Drug Court

At least one third of the cases that have been presented in Superior Court over the last few years have been cases involving drugs. The State of Delaware, with the aid of the Bureau of Justice Assistance and the Federal Government, has developed procedures to speed up the dispositions of case involving drugs, and to try to avoid repeat offenses by steering drug case defendants toward treatment programs rather than imprisonment. The Delaware Legislature has worked with the courts towards this goal, and the executive branch has provided some agencies that act toward achieving rehabilitative efforts. Participants in the Drug Court are placed on a diversion program. They are supervised by agencies such as Brandywine Counseling, Inc., or SODAT, and they come before the Court at least once a month so that a Judge has direct involvement in the effort to treat defendants as people with problems that can be overcome. The program does place a considerable amount of incentive upon the people entering it. When a defendant joins the Drug diversion program, he or she stipulates that upon failure to comply with the conditions of the program, a sentence for the original charges may be imposed. If the defendant is successful, the charges are dropped by the Attorney General's Office, and the defendant can then petition the Court to have the record of their arrest expunged.