Drug use has become an epidemic in our nation, filling our jails and prisons with nonviolent offenders. Studies have shown that adult drug courts are a good alternative to the prison system by being successful in reducing recidivism and long term costs. To date, however, few studies have looked specifically at the effectiveness of juvenile drug courts and their cost effectiveness. Further, the possible benefits of lower attrition rate and cost benefit are being overshadowed by the low attrition rate among juvenile drug court participants. Nearly half of all juvenile drug court participants do not complete the juvenile drug court program. Additionally, studies have shown that juvenile participants who do graduate have lower attrition rates and other benefits. Due to the benefits of juveniles who graduate from a juvenile drug court program, understanding the difference between those who graduate and those who do not can add significant understanding on how juvenile drug courts can be modified in order to help juveniles successfully graduate from the drug court program. This study will shed light on specific pre-drug court demographics and behaviors that were different among juveniles who successfully graduate and those who are unsuccessful in graduating from the juvenile drug court program. The Idaho Supreme Court, which oversees the JDC program in Idaho, collaborated in this effort by providing a statewide juvenile drug court data set, drawn from the Idaho Statewide Trial Court Automated System (ISTARS). The data set included all information that was gathered for drug court participants during the January 2004 - December 2005 period, for who had completed the program either successfully or unsuccessfully. Subsequent analysis of the data clarified the difference between groups of those who graduated and those who did not graduate, specifically that a significant difference was found between groups in the following characteristics: gender, school attendance, and in-treatment drug tests.

Research on the efficacy of drug courts for substance-abusing criminal adult offenders has generally found reduced recidivism rates, and both actual and potential cost savings to the public. However , outcome research on juvenile drug courts has been limited. Furthermore , little research has examined variables that may be predictive of outcome in this population. This study reports graduation and rearrest rates for a sample of juvenile drug court participants in Salt Lake City, Utah. Also, this research assessed whether demographics, prior arrest history, attendance at drug education classes, serving detention time, or a preprogram measure of degree of substance abuse (SAS SI-A) help predict several important outcomes (i.e., graduation from the drug court program and number of rearrests per year after leaving drug court). The graduation rate in this sample was fairly high (84.2%). However, the rearrest rate was also relatively high, with slightly over 50% with an arrest for any offense, and 38. 7% with a drug-elated arrest during follow-up (average follow-up time 4.3 years). Serving detention and not attending prevention class predicted lower rates of program graduation, while younger age, male gender, not graduating drug court, non-Caucasian status, and past adjudication predicted higher rates of recidivism (rearrest).

Mental health courts (MHCs) are part of an umbrella of specialty courts in which court officials, law enforcement, and treatment providers work together to seek alternative solutions to failed traditional approaches to justice. Researchers investigating MHCs indicated that the courts may be helpful in reducing recidivism and introducing offenders with mental health disorders to treatment services. I used the qualitative method of phenomenology to understand the experiences of young adult Black male clients' perceptions of mental health treatment in MHCs. Twelve participants ranged in age from 21-40 years. The research team identified three themes -- (a) helpful treatment factors, (b) relational growth, (c) treatment barriers – and five subthemes: (a) internal growth, (b) relational growth, (c) behavioral growth, (d) factors of marginalization, and (e) interpersonal barriers. Meaning pertaining to findings and implications for research and practice are discussed.

Proceedings on the repeal of an Act before the Constitutional Court, with focus on the review of whether the Act was adopted in the constitutionally prescribed procedure Abstract The thesis deals with the judicial control of constitutionality with a specific focus on the review of the constitutionality of the legislative procedure. The first part of the thesis deals with the general definition of the constitutional judiciary, the position of the Constitutional Court in constitutional system of the Czech Republic and the definition of basic concepts that must be unconditionally known for the next parts of the thesis. The first part of the thesis concludes with a reflection on the topic whether the Constitutional Court really maintains its role as a predominantly negative legislator. In the second part, the thesis focuses on the description of the current legislation on court proceedings of the repeal of an Act or its individual provisions. The main topic of the second part of the thesis deals are the special effects of the decisions of the Constitutional Court in this type of proceedings and the question about binding nature of its reasoning. The author describes, for example, the specific effects of these decisions in horizontal relations or their effects on the specific proceedings from which the proposal...

