The Effect of Parental Support on Juvenile Drug Court Completion and Postprogram Recidivism

• Author: Carlos D. Montemayor,Summer Dannhaus,Leanne Fiftal Alarid
• DOI: 10.1177/1541204012438422
• Published date: 01 October 2012
• Date: 01 October 2012
• Subject Matter: Articles

The Effect of Parental

Support on Juvenile Drug

Court Completion and

Postprogram Recidivism

Leanne Fiftal Alarid

1

, Carlos D. Montemayor

2

, and

Summer Dannhaus

1

Abstract

Juvenile drug courts (JDCs) have grown exponentially in the last 15 years. JDCs typically require

more parental participation than do other community correctional options as a source of social

support for juveniles. Using official data and offender case files, this study examined client behavior

and parental support through various phases to determine factors that contribute toward successful

program completion and postprogram recidivism reduction. Family support was a significant pre-

dictor of both graduation and of postsupervision rearrest. Time spent in the drug court program and

client age were additional predictors of rearrest, while less prior adjudications were an additional

predictor of whether a youth would complete the drug court program. Policy implications to

increase parental support are discussed.

Keywords

drug court, parental support, juvenile justice, recidivism

Juvenile drug courts (JDCs) were established as community-based treatment programs to help youth

with substance abuse problems related to delinquency. JDCs, modeled after drug courts for adults,

have long been viewed under a therapeutic jurisprudence model as both rehabilitative and restorative

(Fulkerson, 2009; Stinchcomb, 2010). Therapeutic jurisprudence generally examines how the court

system affects the psychological well-being of defendants through using behavioral modification

and consequences for behavior that ultimately provides leverage for behavior change. Recent esti-

mates are that 467 juvenile and 343 family drug treatment courts exist throughout the United States

(National Drug Court Resource Center, 2010). Key drug court components include a coordinated

1

Department of Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA

2

Department of Criminal Justice, Texas State University-San Marcos, San Marcos, TX, USA

Corresponding Author:

Leanne Fiftal Alarid, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Texas at San Antonio, 501 W. Durango Blvd, San Antonio,

TX 78207, USA

Email: Leanne.Alarid@utsa.edu

Youth Violence and JuvenileJustice

10(4) 354-369

ªThe Author(s) 2012

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DOI: 10.1177/1541204012438422

http://yvj.sagepub.com

team approach between treatment providers and the court; ongoing judicial interaction with clients,

probation monitoring; and frequent urinalyses in order to assess progress (Belenko & Dembo, 2003).

Parental involvement and participation is perhaps the most important difference existing between

adult and JDCs (Hiller et al., 2010; Ruiz, Stevens, Fuhriman, Bogart, & Korchmaros, 2009). JDCs,

like most correctional supervision programs in juvenile justice, rely on parental support and

participation to help juveniles successfully complete the program. Impaired family relationships are

a significant risk factor in youth drug use (Fradella, Fischer, Kleinpeter, & Koob, 2009). Family

support has not only shown to positively affect treatment outcomes in adult drug courts (Goldkamp,

White, & Robinson, 2001) but also significant for youth in JDCs as well (Fradella et al., 2009;

MacMaster, Ellis, & Holmes, 2005). In his Presidential address to the Academy of Criminal Justice

Sciences, Francis Cullen (1994) expressed the importance of family and institutional support as pro-

tective buffers against future criminal behavior. At the same time, lack of parental support and coop-

eration is a constant concern in community-based supervision involving juveniles. As a result,

parents are oftentimes not involved as much as they should be in juvenile justice processes

(Schwalbe & Maschi, 2010). Clearly, then, there is interest in further study of parental support and

participation as a key variable for youth success and delinquency reduction, particularly in JDC pro-

grams, which hold a higher expectation of parental involvement than other community-based cor-

rectional interventions. This study examines youth behavior and probation officer measures of

parental support through various phases of a postadjudication JDC to determine factors that contrib-

ute toward successful program completion and postprogram recidivism reduction.

Literature Review

Adult drug courts have been around for a little over two decades (Lurigio, 2008), yet only in the last

decadehave there been extensiveresearch and meta-analysesproduced to describeand/or evaluate them

(Anspach,Ferguson, & Collom, 2005;Gilbertson, 2008; Harrell,2003; Hartley & Phillips,2001; Heck,

Roussell,& Culhane, 2009; Listwan, Shaffer, & Hartman, 2009;Listwan, Sundt, Holsinger,& Latessa,

2003; Lurigio,2008; Roman, Townsend, & Bhati,2003; Sanford & Arrigo, 2005;Shaffer, 2011; Shaf-

fer,Listwan, & Latessa, 2004;Shichor & Sechrest,2001; Stinchcomb,2010; Taxman & Bouffard,2005;

Taxman, Perdoni,& Harrison, 2007). Each drug courtoperated slightly different in howeligibility was

determined, requirements for level advancement, and sanctioning for negative behavior. While some

studies of adult drug courts found little difference between groups (Gottfredson, Kearley, Najaka, &

Rocha, 2007), a recent meta-analysis found that involvement in drug court reduced recidivism by an

average of 9%(Shaffer, 2011). In general,‘‘ ... differences in effec tiveness may be dependent o n how

wellthe model is developed, howwell the team works togetherto achieve the court’s goals,and the qual-

ity and type of services offered’’ (Listwan, Shaffer, & Latessa, 2002, p. 53).

In comparison to adult drug courts, fewer studies have examined JDCs, with the earliest known

evaluation in 1998 (Shaw & Robinson, 1998). JDC programs also admit fewer clients making it nec-

essary to gather data across a longer time period to amass a large enough sample. In identifying

which factors influenced program completion or the likelihood of rearrest postdrug court involve-

ment, most researchers used official data (Fradella et al., 2009; Gilmore, Rodriguez, & Webb,

2005; Henggeler et al., 2006; MacMaster et al., 2005; Polakowski, Hartley, & Bates, 2008; Rodri-

guez & Webb, 2004; Sloan, Smykla, & Rush, 2004), and only a handful of studies collected self-

report data directly from participants (Gilmore et al., 2005; Ruiz et al., 2009). Reduced recidivism

into adulthood postprogram completion of JDC graduates has been documented (Carter & Barker,

2011). However, another recent study illustrated that JDC involvement did not reduce alcohol and

drug recidivism when compared to a matched sample of probationers who did not attend drug court

(Hickert, Becker, Prospero, & Moleni, 2011).

Alarid et al. 355