of other quasi-authoritative individuals such as Home Detention monitors, Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) workers, court-based intake workers and/or therapists, probation officers, etc.

In both adult criminal matters and juvenile delinquency matters, then, judicial interaction with defendants is limited; any ongoing work with defendants typically occurs outside of the courtroom; and, generally, only reports about lack of progress will be brought to the attention of the court with likely negative consequences to follow thereafter to those being brought back before the court.

J) Relevant Aspects of Municipal Courts
Within every vicinage, every municipal entity also has a municipal court and a municipal judge , as well as a municipal police department. Municipal courts and judges have jurisdiction over all traffic offenses and Disorderly Persons offenses alleged to have occurred in that municipality, and also participate in the early stages of the processing of most kinds of felonies which are alleged to have occurred within that municipality. Unlike Superior Court judges, who are appointed by the governor, municipal judges are appointed by the presiding executive entity of the municipality and sit at its pleasure. Municipal Courts, which are courts of limited jurisdiction, are also the only courts which are funded in large measure from local, rather than centralized, government coffers.

Contact between a municipal judge and a defendant is also generally minimal. Typically, a judge will only interact with a defendant in a municipal matter at an initial arraignment, a trial or guilty plea, and a sentencing. Disorderly Persons offenses and certain traffic offenses may also be subject to possible probationary terms and/or jail terms of up to one year. While statistics are not as easy to come by with regard to the role that substance abuse plays in municipal violations, anecdotal evidence suggests that the quasi-criminality of municipal offenders is at least as likely driven by alcohol and drug dependency as the criminality of felons, if not more so.

K) Traditional Probation
Both Municipal Court judges and Superior Court judges routinely sentence individuals (both adult and juvenile) to terms of probation. A probation officer then becomes the surrogate for the judge in the sense that s/he exercises ongoing authority over the defendant for the duration of the probation. Unlike a traditional sentencing judge, a probation officer actually maintains an ongoing relationship with a defendant. The ability of New Jersey probation officers to fully or adequately supervise probationers is severely limited, however, by excessive current caseloads .

Frequently, a judge may order as a condition of probation that a probationer undergo a substance abuse evaluation and/or treatment, when such measures seem called for. When this is done, probation officers are responsible for monitoring compliance with such conditions. There is enormous variation in the degree to which probation officers assist probationers in fulfilling such requirements. There is also no clear protocol that all probation officers must follow with regard to how far they must go to assist a probationer in obtaining treatment. Like most addicts, many probationers who are drug dependent do not acknowledge that they are so and resist treatment, as well.

L) Treatment Assessment Services for the Courts
The Court may also need to determine the degree of substance dependency, if any, of an individual whose case has not yet been resolved in the criminal justice system. For example, a judge might want to order drug treatment as a condition of release on bail, or a judge contemplating a probationary sentence might want to know the degree of addiction and treatment needs of a defendant before making the final sentence determination. For situations where the court needs information about the substance abuse needs of defendants, the services of T.A.S.C. (Treatment Assessment Services for the Courts) officers are helpful. Employed by the courts and funded by the court budgets, T.A.S.C. officers work within the Superior Court system to clinically evaluate needs, recommend and sometimes help to obtain substance abuse treatment for criminal defendants.

M) Lack of Availability of Treatment
Lack of wherewithal to obtain drug treatment even without involvement in the criminal justice system is endemic to our society; indeed there is evidence that the best access to treatment for indigent addicts is actually via the criminal justice system . Lack of ability to pay for post-disposition evaluation and treatment represents a chronic individual and systemic challenge, even if such services are available, and frequently they are not. New Jersey does not have treatment on demand for substance abuse. It has been estimated that the number of addiction treatment beds (in-patient and out-patient combined) presently available in New Jersey can service no more than approximately 10% of the population in need of such services . Only a small fraction of those beds are available without cost to the consumer , whether or not that person has become embroiled in the criminal justice system. In this arena as in all others, the advent of managed care has tremendously limited the extent of treatment even when it is theoretically available. Limited numbers of adequate treatment facilities and programs are scattered throughout the state, and many of them have long waiting lists. Simply put, it is often virtually impossible even for motivated probationers to comply with substance abuse treatment.

N) Random Urinalysis
On the other hand, funding for random urine screens of probationers is a standard item in the budgets of most Probation Departments, so that probationers who use illegal drugs (or alcohol when forbidden to do so) are routinely caught. Variation exists with regard to which consequence will flow to a probationer who has given a "hot" urine, but each such violation certainly constitutes a violation of probation for which a probationer can be returned to court for a hearing on whether s/he has "flunked" probation.

Many felons who have been incarcerated, served time and been released on parole are also required to obtain substance abuse treatment as a condition of their freedom. They face the same challenges, as do probationers in acknowledging addiction and seeking, paying for and complying with treatment. A "hot" urine taken from a parolee (parole office budgets also routinely fund urinalysis kits) constitutes a violation of parole, and can easily lead to its revocation.

O) Harsh Trends in Sentencing Legislation
A harsh trend in the sentencing parameters set by the New Jersey State Legislature in the past generation has led to the increasing imposition of incarceration as a consequence to criminal and delinquent acts. Judicial sentencing discretion has been increasingly limited while prosecutorial control of sentencing protocols has been expanded . The advent of mandatory minimum terms without parole eligibility, the increase in juvenile offenses mandatorily "waived up" to the adult criminal system, the upgrading of offense degrees, and the development of legislation which embodies concepts such as "three strikes and you're out" and no early release on parole for serious offenses have all contributed to this landscape. Thus, proportionately more violators are being imprisoned for proportionately longer terms, and the prisons are bursting at the seams, far over capacity . Although crime is actually "down" , and the proportion of crime that is non-violent is very high the gross number of cases in the New Jersey criminal justice system and the gross number of incarcerated New Jersey citizens is ever-increasing . A disturbingly increasing proportion of those being imprisoned are women , a shamefully disproportionate number of those being punished are people of color , and a discouragingly disproportionate number are dependent on illegal drugs and alcohol.

P) Traditional Punishment-Oriented Jurisprudence
The traditional punishment-oriented jurisprudence that has been in place in criminal and quasi-criminal courts in New Jersey is based upon a theoretical framework in which an offender must "pay" for having harmed society (and presumably thereby be deterred from recidivating) and in which the rest of society presumably will be deterred from engaging in undesirable acts by knowledge of the undesirable ramifications that will certainly flow from them. Implicit in this model are assumptions that this cognitive connection can and will be made, that it can and will suffice to adequately influence behavior so that citizens subject to this system will make wise choices, and that simple punishment will induce change in human behavior.

Based upon this syllogism, great effort and energy is placed into maintaining "law and order" and into putting increasingly firm teeth into the systems that perpetuate and sustain it. Judges decree that miscreants who appear before them will be punished in prescribed ways and remain remote and all-powerful authority figures. Criminal defendants and juvenile delinquents are expected to "clean up their acts", reform themselves via serving their sentences, and avoid recidivism. Those who are placed on probation in lieu of incarceration are viewed as having gotten a "break" and are expected to be appreciative and exemplary in their behavior. The remainder of society is expected to conform to acceptable standards of conduct else face the consequences.

Q) Deterrence of Drug Dependent Offenders
A criminal justice model of this kind does not take into account the variations in motivation and commitment that occur in drug dependent persons. An addict who is preoccupied with marshaling enough resources to pay for the next "hit" or whose judgment is clouded by intoxication is far less likely to be deterred from illegal conduct than an offender who can make a rational informed choice to avoid a certain behavior because of its potential penal consequences. Not surprisingly, then, those whose existence is drug-driven become among those least likely to exercise law-abiding self-control and, consequently, they also become those most represented in the criminal population. As long as the traditional deterrence philosophy drives New Jersey's criminal justice system, it seems likely to remain ineffective at extinguishing most drug-driven crime. And as long as the system inadequately comes to terms with this fact, the numbers of expensively incarcerated individuals will continue to rise.

R) Drug-Driven Antisocial Behavior Subject to Non-Criminal Jurisdiction
Conflicts which reach the courthouse doors and which derive from addiction-driven antisocial behavior are not limited to matters within the jurisdiction of the criminal, juvenile delinquency and quasi-criminal municipal side of the justice system. Substance abuse also constitutes a significant factor in the incidence of problems such as child neglect and abuse, domestic violence, divorce, non-support, homelessness, runaways and, of course, driving while intoxicated (DWI). Moreover, a significant percentage of those who are civilly committed by the courts to involuntary psychiatric hospitalization fall into the category of dually diagnosed, or "Mentally Ill/Chemically Addicted" (MICA) , persons who tend to self-medicate with illegal or unhealthy substances to compensate for their psychological pain. Many of these same people are chronic offenders within the ambit of criminal, delinquency and municipal courts as well, particularly when they do not stay on prescribed medication.

