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The Office of the State Attorney is proud to continue its innovative approach to smart justice through various treatment courts and diversion efforts. The State Attorney has long believed that therapeutic justice enhances community safety offenders with the necessary treatment and services to allow them to be productive members of our community.

State Attorney Fernandez Rundle has long believed that we can improve public safety by providing offenders with the treatment and services they need, and worked with the courts and Public Defender’s Office to develop and implement the nation’s first Drug Court. The court diverts offenders who abuse drugs from the traditional justice system and is designed to identify and address their criminogenic needs through offender screening and assessment, judicial interaction, monitoring, intensive supervision, graduated sanctions and incentives, and treatment and rehabilitative services.

In 1993, researchers examined our court and reported that participants had lower incarceration rates and fewer re-arrests than those who did not participate in the program. See Goldkamp, J. and Weiland, D., Assessing the Impact of Dade County’s Felony Drug Court (National Institute of Justice December 1993).

SAO offerings the following treatment courts: