2005 Statewide Drug Court Evaluation

For the past two years, WYSAC has conducted annual process and outcome evaluations of Wyoming’s state-funded drug courts under contract with the Wyoming Department of Health, Substance Abuse Division. As of July 2005, there were 20 state-funded drug court programs serving over 400 clients in Wyoming. The drug court model departs radically from the traditional retributive model overwhelmingly employed in American courts. Drug courts and other “court diversion programs” provide judges with alternative sentencing options wherein intensive treatment, based on proven therapeutic models, is woven into justice-system case processing. Long-term behavior modification is the objective, usually requiring a year to 18 months or more of treatment.

Drug courts are organized so that teams of criminal justice and treatment professionals can collaborate to prescribe a treatment and supervision regimen that fits an individual participant’s recovery needs. WYSAC surveyed and interviewed both participants and team members to determine how well Wyoming drug courts are adhering to nationally developed best practices summarized in The 10 Key Components of Drug Courts (adopted as funding qualification criteria in Wyoming statute). Administrative records from drug courts provided data on participant outcomes such as graduation rate, sobriety, and in-program recidivism. With the 2006 implementation of the Drug Court Case Management System (also built by WYSAC), future data for evaluations will be more uniformly collected and easily harvested.

Project Team