Drug Courts Webinar Series: Specialty Docket Expansion and Changes in Misdemeanor Drug Case Processing Across Race and Sex

U.S. drug policy has recently shifted away from heavy criminalization toward treatment-oriented approaches, a transition accelerated by the opioid crisis. Drug and other specialty courts offer substance use and mental health treatment and structured programming to treat root causes of crime and reduce incarceration. Although specialty court docket participation lowers recidivism, substance use, and unemployment, recent studies evidence disparities in accessibility and completion of treatment programs. How the establishment of specialty court dockets in a jurisdiction subsequently shapes broader inequities in case processing outcomes, however, is much less understood. This Phase I webinar session draws on over 400,000 misdemeanor cases in Franklin County, Ohio Municipal Court between 2001 and 2019 to explore associations between the staggered implementation of five specialty dockets and changes in misdemeanor drug charging and sentencing outcomes, with particular attention to disparate impacts by race and sex.

Presenter: 
Sadé Lindsay, Assistant Professor, Cornell Brooks Public Policy

Moderator: 
Judge Jodi Thomas, Franklin County Municipal Court

The Drug Court Webinar Series is hosted by The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law Drug Enforcement and Policy Center and The Ohio State University John Glenn College of Public Affairs, and Cornell University Brooks School of Public Policy Department of Sociology.

This project was supported by Award No.15PNIJ-21-GG-04708-NIJB, awarded by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. 

The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this exhibition are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.