Monroe County Adult Drug Court Standards Development Project

Proposal Abstract:

The Monroe County Adult Drug Court (ADC), is a post adjudication court whose participants are adult offenders diagnosed with substance use disorder, facing a felony conviction or an Alternative to Revocation of probation. The program is applying for $124,519 within the BJA FY 21 Adult Drug Court and Veterans Treatment Court Discretionary Grant Program, category #3. Awarded monies will be used to fund key program aspects like drug testing (6,8,11), incentives (8,9,14), treatment services (11,14,16), team training (10,11,16) and participant case management (6,14,16).

Implementation of the program were funded by a state revolving loan fund and monies from a state grant through the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ). Additionally, the county budget allocates some money toward the program for attending state conference trainings. We were able to determine that the jurisdiction previously received an award in 2002 although we could not locate documentation pertaining to because everything has been switched to electronic with paper files being destroyed. The programs continuance was not supported by the county board after the funding period ended marking the demise of the program at that time.

The program could serve up to 20 offenders at a time. An estimated 60 individuals will be served through the program in a four year period. The programs structure was modeled after NADCP Best Practice Standards, is 14 months long with 5 total phases. The estimated average length of participation is 18 months. All of the program’s participants will benefit from monies awarded.

The target population for program are adult offenders with pending felony charges or pending revocations through the department of corrections. They must be diagnosed with a substance use disorder by a licensed provider as well found to be high risk on a validated risk assessment tool. There are county residency requirements and an examination of prior criminal history to check for violent or drug distribution cases that would qualify as exclusionary criteria.

90% of program referrals have recommendations for Intensive Outpatient services or higher. Currently, the court contracts with a treatment provider to meet this need. There is only one other provider that offers IOP or higher within our catchment area and current wait times are 2-3 months. There are several providers offering access to medicated assisted treatments and participants are given autonomy in this decision and that decision is then supported by the team and program’s resources.