Drug courts are a recent, but apparently compelling, addition to the criminal justice system, designed to positively influence the drug-crime nexus. They operate as a specialised criminal court, involving cooperation between the courts and drug treatment professionals, by streamlining drug-related cases away from traditional processing and punishment into an intensive drug treatment program. The very proliferation of drug courts renders them deserving of study. While there are surveys of individual Australian courts, there has, to date, been no comparative study across the various Australian jurisdictions. This thesis fulfils this need. Although there is increasing debate in the United States about the theoretical basis of drug courts, this debate is largely taking place after their creation. Australian drug courts have largely been implemented without reference to any philosophical underpinnings. This thesis places the drug court phenomenon within its political, social, and philosophical environment, and provides an explanation of the legal contexts within which the drug court process operates. There are many untested assumptions about drug courts, most importantly claims that they are successful. If drug courts are going to continue to operate and become more widely accepted, it is necessary to recognise their underlying rationale and to identify the link between the social, political, and theoretical bases and the actual outcomes. The indicia for success within the drug court context have never been definitively articulated, and by identifying key elements of success, and then categorising the relationships of those elements to contexts and processes, this thesis will go some of the way towards defining drug court success. In other words this thesis attempts to provide answers to the questions – do drug courts work? And if so, what makes them workable?
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/253512 |
| Creators | Cappa, Clare |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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