About: Drug courts in the United States

Drug courts are specialized court docket programs that aim to help participants recover from substance use disorder to reduce future criminal activity. Drug courts are used as an alternative to incarceration and aim to reduce the costs of repeatedly processing low‐level, non‐violent offenders through courts, jails, and prisons. Drug courts are usually managed by a nonadversarial and multidisciplinary team including judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, community corrections, social workers and treatment service professionals. Drug court participants include criminal defendants and offenders, juvenile offenders, and parents with pending child welfare cases.