By Mya Nobles
The primary goal of creating drug court was to reduce recidivism and allow participants to get back on their feet.[1] However, with the steep court costs and financial obligations, drug courts can potentially be an anchor that destabilizes and hinders participants from moving forward with their lives. Florida became the birthplace of the nation’s first drug court in 1989.[2] Since its creation, there are now over 4,000 drug courts nationwide.[3] Serving as a hurried solution to the drug crisis and mass incarceration onset by the War on Drugs in the 1970’s, drug courts have created an alternative to incarceration for individuals who are battling substance abuse issues.[4] Although drug courts provided a more favorable alternative to incarceration, the program had little scientific backing or economic impact analysis before its development.[5]
Currently, drug courts refer more people to treatment than any other intervention program in the United States and they have served over 145,000 people with serious addictions.[6] The National Association of Drug Court Professionals reported to have graduated over 1 million people from Drug Court,[7] and the Government Accountability Office also reports that drug court participants were found to have up to 26 percent lower rate of recidivism when compared to other groups who did not undergo the program.[8] These success rates coupled with the opportunity to avoid jailtime has made drug court a promising option for many defendants. However, for participants with limited resources, family responsibilities, or ongoing employment, Florida’s modern Drug Court model imposes unrealistic time and financial commitments.
The Drug Court Model
Hernando County’s Adult Drug Court[9] serves as an example of the rigorous process a drug court participant must undergo in order to complete the program. Like other programs throughout Florida, this drug court program is divided into several stages, each with escalating requirements.
Phases I-III
Participants begin in Phase I, the most demanding stage, which spans at least eight weeks. It includes orientation, psychosocial assessments, and rigorous commitments such as therapy three times a week, three weekly peer support meetings, random urine tests multiple times a week, and weekly court appearances. To advance, participants must complete all tasks, have 12 consecutive clean tests over four weeks, and settle any financial obligations.
Phase II, lasting a minimum of 22 weeks, slightly eases the intensity with therapy twice weekly and biweekly court hearings but maintains strict testing and peer support requirements. Participants must demonstrate eight consecutive weeks of clean tests and financial compliance to progress.
Phase III, the least demanding, requires ongoing counseling, peer support meetings, random testing, and monthly court hearings. Completion requires 16 weeks of clean tests and adherence to all program requirements.
Aftercare
Graduating from the program involves entering Aftercare, a final 26-week component focused on lifelong sobriety. Participants attend biweekly group sessions, weekly peer support meetings, and random drug tests while developing a relapse prevention plan. Graduation demands six months without sanctions, financial compliance, and participation in community service.
Completion
Once completed, participants appear before a judge for certification and may later seek expungement of their conviction. While procedures vary across Florida, drug courts impose strict and demanding requirements, leaving participants with little room for error as they navigate a grueling path to compliance and potential rehabilitation.
Economic Destabilization
Participants are responsible for all costs associated with the drug court program and these costs significantly fluctuate county-to-county. For example, in Osceola County, participants pay $1,080 for drug testing, $420 for treatment services, $25 initial services fee, and $120 per month for any defendant whose treatment exceeds twelve months.[10] This is a total of $1,525 not including court fees or the monthly fee for treatments that last over a year.[11] Similarly, Orange County participants are required to pay a base fee of $900 with extra fees for participants whose treatment lasts over a year.[12] Broward county, on the other hand, bases their treatment on a sliding scale based on family size, income, and the number of dependents.[13] The cost of drug treatment varies by county, and there is little disclosure of the cause of the cost disparity. Most counties, unfortunately, do not take into account the financial circumstances of each participant and mirror the total fee of Osceola County.[14] For indigent participants, court costs alone are usually over 10% of their annual income.[15]
The issue of economic destabilization arises when drug court participants are unable to advance or graduate unless court costs are paid. This makes people with limited resources spend more time in the costly program, stuck in the cycle of court fees and obligations. With such a heavy financial commitment, it is destabilizing for individuals experiencing poverty to comply with the demands of drug court. Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice conducted a 2019 comprehensive study to see how drug court affects the daily life of an average Alabama drug court participant.[16] In this study, 8 in 10 individuals disclosed that they were forced to give up a basic necessity in order to cover the cost of drug court.[17] The demanding costs and strict rules may also force participants to miss work for random drug tests, arrange childcare for frequent meetings, and shoulder burdensome transportation expenses, causing significant financial strain. Without considering the financial situation and demands of each individual participant, Florida Drug Courts run the risk of detrimentally destabilizing indigent participants.
As a consequence of any form of noncompliance with drug court rules, a participant is ordered sanctions by the court.[18] These sanctions can include fines, verbal reprimand, incarceration, detention, adjusted therapy plans, and termination.[19] Florida Drug Courts would be remised to ignore the financial circumstances of each participant when implementing fine sanctions as no one dollar amounts to the same degree of punishment for every person.
