Drug Treatment Courts -- a Lesson to be Learned from Old Juvenile Justice?

In my most recent Child Advocacy Policy Workshop we discussed the recent surge of community and family treatment drug courts around the nation, but most specifically in New York. In considering my recent reserach into the development of the juvenile courts and juvenile justice, especially as altered by the Warren Court's In re Gault decision, the modification of family courts in this way is intriguing.

The initial reasoning for these specialized juvenile courts was for the protection of society and the juvenile by a virtuous fatherly judge who would keep the juvenile on track. The reasoning behind the drug treatment courts is similar. The judge has frequent contact with the defendant (who had to admit to their drug use as a prerequisite for treatment) and the judge is a continous presence throughout drug treatment and parenting classes. The hope is that these drug-addicted parents (mostly mothers) will become wholesome parents and that this will help end the cycle of drug and child abuse.

The drug treatment courts seem fantastic. They are promising in their social scientifically proven results and the graduates are enthusiastic about their new lease on life (and their custody over their children). The foster care stays for these children are cut short and the children have the opportunity to see their parents overcome their addiction.

This all sounds promising. The concern is, however, that the juvenile court developments also sounded promising at institutuion. What happens, however, 10, 15, 20, even 50 years down the line when there has been a tradition instilled of leveraging a full admission of guilt for treatment with limited procedure?

Currently, there are great outcomes from these courts -- but danger lurks in hiding behind modern social science (which seems to constantly be replaced by more modern social science with more accurate and often contradictory resoluts).