S) Special Challenges Raised by the Enactment of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (AFSA)
Recent amendments to New Jersey statutes made pursuant to the federal Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (AFSA) require that the safety of a child be the paramount concern when DYFS considers whether to remove the child from a home in light of suspected abuse or neglect. A significant factor in removal is parental drug and alcohol use. Unfortunately, the degree of parental drug and alcohol abuse has also skyrocketed during the past decade, and has had a devastating impact on children in the child welfare system. Programs in other states have estimated that drug or alcohol dependency affects at least 80% of the families involved in abuse and neglect cases, with alcohol or drug use by one or both parents being a contributing factor. A similar or worse picture exists in the placement cases in New Jersey.

AFSA also significantly reduces the time frames for finding permanent placements for children removed from their homes and placed into foster care because of parental abuse and neglect. Since family reunification is the most common initial case goal in abuse and neglect cases, AFSA has meant that New Jersey Family Courts must find better coordinated ways of providing services to parents to help remedy the problems that led to the removal of the child from the home, if possible. Otherwise, pursuant to AFSA, New Jersey law now requires that DYFS seek termination of parental rights in cases wherein the child has been in foster care for 15 of the last 22 months, unless an exception is met.

More than ever, then, expedient and comprehensive parental drug treatment is a frequent, critical and urgent part of a DYFS case plan for family reunification. Prompt and definitive interventions are needed to maximize parents' ability to successfully meet DYFS requirements of recovery from substance abuse, and better developed court mechanisms are needed to ensure judicial supervision, coordination and accountability of services provided to children and families in crisis. Improved means are necessary in order to provide effective alcohol and drug recovery services, integrated with other therapeutic services needed by the family, in order to maximize the opportunity for long term parental recovery and improve long term outcomes for children.

Thus, in the child welfare court arena as well, the Drug Court approach may be one answer.

III) WHAT ARE "DRUG COURTS", AND HOW DID THEY COME ABOUT?

A) Definition of Drug Courts
Drug Courts fuse ongoing therapeutic measures with extended case processing in a justice system. They are not merely courts assigned to hear exclusively drug cases in a traditional criminal case-processing model such as that described above. Instead, they implement and supervise long term probationary sentences (or other extended bouts of compliance with the dictates of courts in non-criminal matters) for specially selected offenders whose non-violent criminality or other anti-social behavior is drug-driven and which is conditioned upon continued compliance with rigorous treatment plans. They both monitor and mentor progress. Characterized by their relationships with participants rather than by the identities of the charges which brought those participants to them, Drug Courts try to firmly but fairly help drug-driven offenders stay the course of recovery. Unlike traditional probationary or parole supervision, they deliberately and directly take on the challenge of brokering actual change in offenders.

To date, the most prevalent manifestations of Drug Courts by far are in criminal courts . The discussion of Drug Courts that follows will therefore assume a criminal justice setting unless otherwise noted.

The interaction between a Drug Court and a participant can begin where the interaction between a traditional criminal court and a defendant ends: as soon as a disposition has been made of a defendant's case. Alternatively, a drug court can function as both the pre-dispositional case processing and the post-dispositional case managing entity. In either version, the essence of the Drug Court experience is a focus on treatment within the context of an ongoing relationship with a participant, rather than merely the one or two shared milestone events characteristic of a traditional criminal justice experience. Notably, however, participants in Drug Court treatment are nevertheless held to strict standards of compliance with other stringent probation conditions such as frequent reporting, paying fines and restitution as soon as possible, clearing up old financial and court obligations, maintaining employment and/or education as soon as possible, and exercising family responsibility as soon as possible. Participants are also held to high standards of honesty, commitment and responsibility. Drug Courts require hard work and an extended commitment to a sober, law-abiding lifestyle.

B) Beginnings of a Paradigm Shift to a Drug Court Model
Drug Courts can only function within a context that enables them to exist both jurisdictionally and operationally. Thus, the laws under which Drug Courts operate must allow them to function, and the agencies and structures with whom defendants interact through Drug Court participation must be adaptable to the Drug Court mode of operation. In order to understand the present status of Drug Courts in New Jersey, it is useful to first review the national history of both the development of laws that incorporate treatment into criminal case disposition and the development of systems which operate in a new treatment-infused criminal justice paradigm.

Despite an evolving understanding of addiction as illness and the passage in 1970 of the federal Treatment and Rehabilitation Act, early efforts to manage the increasing numbers of drug cases coming into the criminal justice system in the 70's and 80's in jurisdictions such as New York and Chicago tended simply to allocate all drug cases entering a given jurisdiction to a particular venue, so that the expanding volume of cases could be handled more efficiently. Organizing the processing of drug cases in this expedited case management manner in so-called "Narcotics Courts" may have been a useful measure for criminal justice systems, but it soon became clear that it had little effect on reducing drug-driven crime itself.

Recognizing not only that a large percentage of criminality is drug-driven , but also that the conventional criminal justice deterrence model has been ineffective in decreasing drug-driven criminality , many criminal justice policy makers increasingly turned in the past decade to measures and models which acknowledge that drug dependency is an illness, and which therefore incorporate treatment into dispositional models. Some of the change has arisen out of efforts focused on drafting laws which build treatment into case disposition, while other change has arisen out of efforts by coalitions of criminal justice system institutional members - such as the judiciary, prosecutors and public defender offices, probation systems, et. al. - to build new models for actual relationships between defendants and those institutions.

C) Model State Drug Legislation
Concern for comprehensive planning to address the many problems posed by drugs in our society led the United States Congress in 1988 to mandate creation of a bipartisan, presidentially appointed commission to develop model state drug legislation. The model laws which were developed range from those concerned with economic remedies, community mobilization and drug-free families/schools/workplaces to those concerning crimes codes and treatment. Among the 44 model drug laws drafted by the President's Commission on Model State Drug Laws in 1993 was a model sentencing law known as the Model Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment Services Act (Model Criminal Justice Treatment Act), which eponymously incorporates diagnosis, periodic screening and treatment as mandatory dispositional components in criminal sentencing. Upon completion of its mission, members of the President's Commission established a body known as the National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws, which is supported by the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) in the federal Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and which currently promotes the model drug legislation drafted by the President's Commission to different state law-makers and policy planners.

Notably, the Model Criminal Justice Treatment Act actually mandates treatment where diagnostic assessment indicates it is needed. It is informed by an understanding of the relationship between substance abuse and crime, but it is also driven by an assumption which is apparently born out in various studies that even coerced treatment is of some value .

The Model Criminal Justice Treatment Act calls for treatment as a consistent component of criminal sentences for drug dependant persons, but it does not, in itself, create mechanisms for maintaining and supporting continuing recovery efforts by those who have been allowed/ordered into treatment as part of their sentences. While commanding treatment, it relies solely on pressure or coercion to obtain compliance, while incorporating the inevitable frequent urinalysis requirement.

Addiction is a chronic and, if untreated, progressive disease, marked by periods of relapse. Fear of incarceration may lead many to treatment, however it has not proven to be a successful enough motivator to keep individuals in recovery in numerous cases. Research has shown that the longer an individual remains in treatment, and the more cumulative treatment an individual receives, the greater the success in recovery is likely to be . It has also been demonstrated that achieving significant lasting success in drug treatment is a long term transformational process . Thus, if a jurisdiction solely adopts the model act as an intended exclusive means of successfully treating drug dependant offenders but does not provide related services to help them successfully stay in treatment, it may well be repeating the mistakes of the past, and it may be unlikely to achieve the desired outcomes. The model act acknowledges the advisability of diagnosis and treatment but, like other predecessor sentencing models, it perpetuates the means to catch violations without building in concomitant measures likely to actually enhance success in recovery and maximize the benefits to be gained by enabling successful recovery in formerly drug-driven offenders.

