Race and Public Support for Rehabilitation in Problem-Solving Courts

• In Event: Public Opinion's Effect on Courts

Abstract

Increased attention in recent years to police misconduct, disproportionate sentencing practices, and racial disparities in all facets of the legal system has led to calls for reform of the American criminal justice system, particularly its focus on punishment. Reformers have called for prison and police abolition, a greater focus on restorative justice, and a transition to more community-focused criminal justice alternatives, such as problem-solving courts. Operating under a model of therapeutic jurisprudence focused on rehabilitation over incarceration, the number of problem-solving courts has increased dramatically across the United States in the last several decades (Wexler and Winick, 1991; Nolan, 2003; Mitchell, 2011). While a number of studies have investigated various measures of success, such as rates of recidivism, in such specialty courts as drug courts (Boldt, 2010), mental health courts (Lurigio and Snowden, 2009), and veterans treatment courts (Tsai, Finlay, Flatley, Kasprow, & Clark, 2018), very little research examines the level of popular support the American public grants toward this rehabilitative model of criminal justice (Thielo et al., 2019). In this paper, I conduct an original survey experiment that measures public support for the problem-solving court model. Specifically, the survey experiment varies the characteristics of a hypothetical offender, including race, and asks respondents the degree to which the offender deserves to be included in a drug court program. This research aims to investigate the degree to which support for rehabilitative justice programs, such as drug courts, varies by race and raises important questions regarding the continued and future use and effectiveness of programs that go beyond a punitive goal and focus on rehabilitation and restoration. This research has the potential to contribute to political science research on criminal justice, race and ethnic politics, and U.S. legal institutions.

References

Boldt, R. C. (2010). The “tomahawk” and the “healing balm”: Drug treatment courts in theory and practice. University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender, and Class, 10, 44–71.

Lurigio, A. J., & Snowden, J. (2009). Putting therapeutic jurisprudence into practice: The growth, operations, and effectiveness of mental health court. Justice System Journal, 30(2), 196-218.

Mitchell, O. (2011). Drug and other specialty courts. In M. Tonry (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of crime and criminal justice (pp. 843–871). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Nolan, J. L. (2003). Reinventing justice. Princeton University Press.

Thielo, A. J., Cullen, F. T., Burton, A. L., Moon, M. M., & Burton, Jr, V. S. (2019). Prisons or problem-solving: Does the public support specialty courts? Victims & Offenders, 14(3), 267-282.

Tsai, J., Finlay, A., Flatley, B., Kasprow, W. J., & Clark, S. (2018). A national study of veterans treatment court participants: Who benefits and who recidivates. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research, 45, 236–244.

Wexler, D. B., & Winick, B. J. (1991). Essays in therapeutic jurisprudence. Carolina Academic Press.

Author

• Ryan James Williams, Bates College