“People, Places, and Things”: Understanding the Context of Participants’ Lives in a Diversion Drug Court

Abstract

To better understand the struggles drug court participants face and their relationship to graduation status, we took freehand notes during observations of staff meetings ( N = 119) and court dockets ( N = 147) and used thematic analysis to examine the notations. Themes included participants’ ongoing mental and physical health issues, legal issues outside of drug court, experience with both prosocial and antisocial relationships, drug use by family and friends, and a variety of treatment barriers even in a program designed to mitigate these. We expected ongoing legal issues outside of drug court, physical and mental health struggles, and family and friends being supportive, or not, to be related to graduation but they were not. However, COVID-19 and treatment barriers were significantly related to graduation status. Results add to the scholarly literature, especially that focusing on justice and court processes post-COVID-19, and can assist practitioners in understanding what factors may need more attention and resources.