Considerable confusion exists about whether a "true" Drug Court is one based solely upon the Model Criminal Justice Treatment Act design or one based upon some other blueprint. Conceptually, therefore, it is important to understand that a sentencing scheme based upon the Model Criminal Justice Treatment Act is simply that. It is not the equivalent of an actual Drug Court or Drug Court system, which are tied to the concept of therapeutic jurisprudence , an orientation which relies upon social science to blend law and the promotion of the psychological and physical well-being of the people it affects . Drug Court is an approach to dealing with sentenced offenders whose non-violent criminality is drug-driven which follows a so-called "transformed process" oriented toward problem-solving rather than a "traditional process" typically marked by pronouncements meted out by a ' "dispassionate, disinterested magistrate".'

D) Development of the Drug Court Model
Although there are some variations on the Drug Court model, the prototypical Drug Court nationally has come to be based upon a qualitatively different approach to criminal justice first developed in 1989 in Dade County, Florida , which does embrace therapeutic jurisprudence principles. Mindful of the failures of traditional criminal justice models to stop drug dependent criminality, the developers of the Dade County model and its champions have focused upon ways in which court systems can actually nurture successful compliance and recovery.

A national Drug Court movement has evolved dramatically in the past decade. The momentum generated by widespread enthusiasm for this model has led to the establishment of a federal OJP Drug Courts Program Office. That office in conjunction with the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) has deemed a "true" Drug Court to be premised on the following key components:

• Integration of alcohol/drug treatment with justice system case processing;
• Non-adversarial team approach which promotes public safety while protecting participants' due process rights;
• Identification and placement of eligible participants early in justice system case processing;
• Access to a continuum of related treatment and rehabilitation services;
• Frequent testing to monitor abstinence;
• Coordinated strategic responses to participants' compliance;
• Ongoing judicial interaction with each participant;
• Process and outcome monitoring and evaluation;
• Continuing interdisciplinary education among team to enhance planning, implementation and operations; and
• Forging partnerships and support among courts, public agencies and the community

Drug Courts are championed by federal policy makers as highly placed as Attorney General Janet Reno and Drug "Czar" Barry McCaffrey, and an extremely well established federal bureaucracy is in place which promotes their development through education, training, networking and support services and a federal grant awards program which is generous but of limited life span. Planning, implementation and follow-up grants are available to jurisdictions that create OJP model Drug Courts, but federal funds cannot be counted on for long term sustainability of such courts. The clear design of the federal planners is to successfully launch Drug Courts as extensively as possible throughout the country and then eventually leave it to each local jurisdiction to determine how to maintain the Drug Court systems over the long haul. As of June, 1999, it was reported that at least 14 states had enacted some form of legislation to authorize local funds for Drug Courts .

Every aspect of the OJP financed Drug Court movement is being tracked statistically through entities such as the OJP Drug Court Clearinghouse and Technical Assistance Project (DCCTAP) at American University, sponsored by the Drug Courts Program of the OJP. The NADCP has grown by leaps and bounds, and has led to the establishment of a National Drug Court Institute which is developing training models for institutional participants of Drug Courts such as judges, public defenders, prosecutors, program coordinators, probation officers, and so forth.

E) Understanding the Drug Court Model
Pragmatically based upon a therapeutic jurisprudence theoretical model rather than a punitive/retribution jurisprudence, Drug Courts incorporate a knowledge of the addiction process and an understanding of the complexities inherent in real change. Treatment-driven interactions and interventions by judge-led interdisciplinary teams require that participants engage in a high degree of recovery-related activity for an extended period of time. The intent is that participants will come to internalize what are initially external controls, come to take ownership of their own recovery and, consequently, have a better chance of successful long term response to treatment. Because better self-control among participants will reduce their need to commit drug-driven crimes in the future, the positive impact on public safety engendered by the Drug Court approach should be significant.

Operating with a combination of carrot-and-stick conditioning, Drug Courts sanction and reward behaviors that are within the control of the participants, such as accountability and honesty, rather than punishing manifestations of illness such as illegal ingestion of drugs, which are not initially within the control of participants. While not condoned, relapses are expected and do not signal termination unless they are accompanied by a lack of genuine effort on the part of the faltering participant. When fully staffed and linked to adequate resources, Drug Courts provide a holistic and flexible continuum of services and care to participants whose treatment and recovery needs shift over time. They tend to treat participants with patience, optimism and dignity rather than with condescension, pessimism and disdain. Much of the handling of participants in Drug Courts resembles the best aspects of effective parenting.

Admission into Drug Court programs depends upon careful screening according to specific eligibility criteria. Successful candidates must be drug or alcohol dependent, have no history of violence, and agree to be subject to potential sanctions - even including brief periods of incarceration, if necessary - to ensure compliance with the program. Defendants must admit their wrongdoing, and the collective judgment by the admitting gatekeepers on the Drug Court team must be that their drug dependence was germane to their wrongdoing. Offenders who are deemed to have offended solely out of a profit motive are deemed ineligible for admission.

The degree of prior involvement by its participants in the Criminal Justice System determines whether a Drug Court will be diversionary in nature or post-adjudicatory. Drug Courts that are diversionary reward successful completion of their programs with a dismissal of charges. These tend to be for first offenders and are frequently the format followed in Juvenile Courts. Early in the evolution of Drug Courts, diversionary versions were more frequent than they now are.

The trend in more recent times has been to target the more serious offender, who is rewarded by being afforded an alternative to incarceration rather than by a dismissal of charges. Jurisdictions choosing this format do so because they have come to understand that "[i]t is the older more 'experienced' offender for whom successful treatment intervention can have the greatest impact on prison populations and generate the most substantial savings in reduced crime and criminal justice costs." Moreover, the subset of individuals who have either bottomed out or are in imminent danger of significant loss of liberty are particularly motivated, as they have come to understand that failure will undoubtedly entail fairly dire consequences.

F) General Programmatic Parameters of Drug Courts
Drug Courts typically impose numerous conditions upon participants who are closely monitored and whose progress is regularly reviewed both outside of their presence and in their presence. A contract or at least notice of expected behaviors is given to participants at the beginning of their involvement, and they are strictly held to those rules. The term of Drug Court probation is usually well over a year but is often considerably longer , as graduation or successful termination is conditioned not upon a certain time goal, but upon success in behavioral terms that the program has established. Probationers must complete all prescribed phases of a program that has been carefully mapped out for them until they stabilize, remain abstinent for significant periods of time, demonstrate that they have made significant therapeutic progress, establish healthy long term habits, and become invested in both recovery and a responsible and productive lifestyle.

While eligibility for participation in a Drug Court varies with the group of offenders which that program has chosen to target , universally ineligible are those individuals who are deemed to be violent, have violent histories, are seriously mentally ill, or are sexually predatory. In addition to screening applicants for "legal" eligibility, Drug Courts carefully evaluate their "clinical" eligibility and treatment needs so that if acceptable, they can be placed in appropriate initial therapy modalities.

G) Drug Court Teams and the Roles of their Members
One of the most striking features of a Drug Court is the redefinition of the roles of its institutional participants. Essential members of a Drug Court team are a judge, a prosecutor, a defense bar representative (invariably a public defender), one or more treatment providers, and one or more probation officers. Some Drug Court teams have coordinators and/or representatives from any of a number of other entities such as police departments, educational or vocational programs, health or family counseling agencies, and so forth. While the judge remains the ultimate authority figure in a Drug Court, s/he is fully conversant with and dependent upon the clinical judgment of the treatment representative(s) and is open to input from the rest of the team as well. Decisions by Drug Court teams are characteristically made by consensus. Although traditionally adversarial, in Drug Court the prosecutor and public defender become to a great extent team players. While the prosecutor does not ignore issues of public safety and the public defender does not ignore civil liberties concerns, they do step out of their customary roles when acting as members of the group. The input of every member of the team is valued in periodic reviews of the progress of participants, and decisions about which next steps the judge will order for each participant are made by the group as a whole.

Participation in a Drug Court team seems to enable members to more clearly understand and accept each others' concerns and agendas. Collectively, the group becomes much more schooled in addiction issues such as stabilization and relapse and more educated about effective addiction reduction techniques. Therapists discover how useful a judge's order can be in keeping reluctant patients in attendance at treatment sessions long enough for self-knowledge to start to sink in. Public defenders actually find themselves sometimes agreeing that participants need sanctioning, while prosecutors and judges come to understand that more severe sanctions need to be visited sparingly, else lose their effectiveness.

