Maine Adult Drug Treatment Court Program Evaluation

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 implementation, statewide drug court enhancement, and planning efforts.

The Maine Judicial Branch, in collaboration with its local and state partners, will use drug court statewide enhancement funds to provide two statewide training events for all adult drug court practitioners in Maine, and to conduct a comprehensive process and outcome evaluation of its adult drug court system. The goal of the project is to enhance the efficiency and promote the overall effectiveness of Maine's drug court system through training, data collection, and evaluation. The objectives are to assess current court practices through a process evaluation; to provide training based on the results; to conduct an outcome evaluation and cost effectiveness study; and to conduct follow-up training. The project will be conducted at two distinct levels over the course of a twenty-four month project time period. The first level is highly process-oriented, focusing specifically on how and in what ways the individual drug court teams can improve their respective programs. This will occur both through a process evaluation of current practices and training of drug court teams. The second level is dedicated to assessing each of the drug courts on long-term outcome measures and cost effectiveness, both to inform policy-making and funding decisions at the state level, and to foster improvements at the local level by correlating outcomes with process measures.

CA/NCF