Drug courts routinely rely on the threat of legal sanction to motivate drug-using criminal offenders to enter and complete community-based treatment programs. In light of the high failure rates among drug court participants, what is the effect of the threat of legal sanction on program retention and completion? A quasiexperimental research design was used to study program retention and completion within two adult drug courts that employed the same staff to administer identical treatment and supervision programs in the same jurisdiction. One court relied on a 120-day suspended sentence to coerce program participation, whereas the other court was prohibited by law from imposing a jail sentence on its participants. Using alternative measures of program retention, a single measure of program completion, and controls for salient sociodemographic and criminal history factors, the analysis found no differences in program retention or completion between the two courts.

Prior research on juvenile and criminal courts argues that because of contextual differences between these two forums, court actors' perceptions of guilt and culpability may be more influenced by racial/ethnic or gender stereotypes in juvenile courts than in criminal courts, regarding the prosecution of adolescents. In this article, the authors explore this differential bias hypothesis, using both quantitative and qualitative data. After comparing the factors that shape sentencing outcomes across court types, the article turns to qualitative data to understand whether the contextual distinctions between these two types of courts create greater opportunity for discrimination in juvenile court. Neither the quantitative nor qualitative results support this differential bias hypothesis. The quantitative analyses do not find a significantly different effect of race/ethnicity or sex across court types. The qualitative analyses help explain this result; although juvenile courts may expose adolescents to greater risks of being judged according to stereotypes, two contextual features protect adolescents by mitigating the impact of these potential hazards: aggressive and well-organized public defenders in juvenile court and the similarity of case processing during the sentencing phases of juvenile and criminal court.

This article reviews the recent development of juvenile competency to stand trial (CST) policies across the United States in light of the inherent contradiction of this due process procedure in a separate juvenile court that is premised on the incompetence of youth. The article draws on existing CST legal doctrine and psycho‐legal research to demonstrate the need for sociolegal research to better understand who gains access to the CST process, CST decisions, and how CST may influence subsequent case processing decisions. Utilizing CST as an adopted formal policy from criminal court and an exploratory case study, I demonstrate the difficulties facing how court actors manage the role of youthfulness and culpability for CST decision‐making in contemporary juvenile courts. Overall, both quantitative and qualitative research is needed to examine whether court actors’ practice of CST serves to further deconstruct or reinforce the juvenile court’s rehabilitative ideal.

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