Do drug courts work? Getting inside the drug court black box

This article argues that evaluation of drug courts will benefit not only fr om an organizing typology (Goldkamp, 1999a, 2000) that focuses research on the critical structural elements of the drug court model but also from an u nderstanding of how drug courts are thought to deliver their impact. In dev eloping a causal model of drug court impact, the analysis separates assessm ent of impact into two investigations: whether drug courts "work" and how t hey work. Data from the ongoing NIJ-supported evaluation of the Portland an d Las Vegas drug courts are analyzed to answer the comparative question of whether there is an impact (and of what sort) and then to move consideratio n of the internal elements of the drug court (the black box of drug court t reatment) through the development of successive theoretical models. The ill ustrative analyses guided by these models consider the relative contributio ns of instrumental drug court treatment functions and defendant risk attrib utes, which contribute importantly to drug court outcomes. The exploratory findings differ by site, but show some support for the importance of treatm ent, sanctions and appearances before the drug court judge-and their intera ction-in lowering the prospects for subsequent rearrest and increasing like lihood of graduation.