As members of Drug Court teams work together, they become more attuned to common ground, more savvy about constructive treatment designs and interventions for participants and more trusting of the programs and each other. While external observers may be skeptical of this new pattern of relationships among institutional members of the criminal justice system, Drug Court team members consistently express considerable enthusiasm for what they find to be surprising transformational professional experiences in these new roles. Rather than being pitted against each other, lawyers, probation officers, judges and counselors report great success and satisfaction in working together toward the shared goal of helping previously faltering individuals reclaim their own lives.

H) Etiology of Drug Courts and Their Teams
Successful Drug Courts staffed by effective Drug Court teams of this kind do not spring into being fully formed. Rather, they have proven to arise out of an extended planning process which brings all necessary stakeholders to the table to consider and design a system that both squares with the generally accepted model and reflects local individuality. Over time, interested potential institutional participants study increasingly available comprehensive documentation about Drug Courts, observe one or more existing operational Drug Courts, and engage in comprehensive discussion in order to determine the idiosyncratic parameters of a Drug Court that each of those stakeholders is willing to live with. Collaboration in a process of formulation in which participants both express and come to understand each other's agendas, concerns, and limits enables them to become a team with a shared vision, program and methodology. As the planning team evolves into a functioning team, it never ceases to tinker with the design of its Drug Court, incorporating what works and what doesn't into its ongoing development. In large measure because the continuum from designing to realizing to maintaining a Drug Court is a dynamic odyssey, the institutional team members remain engaged in the endeavor.

I) The Drug Court Routine

The typical operational structure of a Drug Court involves three components:

• Frequent periodic team meetings (usually weekly) which consider the progress of participants during the intervals between reviews but are not conducted in their presence;
• Frequent regular (usually weekly) in-court face to face reviews between the participants and the judge in the presence of other members of the treatment team and other participants in the program; and
• Comprehensive ongoing participation in treatment and probation and any other programmatic requirements that have been placed upon participants.

In-person reviews carry with them the ambience and authority of the court, as they are conducted in court rooms on the record and may at any time include the issuance of a judicial order that will have to be complied with. On the other hand, the interaction between program participants and the judge tends to be in the form of a dialogue which other members of the team feel free to chime in on. Invariably, graduates of Drug Court Programs proclaim that of the many important relationships they experienced during participation in the program, the relationship with the judge meant the most to them. They stress the powerful impact on their recovery of having a judge care about them, root for them, hold them to high standards, forgive them and guide them. Much of the emerging pride and self-esteem of Drug Court graduates appears tied to their sense of having attained sufficient worthiness in the eyes of the judge.

Intense work outside of the courtroom each week complements the periodic progress reviews. At a minimum, each participant in a drug court each week must:

• Attend one or more therapy and/or counseling sessions;
• Attend one to three 12-Step type meetings;
• Report to probation; and
• Submit to one or more random urine tests

Compliance with Drug Court requirements is necessary in order for participants to succeed in these programs. Because the nature of change is that it is a slow and fragile process and because recovery and abstinence are nearly impossible to achieve in the short term and even difficult to maintain in the long run, Drug Courts have found that it is important to employ various methods to encourage participants to stay in treatment long enough for real progress to be made. This is done through a system of graduated sanctions and incentives that each individual Drug Court devises.

Negative reinforcement for insufficient compliance is typically given through sanctions such as earlier curfews, increased reporting requirements, more frequent urinalysis testing, extra community service hours, and essay and speech assignments. Even short terms in jail are imposed, after which participants are released to continue in the program, although most Drug Courts use incarceration sparingly, having learned that it loses its power as a motivator if it is imposed too easily or frequently. Significantly, the behaviors which are most punished are lack of accountability and lack of candor, rather than mere failure to stay drug-free. The programs understand that old habits die hard, and gear their requirements toward developing life skills in the participants which will support their long-term recovery and abstinence

Positive reinforcement for successful compliance is typically given through incentives such as later curfews, fewer reporting requirements, or less frequent random urinalysis. The messages from Drug Court to participants via its sanctions and incentives are: a) if you keep working with us, we will continue to care about you, fight for you and help you; and b), do it our way because we know what we're doing, not your way which has led you to where you are.

J) Consequences of Failure
Drug Courts are both supportive and demanding of their participants. In exchange for an alternative to incarceration and a path to a drug-free life, participants are required to consistently follow exacting rules. Relapse is tolerated and handled therapeutically, but lack of effort or honesty is punished. Drug Courts range in their willingness to abide initial difficulties that various participants may have in toeing the line, and typically rely upon their individual experience and expertise to determine how much to slack to allow for initial adjustment. Participants are routinely surprised and moved by the fact that an initial failure, though never without consequence, does not automatically result in termination from the program. Most "come around". Eventually, however, if participants consistently fail to comply with Drug Court demands, after appropriate due process of law usually in the form of Violation of Probation hearings, they are terminated from the programs. In many cases this leads to imprisonment; in others, a return to less interactive routine probationary status.

K) How Are Drug Courts Paid For?
Footing the bill for Drug Courts is one of the biggest challenges in their implementation. Jurisdictions have run the gamut in creativity when seeking, developing and implementing long-term funding for them. Both court operations and treatment need to be paid for. While participants are usually asked to pay what they can afford for treatment, it is unusual for most treatment costs to be covered in this manner. Some jurisdictions are able to obtain occasional private grants or reallocate existing criminal justice resources which may temporarily go a long way toward paying for Drug Courts . This does not seem to offer sufficient means to adequately support full Drug Court operations or assure their sustainability, however.

Most jurisdictions with Drug Courts in place have received at least some amount of federal seed money from the OJP Drug Court Office but many have also been able to establish dedicated long-term funding either as a portion of judiciary budgets, as separate appropriations, or from a percentage of certain sales taxes such as those on tobacco or alcohol .

Linkages with other related community resources can pay for important ancillary services for Drug Courts such as the child care and other support services from North Carolina's primary preschool initiative, Smart Start , or the pre-funded job training and placement services of a local government agency such as Camden County's Improvement Authority, which regularly assists Drug Court participants in Camden County Adult and Juvenile Drug Courts. Drug Court funding sources in California reportedly include "state and local general fund resources, law enforcement grants, trial court funding, asset forfeiture money, private donations, redirected federal health funds, health insurance indemnification, client fees and donated goods and services.

L) Do Drug Courts "Work?"
Because Drug Courts have been in existence as a national model for approximately 10 years, but for much shorter durations in the majority of individual jurisdictions, it has only been possible so far to ascertain averaged nationwide statistics to give any indication of their efficacy as a whole. The collective numbers relating to measures of success are very encouraging. According to the DCCTAP's most recent Drug Court Survey Report, "drug court programs have reported [drug usage] recidivism rates between 2% and 20%" and "[s]ignificantly reduced drug use was found even among participants that did NOT graduate from the program, with as much as 93% of participants testing negative for drugs." This compares favorably with an average untreated rate of recidivism of 45% or more. Most remarkably, recidivism among graduates thus far is only 4% .

DCCTAP also reports that: the average retention rate of the approximately 100,000 participants to date is reported as over 70%; 75% of those successfully in or graduated from the programs had been previously incarcerated; over 750 drug-free babies have been born to participating mothers; over 3500 participating parents have regained custody of their children; over 4500 participating parents have re-engaged in making child support payments; and 73% have obtained and/or retained employment. Moreover, notable cost savings are reported which are attributable to reductions in the price of incarceration, health care, police overtime, victim compensation and public assistance, among other items. The contrast between estimated average annual cost of a jail bed (from $20,000 to $50,000) and estimated average annual cost of Drug Court treatment (varying, but certainly not even near $10,000) is palpable.

M) Extension of the Drug Court Model to Juvenile, Family and "DWI" Courts
The "treatment court" approach of Drug Courts has lent itself to applications in certain quasi-criminal and even non-criminal arenas. Since drug dependency appears to underlie a large proportion of anti-social behavior which ends up in Family and Municipal Courts as well as Criminal Courts, the model is being adapted to these other forums, as well. The impetus for trying to do so comes from parallel urgencies arising out of community demands for remedies to juvenile delinquency, drunk driving, domestic abuse, and child abuse and neglect. Each forum and target population presents its own set of challenges in implementing the Drug Court approach.

