Alaska Justice Forum ; Vol. 2, No. 1 (January 1978)

The January 1978 issue of the Alaska Justice Forum opens with a findings of an Alaska Judicial Council study on domestic violence and the Council's proposal to establish a citizen dispute center in Anchorage for the resolution of domestic disputes where injured parties are unwilling to press criminal charges. Other articles describe an experimental diversion program in Ketchikan for juvenile status offenders intended to minimize the entry of youth into the criminal justice system; a pilot project of the Alaska Judicial Council to involve and inform citizens about the criminal justice system; and the first of a six-part series designed to provide a working knowledge of the basic issues surrounding interrogation and confessions. Also included is a justice training calendar.Grant 77-A-006 of the Governor's Commission on the Administration of Justice, State of Alaska"Dispute Center Will Be New Approach To Violence" by Alaska Judicial Council / "Ketchikan Youth Advocate Program Offers Fast Assistance" by Ben L. Neff and Phyllis Bardonski / "Citizens Action Project Looks at Alaska Justice System" by Arlene Warden / "Interrogations And Confessions: Everything You've Always Wanted to Ask" (part 1) by Peter S. Ring / "Justice Training Calendar

Drug courts’ effects on criminal offending for juveniles and adults.

Drug courts are specialized courts in which court actors collaboratively use the legal and moral authority of the court to monitor drug-involved offenders’ abstinence from drug use via frequent drug testing and compliance with individualized drug treatment programs. The objective of this review was to systematically review quasi-experimental and experimental evaluations of the effectiveness of drug courts in reducing future offending and drug use. The systematic search identified 154 independent, eligible evaluations, 92 evaluations of adult drug courts, 34 of juvenile drug courts, and 28 of drunk-driving (DWI) drug courts. The findings most strongly support the effectiveness of adult drug courts, as even the most rigorous evaluations consistently find reductions in recidivism and these effects generally persist for at least three years. The magnitude of this effect is analogous to a drop in general and drug-related recidivism from 50% for non-participants to approximately 38% for participants. The evidence also suggests that DWI drug courts are effective in reducing recidivism and their effect on recidivism is very similar in magnitude to that of adult drug courts (i.e., a reduction in recidivism of approximately 12 percentage points); yet, some caution is warranted, as the few available experimental evaluations of DWI drug courts do not uniformly support their effectiveness. For juvenile drug courts we find considerably smaller effects on recidivism. The mean effect size for these courts is analogous to a drop in recidivism from 50% for non-participants to roughly 43.5% for participants