A Criminological Fly in the Ointment: Specialty Courts and the Generality of Deviance
Specialty courts—such as drug courts, mental health courts, or domestic violence courts—tend to assume, either implicitly or explicitly, that particular groups of offenders have unique problems that can be best met with specialized case processing. Put simply, specialty courts assume that offenders themselves are specialists when it comes to offending. There is, however, a criminological fly in the ointment. The problem is that criminological theory and research have long demonstrated that offenders tend to be generalists and that they rarely specialize in any given form of misbehavior. Accordingly, the authors argue here that the notion of the “generality of deviance” presents a problem for the potential effectiveness of specialty courts because they are likely operating on a faulty set of ideas about offending behavior. The authors offer strategies for moving forward to better integrate the notion of the generality of deviance into specialty courts: in particular, embracing a rehabilitative philosophy and adopting well-documented correctional treatment approaches such as cognitive-behavioral interventions and the risk-need-responsivity model. They conclude by highlighting the risks associated with granting system efficiency a position of privilege among the multiple goals of corrections.
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At this point, there appear to be two rather consistent findings in the specialty courts literature: (a) those courts that take a therapeutic—as opposed to a more strictly punitive—approach tend to produce better outcomes in terms of offender recidivism; and (b) a significant portion of specialty courts are still largely punishment—as opposed to treatment—focused (Marlowe et al., 2016; Tanner-Smith, Lipsey, & Wilson, 2016). These findings are also reflected in the correctional literature more broadly where hundreds of studies point to the ineffectiveness of punishment-based interventions. Still, the desire to punish offenders is a core correctional value (Cullen, Fisher, & Applegate, 2000; King & Roberts, 2017). This means that convincing specialty courts—or any correctional program for that matter—to embrace a treatment philosophy can still be a tough sell. Remaining treatment oriented is especially challenging when offenders do not comply perfectly with court requirements; defying authority has a way of stoking punitive sentiments.
The task of encouraging a treatment philosophy has arguably been made even more difficult in recent years with the revival of faith in the power of punishment in the form of community supervision programs like Project HOPE (Hawaii’s Opportunity with Probation Enforcement) and swift, certain, and fair (SCF) punishment (Hawken & Kleiman, 2009). These programs have become wildly popular in recent years across the country, spreading to over 160 locations across over 30 states (Cullen, Pratt, Turanovic,& Butler, 2018). And like the conservative-led get-tough approaches of the past, the HOPE/SCF model assumes that a stint of incarceration—what might be termed “jail therapy”—will cure offenders of their criminal ills (Kleiman, 2016). And also like the conservative-led get-tough approaches of the past, the accumulated empirical evidence shows that these programs have no consistent or appreciable effect on recidivism (Cullen, Pratt, & Turanovic, 2016; Lattimore et al., 2015; O’Connell, Brent, & Visher, 2016).
The difference, however, is that HOPE/SCF is the brainchild of liberal scholars and practitioners—a program that was developed and evangelized by those who are more progressive ideologically (Cullen, Manchak, & Duriez, 2014; see also the discussion by Cullen et al., 2018). Thus, as progressive policymakers adopt a liberal version of “punishment works,” a key group who may have otherwise been sympathetic to embracing a treatment philosophy might now be harder to convince that it has merit. Even so, the data are pretty clear on this one—that specialty courts do much better when they explicitly adopt a treatment philosophy (Blair, Sullivan, Lux, Thielo, & Gormsen, 2016; Shaffer, 2011). So to the extent that policymakers still favor evidence-based approaches to corrections—and we have good reason to believe that they do—this is the evidence that should guide specialty courts in the future.