For example, the psychosocial complications of adolescent development, the lack of opportunity to be motivated by having "hit bottom", and the necessity of involving whole families in treatment make it more difficult to fashion a successfully calibrated Juvenile Drug Court . The hallmark of Juvenile Drug Courts operating to date has been flexibility, but certain characteristics are common to their approaches. These include: much earlier and more comprehensive intake assessments; much greater focus on the functioning of the family throughout the juvenile's participation in the program; much closer integration of the information obtained during the intake and assessment process with subsequent decisions made in the case; much more active and continuous judicial supervision of the juvenile's progress in treatment and compliance with other program, treatment and rehabilitation services being provided; immediate use of age- appropriate judicial sanctions for non-compliance and age-appropriate incentives to recognize progress; and much greater coordination among the court, treatment community, school system and other community agencies needed to help the juvenile.

Given the youth and uniqueness of juveniles, special strategies are needed in Juvenile Drug Court to motivate these offenders to change. Juveniles often "present a sense of invulnerability and a lack of maturity, ... are at different developmental stages" than adults involved with Drug Courts, and are more influenced by peers and family members . Moreover, while the adult Drug Court can require participants to obtain "stable living" situations, most juveniles have little control over their living environments and have great difficulty in altering peer relationships. Dealing with juveniles also requires special consideration regarding the applicability of additional confidentiality requirements due to their juvenile status.

The populations and caseloads of juvenile and family court dockets have changed dramatically during the past decade. The matters that come before them are more complex and involve escalating degrees of substance abuse . The implementation of the ASFA has turned the wisdom of the Drug Court approach in child welfare matters into a virtual mandate, as discussed above. A Family Drug Court which can deal effectively with cases involving some loss of restriction of parental rights due to parental substance use has the potential to safeguard children more effectively while increasing the likelihood of family reunification . A Drug Court approach seems tailor made for cases of child abuse and neglect due to substance dependency due to both their gravity and the shorter deadlines now surrounding permanency resolution for children pursuant to AFSA. Parents' motivation to participate in treatment in family court is usually tied to their goal of retaining custody of their children. In recognition of these factors, a number of jurisdictions have begun to pilot Child Welfare Family Drug Courts.

In 1997, there were nearly 1.5 million arrests for driving while intoxicated (DWI) in the United States - one arrest for every 122 licensed drivers. In an attempt to reduce recidivism among DWI offenders, some jurisdictions have started DWI treatment courts. Special challenges inherent in applying the Drug Court approach to DWI include the difficulty of a non-adversarial approach given the extreme distress of victims, and the limitations on the incentives that can be offered given the mandatory incarcerative imperative of many sentencing laws.

Some piloting of the Drug Court model has also occurred in the Domestic Violence arena due to a recognition of the need to maintain offenders in treatment in order to break the chronic cycle of this form of anti-social behavior. Community and political support for a treatment approach to this population is much harder to achieve, however, as this offender group is considered much less sympathetic than those unwittingly addicted to drugs and alcohol. The shift in perception that has at least to some degree come to view drug dependent persons as ill rather than bad has not extended as generously to perpetrators of domestic abuse.

IV) THE HISTORY OF DRUG COURTS IN NEW JERSEY

In the past three years , a number of Drug Courts have been planned and commenced operation in New Jersey. To appreciate their present status, it is important to trace their evolution here. It is also essential to understand that two separate streams of effort arising out of two separate but related modes of thinking about treatment within the New Jersey Criminal Justice System have led to the concurrent development of two adult criminal Drug Court tracks in New Jersey. Some very recent amendments to existing legislation which will have an unclear future impact on Drug Court dispositions, need to be considered as well.

A) The State Drug Court Initiative (DCI)
One of the New Jersey Drug Court tracks, known as the state "Drug Court Initiative" (DCI) grew out of the efforts of a unique Steering Committee/Working Group of high ranking representatives of various state agencies who came together around the goal of establishing a treatment alternative to incarceration.

Beginning sometime in 1994 and carried on into 1995, a number of AOC personnel, state legislators and representatives of New Jersey criminal justice agencies became interested in exploring whether New Jersey might benefit from the kind of treatment alternative to incarceration that had been incorporated in the 1993 Model Criminal Justice Treatment Act discussed above. They educated themselves about drug rehabilitation treatment for addict offenders , attended at least one seminal conference on the topic, and started to think about how it might be integrated into the New Jersey landscape.

At the same time, statewide policy planners in the executive branch, in particular, were becoming increasingly alarmed at the seemingly unstoppable expansion of incarceration in the state. As the numbers were analyzed, it became clear that much of the growth in incarceration in New Jersey was attributable to non-violent drug-driven criminality, and that incarceration was not effective in preventing recidivism in this population. These leaders realized that the state needed a smarter way to apportion its resources within the existing institutions and statutory scheme in order to alter this self-defeating trend.

A conceptually simple but rather bold idea surfaced among the thinkers and planners: why not reallocate a portion of the budget of the Department of Corrections to create a fund that could pay for the cost of treatment as an alternative to incarceration? To consider the design and feasibility of this proposition, then Deputy Director of Policy and Planning for the Governor's Office Bruce Stout convened a Steering Committee in late 1995 or early 1996 which included representatives of those who had already been thinking about treatment alternatives to incarceration. This Working Group started meeting regularly to wrestle with the concept. It heard, expressed and reviewed the interests and concerns of many including the Department of Corrections (DOC), the Department of Health, the Division of Addiction Services (DAS), the Office of the Attorney General, the Office of the Public Defender, the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC), the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). It also specifically directed its attention to an up until then little used provision in the New Jersey Penal Code known as N.J.S.A. 2C:35-14 (hereafter, 2C:35-14) .

2C:35-14 is a subsection of New Jersey's Comprehensive Drug Reform Act of 1986, which was signed into law on April 23, 1987 and is now known as the New Jersey Controlled Dangerous Substances (CDS) Act. That Act re-codified all of the offenses involving the use, possession or distribution of drugs (CDS) and contains all provisions governing sentencing of offenders for violations of the law involving CDS, including new enhanced penalties with mandatory incarceration for behaviors such as drug distribution within 1000 feet of a school. It also incorporated a provision allowing for rehabilitation in lieu of incarceration for a certain category of drug dependent persons under specifically prescribed circumstances. This treatment section of the Act, 2C:35-14, was in large measure crafted by Assistant Attorney General and Policy Bureau Deputy Director Ronald Susswein of the Attorney General's Department of Law and Public Safety, and bore a direct relationship to the Model Criminal Justice Treatment Act discussed above, which Susswein also helped draft.

The version of 2C:35-14 then (and until very recently) in place to which the Steering Committee directed its attention provided, in pertinent part, that:

• upon motion of a defendant, a court could sentence a drug dependent person not convicted of a first degree crime (the most serious kind; usually one of great violence) and not found to be a danger to the community to a term of five years probation conditioned upon drug treatment and periodic urine testing even if there was a presumption of imprisonment for the crime for which that person was convicted;
• the above option was not available to a person being sentenced for drug distribution in a school zone (within 1000 feet of a school) or for employing a juvenile in a drug distribution scheme or who had previously been convicted for drug distribution unless the motion for treatment in lieu of incarceration was joined in by the prosecutor;
• if a drug dependent person convicted of a second degree crime (quite serious) or of school zone distribution was placed on five years probation conditioned on drug treatment pursuant to joint motion of defense and prosecution, then that person would have to be committed to a residential (i.e., in-patient) treatment facility for at least six months duration; and
• if a person sentenced under this provision to five years probation conditioned on treatment (whether in-patient or out-patient) violated that probation more than once (whether by failing to complete the rehabilitation program or failing to comply with a term of probation), then the court must terminate his or her probation and send him or her to prison.

Mindful of the underutilization of 2C:35-14 rehabilitative sentencing and of the savings projected to ensue if prison-bound defendants were instead placed on probation conditioned on treatment, the Steering Committee's win-win strategy married the reallocation of Corrections dollars to several carefully structured pilot "2C:35-14 Programs". The Steering Committee considered that, while some drug dealers are motivated by nothing other than profit, there are others who are "user/dealers" in that out of desperation, they sell only the small amounts of drugs necessary in order to be able to pay to support their habits. While the motives, characteristics and degree of depravity of "drug dealers" thus can vary widely, all who sell drugs in school zones including user/dealers are faced with the same mandatory incarceration under the sentencing provisions of the Controlled Dangerous Substances Act unless the county prosecutor in the county in which the offense occurred agrees to recommend an alternate case disposition .

