Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2009, $191,237)
The Drug Court Discretionary Grant Program is designed to assist states, state courts, local courts, units of local government, and Indian tribal governments in developing and establishing drug courts for substance-abusing adult and juvenile offenders. Drug court programs funded by the Drug Court Discretionary Grant Program are required by law to target nonviolent offenders. The program supports the following activities: adult drug court implementation, single jurisdiction drug court enhancement, statewide drug court enhancement, and planning efforts.
The Kansas City Municipal Drug Court (KCMDC) enhancement project spans four counties and lies at the core of the greater metropolitan area. The Kansas City Municipal Court, the largest court in Missouri, processes more than 350,000 charges each year and approximately 3,000 are for drug or drug paraphernalia possession, usually items associated with the use of crack cocaine or methamphetamine. The KCMDC focuses its resources on substance abusers with the most chronic and debilitating addiction. The court links clients to local, community-based treatment resources with the goal of reducing recidivism and preventing further involvement in the criminal justice system.
The court's goals are to strengthen services to support successful transition from substance abuse treatment to full rehabilitation, strengthen the education and awareness of the drug court practitioners to provide a comprehensive and successful drug court to all participants, and obtain restitution for treatment and supervision services. RDI will conduct a process and outcome evaluation to assess court enhancements, random observations of the weekly drug court proceedings, and monthly client screenings. RDI will hold an annual lessons learned focus group to assess program strengths, weaknesses, barriers, and limitations. Annual interviews with treatment staff will be conducted to assess the referral and placement process of the drug court. An outcome evaluation will use baseline, 6 month, and 12 month follow-up client surveys to assess sustained involvement in the program, in addition to a review of program notes and logs. RDI will assist staff in creating client tracking tools and design a data collection and management system. Two client focus groups will be held to gather qualitative data. Staff surveys and the focus groups will assess training benefits, knowledge gained, and training impact.
CA/NCF