Assess the impact of judicial decision making on the development and implementation of public policy. (CO# 4,5) In this module, you were introduced to the notion of adversarial justice where opposing sides of a case argue vigorously to have a jury believe their version of the events. Take into consideration that we have been engaged in the War on Drugs for 40 years since Nixon “declared” such a battle in the 1970s. In 1970, there were 322,000 drug related arrests. In 2012, there were 1.6 million arrests for drug offenses. When we factor in we have been at “war” since President LB Johnson declared a War on Crime in 1965 (Walker, 2006). When we take into consideration that as many as 2.3 million people were jailed and imprisoned in the United States, we have to question the effectiveness of these “Wars,” especially the War on Drugs as it is often considered the greatest factor in the rise of incarceration rates. In 2009, 52% of all federal prisoners and 20% of all state prisoners were convicted of drug offenses, and 83% of all inmates are addicted or abuse drugs and/or alcohol (Schmalleger & Smykla, 2009). Dade County Florida established the first drug court in the United States in 1989. Since then, they have been enacted by a number of jurisdictions across the country. For this discussion, based on the Haley article, how do Drug Courts differ from traditional, adversarial courts? What are the ten key components of drug court programs? Are drug using offenders better served by traditional adversarial courts or drug courts? Insure you justify and explain your answer. References Schmalleger, F., & Smykla, J. O. (2009). Corrections in the 21st century (5th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw Hill Higher Education. Walker, S. (2006). Sense and nonsense about crime and drugs (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth
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