The Transportability of Contingency Management in Problem-solving Courts

Abstract

Problem-solving (PS) courts continue to proliferate throughout the country, providing an ideal setting for understanding the factors affecting the use of rewards, a key part of one evidence-based practice (EBP), contingency management (CM). This study uses the concept of transportability to explore how justice practitioners implement CM. Based on roughly 400 h of ethnographic fieldwork, conducted over 34 months in six PS courts, we examine the implementation and adaptation of CM. While decisions to adopt and implement practices are concentrated at the managerial level of organizations, the implementation processes used by frontline workers provide key insight into how EBP may become an everyday workplace practice. This study finds frontline workers adapting CM principles to their environments. While it might appear as though CM implementation strays from the original evidence-based construct, local adaptations provide a foundation for understanding the factors that affect the transportability of CM into routine practice.

Keywords:

• implementation
• evidence-based practices
• problem-solving courts

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the collaborative contributions of the federal staff from NIDA, the JSTEPS research team, members of the JSTEPS project teams in the five federal US districts, and the graduate student researchers within the Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence (ACE!) at George Mason University who assisted with data collection for this project.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse [PI Faye Taxman, grant number U01-DA016213-07-A].

Notes

^1. Drug courts are one specific type of PS court. While there are a variety of PS courts (see e.g. Kleinpeter, Deschenes, Blanks, Lepage, and Knox (2006) for a discussion of dual diagnosis courts), drug courts continue to garner the most scholarly and public attention and are a model for other types of PS courts.

^2. Outcomes are considered as part of the broader JSTEPS study, but are outside the scope of this paper, which focuses specifically on the process of implementation.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shannon Portillo

Shannon Portillo is an assistant professor at the University of Kansas School of Public Affairs and Administration. She takes an interdisciplinary approach to her work pulling on organizational theories rooted in Public Administration and Law and Society to explore how rules and policies are carried out within public organizations. To date she has done work in a broad array of organizations including problem-solving courts, probation, restorative justice programs, administrative hearings, policing, higher education, and city management. Using a variety of methods, she collects empirical data to assess how social, cultural, and legal factors influence the day-to-day operations of justice in these organizations. Teaching and research interests include social equity, organizational theory, and legal mobilization. Her work has appeared in Law and Policy, Administration and Society, Law and Social Inquiry, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and Public Administration Review.

Danielle S. Rudes

Danielle S. Rudes, is an assistant professor of Criminology, Law and Society and the Deputy Director of the Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence (ACE!) at George Mason University. Broadly stated, her research focuses on how middle managers and street-level workers within juvenile and adult social control organizations (like correctional institutions, probation, and parole) understand, negotiate, and at times, resist change. This change includes organizational reform and implementation of evidence-based practices. Using qualitative methods, including ethnographic observation and interviews, she threads her research around both theoretical and practical considerations using empirical data to inform policy. To date, her research has considered organizational change among a wide array of players, including state and federal parole/probation officers, problem-solving court teams (e.g. judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and treatment providers), international police, correctional officers, and prison case managers.

Faye S. Taxman

Faye S. Taxman, is a university professor in the Criminology, Law, and Society Department and Director of the Advancing Correctional Excellence Center at George Mason University. She is recognized for her work in the development of the seamless systems of care models that link the criminal justice with other service delivery systems as well as reengineering probation and parole supervision services. She has active “laboratories” with her nearly 20-year agreement with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services and has received funding from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, National Institute of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance, National Institute of Corrections, and other agencies. She is the co-author (with Steven Belenko) of Implementation of Evidence Based Practices in Community Corrections and Addiction Treatment (Springer, 2011) and senior author of Tools of the Trade: A guide to incorporating science into supervision.