Drug courts: A conceptual framework

Structural and process characteristics of drug courts may have a major infl uence on offender outcomes However, despite the existence of dozens of outc ome evaluations in the drug court literature, it is impossible to draw clea r conclusions regarding variability in outcomes in relation to drug court c haracteristics. We describe existing approaches to the description of drug court structure and process and argue that a new approach is needed. To add ress that need, we propose a conceptual framework of five drug court dimens ions: leverage, population severity, program intensity, predictability, and rehabilitation emphasis. These dimensions, each scorable on a range from l ow to high, lend themselves to a systematic set of hypotheses regarding the effects of structure and process on drug court outcomes. Finally, we propo se quantitative and qualitative methods for identifying such effects.