The impact of gender characteristics and protocol variations within the screening process of drug courts: Yavapai county adult probation

Abstract

This thesis explores the screening process in drug courts. Drug courts are known to be specialty courts, as much emphasis is put on efforts to rehabilitate drug offenders and not necessarily punish drug offenders by incarcerating them. An important aspect to note is drug courts operate in a non-adversarial model, whereby the philosophies and goals are different from the traditional courts. A drug court workgroup exists in drug courts, which typically include a judge, prosecutor, defense attorney, drug court coordinator, and probation officer. The drug court coordinator has the most discretion in drug courts, and it is due to this nature that the drug court coordinator is regarded as the gatekeeper in drug courts. I examined Yavapai County's Adult Probation to research the impact of gender characteristics and protocol variations within the screening process. Two interviews were conducted on the drug court coordinator, and the observations of ten drug offender's screening were done in between the two interviews. I researched the following question: Do gender characteristics and protocol variations have an impact on the treatment and services given to drug offenders? The data support my hypotheses. The first hypothesis was supported in the sense that the female drug offenders who had more gender characteristics (i.e., health and socioeconomic issues) received more recommendations for treatment and services than the male drug offenders. A separate gender characteristic that I found to have an impact on the recommendation for treatment was the drug offenders' difference in offending. All of the gender characteristics result from gender differences. It is important to note that the concept of gender itself did not have an influence on the recommendations for treatment and services. The second hypothesis was supported with the finding that the drug court coordinator's discretion had an impact on the use of various protocols (DUI/Court Screening Information, ASUS-R, and TCU Drug Screen II) and the recommendations for treatment and services.