Reasoning that those first-time school zone drug distributors who were only dealing because they were unable to stop using would likely stop breaking the law if they could receive adequate intensive drug rehabilitation, the Steering Committee decided to initially target that group of offenders in several carefully crafted and fully funded pilot programs. This target group was also chosen because it was possible to demonstrate that, but for the fact that these offenders would be participating in the DCI pilots, they would clearly be serving more expensive sentences in New Jersey state prisons. A further reason for choosing this population for piloting funded 2C:35-14 programs was that, due to the nature of the charge in question, the statute required that defendants with this charge could not be sentenced pursuant 2C:35-14 unless they were separated from society for at least six months in a residential treatment program. This "containment" factor made the experiment more palatable from a public safety point of view.

Although all counties and county prosecutors were offered the opportunity to apply for a 2C:35-14 DCI pilot program, there were only a small number of takers . While only a handful agreed to sign on, among them were several with considerable urban centers and criminal offense statistics. Ultimately, DCI pilot programs were undertaken and are currently in operation in Camden County (the oldest program, begun in early 1997), Essex County, Passaic County, Union County and Mercer County (the newest program, begun in 1999). The Steering Committee has determined to fully fund these five programs, and not to add more locations until it has gathered and been able to study enough long term statistical information in order to determine their efficacy.

Enormous cross-agency effort has been successfully expended by the Steering Committee to effectuate the transfer of funds and to create the coordinated infrastructure necessary to support the DCI pilots, which became known as "School Zone Drug Courts". Consistently in each pilot county, first time non-violent user/dealers have been able to apply for consideration for a slot in its DCI/2C:35-14 program. If they are determined legally eligible for inclusion by the local County Prosecutor's Office, they are then diagnostically screened by TASC officers to determine whether they are clinically appropriate candidates for long term inpatient drug treatment of at least six months' duration. If so, they are accepted into the 2C:35-14 Drug Court programs. Recently, the Steering Committee has permitted candidates presenting with certain other offenses to apply who are also demonstrably prison bound and in all ways fit the eligibility criteria. Thus, the DCI program should no longer be considered or labeled an exclusively a "School Zone Program".

Nine residential treatment programs across the state of New Jersey have been approved as sites for 2C:35-14 DCI placements to date. Each has not only been licensed and approved by DAS for this purpose but has also specifically designed a treatment program in coordination with the DCI parameters, and has also agreed to cooperate with Law Enforcement if participants leave or otherwise violate program parameters. . DCI funds are available to pay for longer inpatient treatment of a DCI participant if a DCI Drug Court team feels that this is warranted, although the preference is that the residential phase of DCI treatment not exceed the six month period, if therapeutically possible. Upon release from the inpatient phase of treatment, DCI clients return to their counties of origin to continue in intensive outpatient treatment through County Drug Court monitoring for the remainder of their five year probationary sentences.

The Steering Committee continues to meet on a periodic basis to oversee the DCI Drug Program process. Comprehensive and stringent process and outcome evaluation of the initiative is being conducted over a long term by Dr. Christine Boyle, Chief of the Research and Evaluation Section of the New Jersey Attorney General's Division of Criminal Justice. The sample size, whose cumulative numbers began to be tracked in early 1997 when the first DCI participants began the program, is small but growing.

As of December 22, 1999, the following DCI statistics are known:

• Of 1013 applicants, 356 (35.1%) were ineligible.
• Of 657 applicants found eligible, 188 (18.6%) were pending final acceptance and 469 (46.3%) had been accepted.
• Of the 469 who had been accepted, 332 (70.8%) were actually admitted to inpatient placement, 66 (14.1%) were pending inpatient placement and 71 (15.1%) were not admitted (46% of these chose not to enter).
• Of the 332 who were admitted inpatient, 133 (40.1%) completed the residential phase and moved on to the aftercare phase. Another 142 (42.8%) are currently in inpatient placement.
• Of the 133 who reached the aftercare phase, 107 remain successful (80.5%). 9 (6.8%) of these have graduated and 98 (73.7%) are in ongoing aftercare. Only 26 (19.5%) of those 133 in aftercare have been unsuccessful, 25 (18.8%) having failed aftercare, and one (0.8%) having an outstanding Bench Warrant.

Because the Steering Committee members recognized that successful recovery is necessarily a multi-phased process, they soon realized that to make the DCI vision a successful reality, it was also essential to tie the initial residential phase of the initiative to - and fund - appropriately structured aftercare (i.e., after residential treatment) services. To do so, they didn't have far to look for an existing model with which they could link the initiative. As it turned out, a concurrent but separately developed Drug Court track was already in place in New Jersey which had arisen based upon the OJP model. Adoption of the OJP model had been planned for locally in several New Jersey counties, and had already actually commenced activity in Camden County in April of 1996, by the time the DCI became interested in it.

Thus, two until then uncoordinated New Jersey Drug Court initiatives, each based upon one of the two national models discussed above for the development of Drug Court programs had simultaneously but independently evolved in New Jersey.

B) Evolution of OJP-Model New Jersey Courts
While high level state agency leaders were brainstorming the DCI initiative, interest in finding better solutions to drug-driven criminality in New Jersey had also developed in a number of local jurisdictions, particularly as word of the OJP approach and potential startup grants trickled down to grassroots arenas. The tradition of local innovation specific to individual vicinages coupled with the organizing and funding modus operandi of the OJP and NADCP appear to account for the piecemeal beginnings of a Drug Court groundswell in local New Jersey regions.

Local vicinage planning for Drug Court activity was no secret, of course. In order to apply for any grants for local innovation, not only the approval of the local Assignment Judges, but also the authorization, assistance and cooperation of the AOC and others with statewide jurisdiction was necessary. Thus, for example, five applications in November of 1996 to the OJP for various planning and implementation grants were endorsed by then Administrative Director of the Courts James Ciancia on behalf of Chief Justice Poritz, by then Public Defender Susan Reisner and by Terrence O'Connor, Director of New Jersey's Division of Addiction Services.

A great deal of the planning and realization of OJP Drug Courts, however, resulted from direct outreach of individual planning teams to national leaders and institutions of the Drug Court movement. Members of the Essex County Drug Court team, for example, which was one of several jurisdictions that received a Drug Court Planning Grant from the OJP, traveled to the 1997 national convention of the NADCP. Two of them returned as newly elected New Jersey representatives to the National Congress of Drug Courts, positions which they retain at this date. In early 1998, they, along with other representatives of New Jersey Drug Court teams, various treatment providers and assorted other Drug Court professionals, formed the New Jersey Network of Drug Court Professionals, which continues to meet bi-monthly with support from the AOC.

Camden County's Drug Court team didn't even wait for an eventual federal planning grant before commencing efforts to bring about a Drug Court. After considerable preliminary talk among all necessary parties, participation in an OJP-sponsored planning workshop and a visit to a "mentor" Drug Court in Buffalo, New York, the Camden County team decided to forge ahead with its own initial pilot of 50 offenders who were "flunking" probation due to their struggles with substance abuse, and who, but for the program, would have been sent to prison. With the help of a start-up grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a full consortium of treatment providers who agreed to come on board in order to provide a full range of therapeutic services to the program with only a future promise of payment, Camden County began the first Drug Court in New Jersey in April of 1996. This endeavor evolved into the first OJP Drug Court in New Jersey, although Camden County did not actually receive its first federal implementation grant until April of 1997.

On several occasions, non-judiciary members of the Camden County Drug Court team have also been successful in persuading the Camden County Board of Freeholders to tap some supplementary county dollars to help fund certain wraparound services on an interim basis. The Drug Courts in both Camden County and Essex County have also been able to link their programs with existing community endeavors such as Newark Fighting Back and the Camden County Improvement Authority in order to assist participants in vocational training and job placement.

Not all counties which have attempted to set up Drug Courts have succeeded. Applications from Ocean and Morris Counties, for example, were turned down for federal grants, although Ocean County has now managed to obtain a planning grant. The U.S. Drug Courts Program Office has a very clear design in mind for what it deems Drug Court proposals, teams and planning processes should look like, and if it does not feel that its expectations are met, it does not come across with requested grant money.

Several of New Jersey's OJP Drug Courts have reached a second federal funding cycle; Camden is about to begin its third. A Multi-Jurisdictional Enhancement grant dedicated to facilitating statewide coordination of New Jersey Drug Courts was awarded to the AOC last year, enabling the former statewide TASC Coordinator to begin to function as a statewide Drug Court Coordinator. The future of federal OJP grants is uncertain at the present time, however. Even though they are flowing generously at the moment, OJP grants alone do not amount to sufficient funding to fully support Drug Courts, in any case, and the budgets and personnel of the judiciary, probation and county prosecutors' offices must be relied upon as well to maintain the programs. Agencies such as the Office of the Public Defender have allocated attorney time to staffing Drug Courts without any budgetary support other than the team training money written into some of the OJP grants.