Nevertheless, the Florida Adult Drug Court Best Practice Standards explicitly states that, “[m]embers of disadvantaged groups receive the same incentives and sanctions as other participants for comparable achievements or infractions, except when they may cause harm or injury to the participant’s physical or mental health.”[20] Despite the last clause, the means of establishing what is deemed “injur[ious] to the participant’s physical or mental health” is unspecified. Therefore, there is no structure that guarantees that individuals who are financially disadvantaged will be protected from inequity in administering sanctions. This is especially important in drug court where fines are amongst the most common form of sanctions.[21]
Participants can be sanctioned for missing a court date, missing a payment fee, failing a drug test, and/or not fulfilling the aforementioned treatment obligations as set by the court.[22] As relapse is an intricate part of the recovery process of addiction, individuals who experience addiction are at a stifling disadvantage because they are more inclined to fail a drug test during their treatment.[23] Therefore, these individuals are also more susceptible to incur sanctions and get trapped in the drug court’s financially demanding process.
Maintaining a form of financial stability is already a difficult task for participants with substance use disorders, and they are also at an increased risk for numerous medical conditions which can lead to culminating medical fees.[24] Addiction can also make it difficult to maintain a job which can lead to a cycle of financial instability.[25] With the boundaries of financial independence lingering over the heads of many participants, an additional fine on top of the steep drug court costs could be detrimental to their efforts in getting back on their feet.
Conclusion
In theory, Florida’s drug courts offer a pathway to recovery and reintegration, but in practice, they risk becoming a destabilizing force for many participants. The financial demands, coupled with stringent requirements and the risk of sanctions, create significant barriers, particularly for indigent participants and those with limited resources. While drug courts may lower recidivism rates and provide an alternative to incarceration, their current structure often overlooks the economic realities of addiction and poverty. Without meaningful reforms that address these inequities, drug courts may perpetuate the very instability they aim to resolve, leaving vulnerable participants trapped in a cycle of financial and legal hardships.
[1]Lindsay Timari, Changing Florida’s “Dazed and Confused” Past: How Recent Legislation Provides More Options for Sentencing Drug Addicted Offenders, 34 Nova L. Rev. 321, 322 (2009).
[2] Id.
[3] What are Drug Courts, Nat’l Treatment Ct. Rsch. Ctr. (Oct. 12, 2023), https://ntcrc.org/what-aredrugcourts/#:~:text=There%20are%20over%204%2C000%20drug,least%20one%20drug%20court%20program.
[4] Eric J. Miller, Embracing Addiction: Drug Courts and the False Promise of Judicial Interventionism, 65 Ohio St. L.J. 1479, 1481 (2004).
[5] Wayne A. Comstock, Drug Courts: The Risk of an Increased Number of Drug-related Arrests and Long Jail Sentences, 13 U. MIA Race & Soc. Just. L. Rev. 1, 7-8 (2023).
[6] Adult Courts: Studies Show Courts Reduce Recidivism, but DOJ Could Enhance Future Performance Measure Revision Efforts, U.S. Gov’t Accountability Off. (Dec. 9, 2011), https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-12-53.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Katie Mosley-Rusha, Hernando County Drug Court, Fifth Jud. Cir. of Florida (2017), https://www.circuit5.org/programs-services/drug-court-programs/hernando-county-adult-drug-court/.
[10] Drug Court, Ninth Jud. Cir. of Florida (2017), https://ninthcircuit.org/divisions/drug-court.
[11] Id.
[12] Id.
[13] Drug Court Treatment Program, Broward Sherriff’s Off. (2022), https://www.sheriff.org/CP/Pages/Drug-Court-Treatment-Program.aspx.
[14] Drug Court, supra note 10.
[15] Id.
[16] Alabama Appleseed, In Trouble, Alabama Appleseed Ctr. L. & Just. 4 (2020).
[17] Id. at 18-19.
[18] State of Florida, Florida Adult Court Best Practice Standards 1 (2017), https://www.flcourts.gov/content/download/217042/file/Florida_Adult_Drug_Court_Standards_I-X.pdf.
[19] Id. at 40.
[20] Id.
[21] Id.
[22] Id.
[23] Treatment and Recovery, National Institute on Drug Abuse (July 2020), https://nida.nih.gov/publications/drugs-brains-behavior-science-addiction/treatment-recovery.
[24] Kesha Baptiste-Roberts, PhD, Socioeconomic Disparities and Self-Reported Substance Abuse-related Problems, Nat’l Library of Medicine (Apr. 2018).https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6494986/#:~:text=Individuals%20with%20SUDs%2C%20resultingly%2C%20experience,at%20over%20$220%20billion.12.
[25]Id.
