Lancaster County DUI Court Implementation Project

The Lancaster County DUI Court (LCDC), located at located at 575 S 10th St Lincoln NE 68508, is prepared to implement a fully operational treatment court in the spring of 2021. The court, which will be a felony DUI docket, post-plea court. The presiding Judges for the court will be the Honorable Darla Ideus and the Honorable Judge John Colborn (retired).

The LCDC will have a program capacity of twenty felony DUI participants per an agreement with the LCDC team members. Over the course of the four year grant, the court intends to enroll about 53 participants, based on the maximum time for participation in the LCVTC being twenty four months, a minimum of eighteen total months, with an average of twenty months of supervision.

The target population will be felony 3rd offense and felony 4th offense DUI cases, high risk/high needs participants, as identified using the RANT-DUI assessment tool. MAT services are available in the local community to assist with opioid and alcohol medication assisted treatment strategies. Treatment will be at the recommended level of care to each participant and can include MATRIX IOP, residential treatment, outpatient treatment, DBT, trauma, and other CBT programs. MRT cognitive programming will be used to address criminal behaviors.

The LCDC has not leveraged any other federal funds and has never applied for nor received any prior OJP grant funds.

Both the NADCP Adult Drug Court Best Practice Standards and the NCDC Guiding Principles are  addressed on pages 9, 10, and 11 of this grant application. Objective 1 discusses housing assistance to DUI Court participants concerning ADC Best Practice VI. Objective 2 discusses providing residential, outpatient, and detoxification services to in line with ADC Best Practice V. Objective 3 targets ADC Best Practice VII. by providing participants access to daily substance abuse testing. Objective 4 proposes technology upgrades concerning ADC Best Practice VIII. Objective 5 will address NCDC Guiding Principle #8 to remove transportation barriers through use of ride-share services. Objective 6 will offer financial programming and relapse prevention program in line with ADC Best Practice VI. Objective 7 targets NCDC Guiding Principle #5 to build support for the first DUI Court program in Nebraska. Objective 8 targets ADC Best Practice VIII. to provide ongoing training. Objective 9 will address ADC Best Practice X. to conduct a program evaluation of the court. 

The grant total requested is $500,000 category 3 grant request.