C) The Current Status of Drug Courts in New Jersey
As of March 1, 2000, Drug Courts and/or Drug Treatment Programs are operational in some form in seven counties, with an eighth and more waiting in the wings.

Counties with both OJP and DCI programs are:

• Camden County (Adult) Criminal Drug Court;
• Essex County (Adult) Criminal Drug Court;
• Passaic County (Adult) Criminal Drug Court; and
• Union County (Adult) Criminal Drug Court.

• Mercer County (Adult) Criminal Drug Court (which has had to develop an aftercare component which does not "piggyback" onto an existing OJP Drug Court).

• Camden County Juvenile Drug Court; and
• Hudson County Juvenile Drug Court (which has been named a "Mentor" Drug Court by the NADCP).

• Ocean County Criminal Drug Court Planning Team.

• Mercer County
• Passaic County
• Essex County

• Long Branch Municipal Government; and
• Middletown Municipal Government. Other known Drug Court activity includes the OJP multi-jurisdictional enhancement grant described supra and at least one Municipal Drug Court entirely funded by local county dollars, in Trenton. Preliminary planning discussions have occurred in Middlesex County, Hudson County (for an Adult Criminal Drug Court) and possibly Burlington County; and there have been preliminary Family Drug Court planning discussions in Camden, Ocean and Essex Counties and possibly Gloucester and Monmouth Counties. In addition, proposed legislation has been introduced from time to time concerning Drug Courts. Pending at the moment, for example, is Senate Bill 70, which would establish a hybrid form of Drug Court in Morris County . Since the growth of Drug Courts in New Jersey is blossoming, there may very well be other significant preliminary activity as well that has not come to the attention of the authors of this paper.

1. Date when planning began for a Drug Court:
      Camden County (Adult): Late 1995
      Camden County (Juvenile): Early 1998
      Essex County (Adult) May, 1996
      Hudson County (Juvenile): April, 1997
      Mercer County (Adult): Spring, 1998
      Passaic County (Adult): Spring, 1998
      Union County (Adult): August, 1997

2. Date when participant intake began:
      Camden County (Adult): April, 1996 (February, 1997 for DCI; April,1997 for OJP)
      Camden County (Juvenile): March, 1998
      Essex County (Adult): May, 1997
      Hudson County (Juvenile): February, 1998
      Mercer County (Adult): April, 1999
      Passaic County (Adult): November, 1997 (for DCI; June,1999 for OJP)
      Union County (Adult): March, 1998 (for OJP; September, 1998 for OJP)

3. How close to full capacity, and what that number would be (none reported being at full capacity yet):
      Camden County (Adult): Additional funding could enable capacity of 400-500; present number of over 300
      is close to capacity with present resources
      Camden County (Juvenile): Close to full capacity of 50, anticipated to be reached by August, 2000
      Essex County (Adult): Anticipate reaching full capacity of 175 in 6-12 months
      Hudson County (Juvenile): Full capacity of 35-40 might be reached by January, 2001
      Mercer County (Adult): Close to full capacity of 50, anticipated in two months
      Passaic County (Adult): DCI already exceeds capacity of 100; OJP not yet at capacity of 150)
      Union County (Adult): At least another year to get to anticipated full capacity of 300-400

4. Number of total participants to date:
      Camden County (Adult): 781 (of 849 applicants; 305 of these DCI)
      Camden County (Juvenile): 55
      Essex County (Adult): 170
      Hudson County (Juvenile): 80
      Mercer County (Adult): 38
      Passaic County (Adult): 206 (177 DCI, 29 OJP)
      Union County (Adult): 61 (46 of these DCI)
                  Total: 1,391

5. Number of "successful" participants (defined as still participating, or having graduated so far):
      Camden County (Adult): 367 (of total of 781)
      Camden County (Juvenile): 41 (of total of 55)
      Essex County (Adult): 132 (of total of 170)
      Hudson County (Juvenile): 45 (of total of 80)
      Mercer County (Adult): 35 (of total of 38)
      Passaic County (Adult): 145 (of total of 206)
      Union County (Adult): 55 (of total of 61)
                  Total: 820 (of total of 1391)

By the time this paper is published, updated statistics should be sought, of course, to gain a current sense of the statistical trends in existing New Jersey Drug Courts.

As an outgrowth of significant Drug Court activity and momentum, a conference of New Jersey Adult Drug Court Coordinators has formed in the past year, which meets periodically and is engaged in considering and relating to the AOC its sense of resources and recommended initiatives as well.

Many entities in New Jersey are extremely interested in and supportive of implementing, sustaining and institutionalizing Drug Courts of all varieties. Others, however, are wary and raise concerns that merit attention. Specifically:

• Some judges disagree or are uncomfortable with the wisdom of the transformed judicial role necessitated in the Drug Court model;
• Some leaders in court administration feel that the resource-intense and schedule-intense Drug Court model is a luxury that an over-burdened system with a crowded docket cannot afford;
• Development of Municipal Drug Courts has been hampered by the lack of coordination between local municipalities and any central administrative entity;
• Many law enforcement officials and county prosecutors remain skeptical of the Drug Court concept;
• Many legislators remain wed to the notion that the electorate will not tolerate any activity in the criminal justice arena that is not of the "lock 'em up and throw away the key" variety;
• The fragmentation in the development of the two main Drug Court models in the state has caused a significant amount of confusion and duplication of effort which still to some degree remains uncoordinated;
• Despite the best efforts of many to take into account all important considerations before taking virtually irrevocable steps affecting the course of implementation of treatment-based programs in New Jersey's Criminal Justice System, a recent set of amendments to 2C:35-14 was passed which unintentionally guts part of the DCI program;
• The financial support available to maintain existing Drug Court programs must be stretched so thin that at times intake must be shut down, as it had to be recently in Camden County's OJP Drug Court;
• Sustainability is a looming challenge for Drug Court programs which so far have depended in great measure on federal grants but cannot assume their continuation in perpetuity;
• Unless quickly addressed, a critical shortage of suitable and sufficient treatment facilities and beds will mean increased difficulty in placing offenders in need of treatment as the numbers grow of those who are given Drug Court dispositions;
• Confusion and frustration about how to link Drug Courts with the very important component of community support is hampering the expansion of broad-based assistance and access to additional resources for these programs;
• The public does not understand the inadequacy of the traditional criminal justice approach to drug-driven criminality and the long-range costs of maintaining the status quo;
• Because Drug Courts do not exist in the majority of New Jersey counties, many citizens are so far unfairly precluded from the benefits that are conferred on those who live in counties where such an option does exist; and
• Too small a sample exists so far from which to infer whether expansion of Drug Courts should occur in New Jersey.

• The Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court, the Governor's Office, the Office of the Attorney General, the Office of the Public Defender, the former and present Directors of the Administrative Office of the Courts, and the Director of the Division of Addiction Services have all publicly and vocally supported moving forward with plans for carefully implementing Drug Courts in New Jersey;
• The majority of New Jersey's Presiding Judges of Vicinage Criminal Divisions have signaled private approval of the Drug Court concept, and are expected to do so publicly in the near future;
• Every New Jersey judge who has ever served as a Drug Court judge remains consistently supportive of the concept;
• Leaders in the Division of Youth and Family Services, members of the state's Children in Court Committees, and child advocates such as the Association for Children of New Jersey are actively seeking the establishment of Family Drug Courts in the Child Welfare arena;
• County leadership in a number of counties has supported indigenous Drug Courts, even, to some degree, financially;
• The new leadership of the New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commission supports the development of Juvenile Drug Courts as an alternative to detention resolutions in delinquency matters;
• Local police officers in jurisdictions that have Drug Courts frequently recommend to drug-driven offenders whom they arrest that they try to get case dispositions into Drug Court programs;
• Several of the existing Drug Courts in New Jersey have gained national prominence; and
• Some members of the State Legislature's Judiciary Committees have expressed interest in establishing legislation supportive of Drug Courts in New Jersey.

Rather than defining its criminal justice policies by whether they are "tough"or "soft", New Jersey needs to focus on ensuring, instead, that they are smart and effective in their impact on public safety, public resources and community justice. We believe that a problem solving approach, not an oversimplified knee-jerk response , is needed in formulating public policy in this area and establishing the means to execute it in order to achieve those ends which will best enhance the quality of life of all citizens of the state. Despite whatever myths prevail or resistance to change endures, it is patently clear that New Jersey's systemic responses to drug-driven crime and anti-social behavior must transform in order to have a discernible degree of success in changing those behaviors and stopping the toxicity that they bring about in our communities.

