The Future of Crime and Punishment: Smart Policies for Reducing Crime and Saving Money

A relatively new version of a problem-solving court is called a swift and certain sanction court. The prototype was developed in Hawaii in 2004 and is called the HOPE court (Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement). The HOPE court was designed to increase accountability and compliance among probationers who are in drug treatment. The method is really quite simple. Rather than relying on the severity of punishment, this approach maximizes the certainty and swiftness of modest punishment to enhance compliance. The evaluation research indicates that while severe punishment has very limited behavior-altering effects, swift and certain but modest punishment—a night or two in jail—can be quite effective in getting individuals who violate the conditions of probation to follow the rules. The evaluations to date of the HOPE court and HOPE-type courts show rather dramatic reductions in violations and recidivism and significant increases in program compliance. The HOPE court concept has mainly been applied to a variety of offenders on probation. It is quite reasonable to expand this concept to pretrial diversion offenders as a tool to enhance compliance and manage the risk of reoffending. Today there are at least sixty jurisdictions in over eighteen states that have HOPE court-based swift and certain sanctioning courts for probationers.
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Juvenile drug courts are also a popular alternative to juvenile court and juvenile corrections. Modeled after the adult version, juvenile drug courts provide a balance of accountability and compliance with substance abuse treatment, mental health services, education, job training, case management and so on. Compliance is enhanced by swift, certain, and graduated sanctions. Research indicates that drug courts are effective at reducing recidivism and drug use. However as is the case at the adult level, juvenile drug court capacity is extremely limited, so few juveniles have the opportunity for this type of diversion.
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It is critically important that individuals in the juvenile justice system, including probation officers, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, case managers, and so forth, all understand and recognize the various ways that the deficits and impairments that many youth bring to the juvenile justice system affect their behavior. Many of the problems we discussed above have important implications for things like compliance with probation conditions or requirements for participation in drug court. What may look like indifference or acting out may in fact be a consequence of an identifiable mental or neurological problem. Those individuals who engage with youth in the justice system need to change how they respond to noncompliance. While swift, certain, and graduated sanctioning for rule violations may work for some, they may not work for all. When a kid repeatedly violates conditions of probation or drug court rules, it may be that the kid is not simply criminal but lacks the capacity to understand the consequences of his or her behavior or is desensitized to punishment. In that case, continued sanctioning may be ineffective. If that scenario plays out like it has in the past the kid eventually will be placed in secure detention. That is probably the worst outcome.