affer, Latessa, 2002). This program and many more drug court programs that have followed this example are composed of cooperation between the judiciary, the district attorney, the public defender, probation officers, the police department, and the community. Over the past decade drug courts have caught on tremendously and gained great popularity. These specialized courts were designed to make the processing if drug cases easier and to help the offender by making treatment part of the program that is supervised by the court (Saum, Scarpitti, Robbins, 2001). As of now almost every state has a drug court system. In "June 2001, there were a total of 697 drug court programs in operation- serving an estimated 226,000 offenders- and another 427 programs planned, according to the Office of Justice Programs (Listwan, Schaffer, Latessa, 2002,52)". The primary goals of drug courts include promotion of abstinence from drug use and reduction of recidivism. They work to increase community safety and sense of well being, in addition to the increase of life skills, the increase of community awareness, and to expand and maintain a resource base.
             As with adults, many nonviolent, substance-abusing juvenile offenders repeatedly cycle through the system due to a lack of intervention measures that would provide sanctions and services necessary to change their deviant behavior (#1) In an attempt to resolve this problem, many communities have established juvenile drug courts.
             Determining the target population and eligibility is centered on making use of limited available resources. Because of this most juvenile drug courts focus on non-violent juveniles with moderate to heavy substance abuse prob
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