Discretionary Justice: Looking Inside a Juvenile Drug Court (Critical Issues in Crime and Society)

Her book manuscript, entitled Discretionary Justice: Looking Inside a Juvenile Drug Court is an intensive case study of staff decision-making practices in a juvenile drug court in southern California. Use of juvenile drug courts is on the rise in the US, as a result of a favorable political climate and a professional endorsement of the concept of combining therapeutic care with correctional discipline. These efforts aim to divert nonviolent youth drug users into drug treatment instead of long-term incarceration. The author proposes to look at what kind of effects this "therapeutic jurisprudence movement" has on the process of recovery of program participants. The author focuses on the way accountability and non-compliance are assessed by staff members of such programs. Explaining the concept of "workability," Leslie Paik demonstrates how compliance and what is seen by staff as "noncompliance" are the constructed results of various staff decisions, budget cuts, and sometimes questionable drug test results. Starting with an overview of the juvenile drug court system, this manuscript provides a portrait of the "highly contested and negotiated backstage staff negotiations" surrounding the way youths and their families negotiate their way through these programs.