Dedication for the Special Issue on Problem Solving Courts

• Published date: 01 September 2008
• Date: 01 September 2008
• Author: Roger E. Hartley
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016808320688
• Subject Matter: Articles

Dedication for the Special

Issue on Problem Solving Courts

It is with great pleasure and sadness that the Criminal Justice Review offers this special

issue on the important topic of specialized courts. This issue was originally conceived by

long time Review editorial board member, Dr. Susette M. Talarico of the University of

Georgia and slated for a 2007 publication date. Susette bravely battled cancer for more than

17 years, all the while teaching, writing, and advising students through the symptoms and

treatments. In the process of overseeing the manuscript review process for this issue, she

unfortunately fell ill again in the fall of 2006 and eventually passed away in the summer of

2007. As a former PhD student whose career and life has been rewarded by her mentorship

and friendship, I was pleased to be asked to write about Susette’s vision for this issue and

to say a bit more about her career and life.

As a scholar and teacher, Susette spent a large portion of her career studying trial courts,

and her work demonstrated how they are an instrumental part of our criminal justice sys-

tem. She advocated for the need of scholars to better understand how trial courts function,

how actors behave in the process, and, in general, how these courts impact society. The

reform of trial courts always interested her because it offered scholars the opportunity to

understand how social and political movements work to change our justice system, how

these changes impact the process, and how they impact individuals who work in the courts

and who are served by our judicial system. It is no surprise that Susette became interested

in the movement of specialized courts in the latter years of her career.

Specialized, or problem-solving courts, emerged in the late 1980s in the United States and

were based on the theories of therapeutic jurisprudence and community-based justice. While

each variety of specialized court is different, they share a common philosophy of providing

a program for offenders that focuses on specific societal problems such as drugs, mental

health, domestic violence, guns, and driving under the influence, among others. Research

and policy discussions related to many of these variations of problem-solving courts are con-

tained in this thematic issue of the Review. In these sorts of courts, offenders are offered a

specially tailored judicial program that combines therapy or treatment, on-going monitoring

and supervision of offenders, regular appearances before the court, and the provision of

additional wrap-around services. Judges, attorneys, probation officers, and treatment offi-

cials also specialize in the particular problem that has the focus of the court. The goal of

these courts is to focus on the causes of the problem behind the criminal offense to improve

the life of the offender and reduce criminal recidivism and its costs to society. Since the late

1980s, specialized courts have diffused across American trial courts, the model has been

altered from a focus on drugs to fit other societal problems, and they have attracted more of

society’s resources. In addition, some argue that these reforms alter the very nature of trial

courts and expand their networks to other organizations in society such as government agen-

cies, nonprofits, and businesses. As an institutional change to the process of courts, the size

and scope of the movement’s influence is quite significant and raises many questions for

scholars, practitioners, and the public officials who are asked to support them. The articles

289

Criminal Justice Review

Volume 33 Number 3

September 2008 289-290

© 2008 Georgia State University

Research Foundation, Inc.

10.1177/0734016808320688

http://cjr.sagepub.com

hosted at

http://online.sagepub.com

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