Indeed, we cannot afford not to change. The accelerating rate and cost of incarceration is eating up present and future resources at an alarming pace, and crowded prisons must allocate more and more space to accommodate expanding numbers of serious offenders who will be remaining in custody for increasing lengths of time. There is little room to incarcerate non-violent offenders, particularly when doing so has been demonstrated to be a waste of time, space and resources.

Criminal offenders who spend their time taking advantage of family members, trashing poor urban neighborhoods and hustling in order to support their addictions need, instead, to become better educated, wage-earning, tax-paying, and home-owning members citizens. We need to be much more effective in reducing drug-driven recidivism in our communities and among our youth, before they become too embroiled in the criminal justice system.

Substance - abusing parents must be more quickly and effectively helped to heal if possible, so that we can comfortably allow them to return to the responsibilities of caring for and financially supporting their children, and bringing healthy babies into the world. We are running out of time in which to try to make dysfunctional families that have fractured due to drug-driven abuse and neglect of children whole, and because we are running out of sufficient foster and adoption homes for children who are the victims of drug-driven abuse and neglect, we face an urgent need to diminish the foster care cycle in New Jersey.

To reach these goals, New Jersey needs to explore, pilot and adequately fund more effective strategies than simply containment and removal of non-violent law-breaking addicts. Drug Courts are precisely the type of endeavor in which we need to be willing to engage. Just as we ask participants in Drug Courts to change long-standing dysfunctional thought processes and behaviors, our institutions and our leaders must be willing to do the same : we must be willing to change. At this point, we have very little to lose.

We are at critical crossroads in the implementation of Drug Courts in New Jersey, for the present need to plan for more secure long-term infrastructure and funding coincides with concern by some that it may still be too soon to be certain that they work well enough to merit unqualified support. Perhaps an epidemiological analogy helps: when a community suffers from an endemic disease, the development of a promising new medicine is embraced. Carefully calibrated clinical trials are fully enabled, and once into the clinical trials for the medicine, researchers track preliminary results for trends that signify likely success or failure of the medicine to impact the illness which it was developed to remedy. At a certain point, it can become clear that a given piloted medication is, in fact, particularly efficacious, even if the clinical trial is not yet complete. At that point, while it could still be pulled from final FDA approval and the marketplace if further testing signifies that it is not the remedy it appears to be, it becomes unconscionable not to make it more widely available to alleviate suffering.

It appears that New Jersey has reached the point where it would be unwise, if not unconscionable, to allow a tremendously promising response to drug-driven non-violent criminality to wither away due to lack of sufficient resources to maintain it. It is time to thoroughly embrace, carefully implement, and take the measures that are necessary to sustain the Drug Court approach in New Jersey.

VI) RECOMMENDATIONS

Given the systems, processes, dynamics and agendas which have been reviewed in this report, we make the following recommendations surrounding the further implementation of Drug Courts in New Jersey:

A. MEASURES THAT SHOULD BE TAKEN BY THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH

1. Alternative sources of funding should be established to pay for all necessary components of Drug Courts.

The Legislature should establish sources of revenue to help sustain the cost of Drug Courts by allocating toward them some of the money derived from tobacco settlement money, taxes on casino gambling/liquor and tobacco sales, prosecutorial forfeitures, and the collection of DEDR penalties (fines collected in all convictions/adjudications of drug offenses).

2. Those who engage in legislative activity with regard to court programs and proposed legislation that are related to them should not depend exclusively upon Law Enforcement and AOC input, but should actively seek input from all affected sectors when considering proposals and their projected impact.

Legislators must do a better job of soliciting and considering every relevant voice with regard to proposed legislation, regardless of how popular that voice might be. Listening exclusively or primarily to only one or two points of view limits the ability of law-makers to fully consider the probable impact of potential measures. The input of the Attorney General's Office, even if learned and offered in good faith, will not always catch a potential difficulty in suggested amendments with criminal justice impact, for example. If divergent points of view are expressed and given attention, there is a higher likelihood that unintended consequences of a given bill will be missed.

B. MEASURES THAT SHOULD BE TAKEN BY THE EXECUTIVE AND LEGISLATIVE BRANCHES TOGETHER

3. The backlog in judicial appointments must be reduced.

It is very difficult to successfully introduce needed and exciting new programs into a Judiciary System which is chronically understaffed. The pressure of keeping current with existing caseloads and speedy trial constraints is difficult enough when the judiciary is fully staffed; when it is understaffed, the work burden is overwhelming and tension over it discourages systemic support for needed innovation. While literally every state agency whose involvement is necessary to smoothly operating Drug Courts has been supportive of their introduction, the Judiciary has been the most ambivalent about embracing them because of concerns over judicial workload and concomitant resource allocation.

4. Any remaining impediments to Judiciary control of its own budget must be eliminated.

To effectuate its share of programs such as Drug Courts which interface with contributions from other governmental agencies, the Judiciary is in the best position to determine its own allocation of resources, internally. The remarkable shift which the Executive Branch was able to broker to reallocate dollars from the Corrections budget to the DCI budget could not have come about if the Executive Branch had not been able to shift around its own resources internally. As proposed in the Judiciary Strategic Planning Committee's 1998 Report, the Judiciary needs the autonomy to be able to do the same.

C. MEASURES THAT SHOULD BE TAKEN BY THE JUDICIARY BRANCH

5. The Conference of Presiding Criminal Judges should publicly endorse Drug Courts as a "Best Practice."

Reluctance of individual Assignment and Criminal Presiding Judges to allow the introduction of Drug Court pilots into their respective vicinages has hampered the widespread forward progress of the model, and threatens to engender outcry about lack of Equal Protection and equal access to services from those who cannot benefit from what Drug Courts have to offer solely because of where they reside. Declaring Drug Courts a "Best Practice" would encourage a more fair distribution of court services across the state, and would help to implement one of the goals of the 1998 Judiciary Strategic Planning Committee Report, which is to establish consistency in practice from county to county. Each Drug Court does not have to be identical, as to a large extent each is a creature of indigenous resources and culture, but uniform access to a court which operates with the Drug Court approach is optimal, as is clarifying common essential components.

6. Judicial Assignments should take into account to a greater degree the individual preferences of judges who are inclined to take on special, innovative, or unpopular roles.

While traditionally a province of Judicial Management, the assignment of judicial positions which require special expertise, training and performance should be made optimally to those jurists who are most interested in functioning in and developing those non-traditional roles. It makes little sense for those judges who do not feel comfortable in roles such as Drug Court Judge to be so designated; by the same token, the discomfort of some should not impede the willingness of others to embrace transformed roles on the bench.

7. In furtherance of Strategic Initiative 10A recommended by the 1998 Judiciary Strategic Planning Committee (that the AOC provide statewide guidance, support and direction for court/community partnerships and initiatives), guidelines should be established which provide a roadmap to the manner in which non-judiciary personnel can participate in, support and contribute to the maintenance of court programs.

Drug Courts, in particular, could function at their maximum potential if they enjoyed broad community support and participation. Some of the permissible interface between court programs and the community is readily apparent, such as information sessions or court/community committees that make non-binding suggestions for improvement of court services. Other cooperative endeavors present more ambiguous possibilities for collaboration and often do not accomplish all that they might out of fear of improperly crossing some ill-defined ethical line. Drug Courts could greatly benefit from private sector contributions and sponsorships and from linkages with the Faith Community and other resources that can provide child care, housing and jobs, for example, but the permissible parameters of doing so are so murky that very little has been done so far to draw upon these community resources. Clarification is needed as to how and to what degree such contributions could be made.

8. Non-judiciary participants in Judiciary programs should be included in the "TQM" loop.

Judiciary programs such as Drug Courts depend upon the participation of non-Judiciary participants as well as employees of the Judiciary, such as treatment providers, prosecutors and public defenders. Extending the concept of Total Quality Management to de facto members of integrated case management teams would reap further benefits for the entire teams, and result in better programmatic planning and fewer of the glitches that occur when people "in the trenches" are not consulted about strategies and decisions that affect the group or program as a whole.

9. Juvenile Drug Courts and Family Drug Courts should also be widely piloted as soon as possible, and if a successful track record for them is establis