My dissertation “Bronzino in Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s Court: Manufacturing Propaganda in Sixteenth-Century Italy” challenges entrenched scholarly approaches on the artist which developed during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Bronzino (1503-1572) is best known for his autograph portraits and the painting Allegory with Venus and Cupid; yet the scholarship on the artist has suffered due to the inordinate focus on this very select portion of his artwork. The portraits and allegory have been scrutinized so intensely because they have been deemed masterpieces of the Western canon. However, almost three-quarters of his oeuvre, in particular the copies of the ducal portraits made by Bronzino and his workshop, as well as the religious paintings, have been neglected due to their non-masterpiece status. To bring a fresh approach to Bronzino scholarship, my research hinges on the matter of how the painter’s artistic practices changed when he began to manufacture propaganda for the court of the second duke of Florence, Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574). This topic elicits questions such as how an artist transformed their workshop to a salaried court studio as well as the complicated realities of manufacturing propaganda for a principality. By focusing my dissertation on this topic, my study offers a different way of understanding Bronzino and a way to think with the painter on broader questions related to the life of an early modern court artist. / Art History

The Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) was inaugurated in 2005. It is a regional court that serves Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), an international organization that promotes regional integration in the Caribbean. In this dissertation, I conduct a doctrinal examination and analysis of the human rights jurisprudence of the CCJ, to determine the nature and extent of the Court’s use of International Human Rights Laws and Norms (IHRLN) in its adjudication. Although my main focus is the Court’s human rights decision-making, I also conduct an analysis of some of its wider work, to the extent that this wider work, coupled with the Court’s human rights decision-making, builds an understanding of the Court’s definition of itself and explains the trajectories of the Court as a regional judicial institution. I conduct my doctrinal examination and analysis against the backdrop of three theoretical underpinnings, namely - human rights universalism; transformative justice; and Caribbean political economy and human rights cultural relativism. The goal is to understand how the CCJ, as a young regional Caribbean court, has navigated the region’s historical, socio-cultural, and political contexts, in its use of what are regarded as universalist human rights norms in the law, as it adjudicates domestic human rights and constitutional law issues. I also evaluate where the Court ends up when it navigates these issues, in order to determine impact, and to assess whether the Court’s outcomes can be rationalized or justified. The study demonstrates that this new court has adopted and adapted existing international human rights norms and ideas, notwithstanding some socio-cultural and political challenges in the Caribbean to some of these norms and ideas. My major finding is that the CCJ is inclined towards a strongly universalistic perception and application of IHRLN, and relies quite heavily on these laws and norms to guide its human rights and constitutional law adjudication, although it does this sometimes in a way that indigenizes the application of these IHRLN. In some of the Court’s human rights-related decisions, it has also acted in quite transformative ways, sometimes arriving at outcomes that challenge some Caribbean’s socio-cultural and political norms or expectations, particularly on subjects such as LGBTQ+ rights, the death penalty, political corruption, and the strengthening of aspects of Caribbean Community Law. Through these transformative decisions, the CCJ has disturbed some of the expectations about the contours and boundaries of Caribbean constitutional law, and in places, has formulated new principles and doctrines which signal a clear yearning to use IHRLN to take Caribbean law to new frontiers. It does this without completely disregarding Caribbean socio-cultural and political realities, but by sometimes mediating them. This approach by the Court demonstrates independence and reflects an absence of the suspicions of some IHRL norms and ideas that are oftentimes reflected in the political economy dynamics of the wider Caribbean region. It likewise does not signify an embrace of some of the more well-known cultural reticence and relativist attitudes to some aspects of international human rights norms found in some quarters of the Caribbean. Instead, the study reveals a more nuanced positioning by the Court, in its human rights jurisprudence. The result, this dissertation has found, is a Court that has (a) accomplished critical legal reform in important areas of the law, (b) empowered CARICOM citizens in a number of ways, and (c) strengthened respect for indigenous regional institutions in the wider politique of Caribbean regional identity and integration. The Court has accomplished these goals through calculated persuasion, rationality, and normative reasoning. The contribution of this dissertation is three-fold. Firstly, it formulates and presents a rigorous analysis of how the CCJ operationalizes IHRLN in its work. This is done, drawing on the literature on human rights universalism, cultural relativism, and transformative justice, and against the backdrop of regional human rights reticences that I explore, and which are premised on certain perceptions of the hegemonic and neo-colonial tendencies and potential of some IHRLN. Secondly, the thesis offers an in-depth and critical assessment and evaluation of the CCJ’s impact on the human rights jurisprudence of the region as a whole. Finally, it offers an in-depth analysis of how the Court’s work has so far contributed to the development of Caribbean law.

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The purpose of the current study was to investigate predictors of therapeutic alliance among a sample of 46 adults with substance misuse who were convicted of felony offenses and court-mandated to attend substance use treatment as part of their probation requirements. For this study, I purposed four hypotheses: (1) older participants will report a stronger therapeutic alliance with their therapist. (2) women will form a stronger therapeutic alliance with their therapist than men, (3) higher levels of distress will be associated with lower therapeutic alliance, and (4) people with more extensive criminal and substance use histories to have poorer therapeutic alliance. Data was collected quantitatively, utilizing a questionnaire method. Bivariate correlations were run on all study variables, as well as a multiple linear regression model. Results of this study found that older participants and number of months incarcerated predicted weaker therapeutic alliance. No statistically significant findings were found in relation to the DASS-21 or gender.