Healing Families: Outcomes from a Family Drug Treatment Court

Family drug treatment courts (FDTC) have been acknowledged as a promising intervention for substance‐abusing parents involved in the child welfare system. Over the past decade, the number of FDTC programs has grown substantially, yet questions remain regarding the efficacy of these courts. This study examines the ability of the Snohomish County (WA) FDTC to address the three main goals of the Adoption and Safe Families Act. Utilizing propensity score matching, this study found that participants were more likely to have their children returned, experienced stronger treatment completion rates, and had less use of foster care. Implications for replication and further analysis are discussed.     

Socializing Distrust of the Justice System through the Family in Juvenile Delinquency Court

Juvenile delinquency courts in the United States generally require parents to attend all court hearings, but little is known about how parents' experiences in the court process affect their discussions of the justice system with their court‐involved children. Using multiperspectival and longitudinal data combining observations with interviews of parents and youth in two courts, this research finds that many parents discuss the legal process in negative terms with their children when parents are outside the presence of legal authorities. This research adds to the literature on legal socialization by examining how parents' perceptions of law and their experiences with the court become part of the socializing content provided by parents to their court‐involved children. Creating a more meaningful role for parents in the juvenile justice process may potentially lead to more positive discussions of the court process between parents and juvenile defendants.     

Another permanency perspective:Family Drug Court

Because a staggering percentage of criminal court caseloads are intrinsically related to drug or alcohol abuse, general jurisdiction courts with rehabilitative “Drug Court” programs have experienced notable success. A similarly large number of juvenile and family court cases also involve substance abuse. The establishment of a “Family Drug Court” is allowing parents involved in abuse and neglect litigation to benefit from the juvenile justice system's social service mode of rehabilitation.     

Healing Families: An Outcome Evaluation of a Community Family Court

In this paper, a model community family court program that seeks to break the intergenerational cycle of crime and substance abuse by treating families holistically will be presented. This model court seeks to reduce crime and provide safe and permanent homes for children of substance‐abusing parents. In this community family court, the prototypical problem‐solving court has been both focused and expanded. The community family court provides a focused response designed to address the unique combination of problems facing families on a family‐by‐family basis. At the same time, supervision and treatment services have been expanded to include every family member and all open court cases including criminal charges, juvenile delinquency, dependency, and civil cases. An overview of the court's evolution and discussion of integrated services designed to provide a wraparound style intervention will be highlighted as key contributors to the largely positive results of this community family court's evaluation.     

Against the Grain: Therapeutic Judging in a Traditional Family Court

The last several decades have seen a proliferation of specialized courts, including within the family court system, that deviate from the adversarial model, and that rely on therapeutic jurisprudence and other problem‐solving techniques. Whether and how traditional family courts can incorporate the best practices of these specialized courts is a largely understudied area. Drawing from ethnographic observations of a traditional urban family court, this study finds that some judges are able to transform nontherapeutic courtrooms into therapeutic ones despite obstacles. These “against the grain” actors, who act contrary to the institution's dominant norms and practices, demonstrate how therapeutic jurisprudence and other problem‐solving techniques can be utilized in traditional courtrooms.     

A Family Affair: The Juvenile Court and Family Violence Cases

Little attention has been devoted to studies of adolescent family violence offending, yet research on adult populations show that victim relationship may make a difference in how offenders are treated in the criminal justice system. Given that the intergenerational transmission of violence may operate through adolescent family violence, a detailed examination of these youth is warranted. Through an analysis of detained youth in a small northeastern state, this study examines differences in court treatment between family and non-family offenders. Family violence offenders are significantly more likely to be minor offenders and to be female than are non-family offenders. Results of logistic regression show that, all else being equal, family violence youth are treated more leniently by the court than non-family offenders. Finally, while most youth are released to community dispositions, there are no differences in court-ordered family counseling between family and non-family offenders. These findings point to areas of needed research on adolescent family violence offenders and larger policy questions about how such youth should be treated relative to other youth. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Denver, CO.