NCJ Number
126762
Date Published
1990
Length
149 pages
Annotation
The Santa Clara County (California) Comprehensive Adjudication of Drug Arrestees (CADA) Program has as its main goal the joint reduction of jail overcrowding and court congestion. An intermediate objective is to improve and expedite the processing of felony drug cases through the criminal justice system.
Abstract
In this reporting period, July 1988 through December 1989, the CADA Program noted accomplishments and problems in each of its five programmatic interventions. The first intervention, the crime laboratory, was designed to provide defendants and criminal justice agencies with timely and reliable reports on the nature and net weight of chemical substances submitted for analysis. Early drug diversion, the second intervention, has two objectives: for in-custody cases, the qualification for drug diversion of all eligible defendants by the time of arraignment and, for out-of-custody cases, the determination of their interest in achieving drug diversion. The objectives of specialized court constellation are to reduce the narcotics case backlog, prevent the reappearance of that backlog, reduce the number of court appearances per case through the final disposition, reduce the numbers of days served by defendants in pretrial detention, and reduce the overall jail population. The fourth intervention, resource development, seeks to make available a larger number of treatment options to felony drug offenders. This intervention has been modified to focus on developing long-range plans to increase the range of treatment resources rather then working on an individual basis to increase the use of treatment resources. The final intervention, rational justice system planning process, attempts to establish and implement a process to guide policy, program, and operational planning related to the processing of narcotics cases and to establish an analytical and evaluation process for the entire program. 8 tables, 7 figures, and 10 appendixes