Drug courts emerged as a method for responding to America's drug problems at a time when health, treatment and justice systems were overwhelmed by the drug epidemics of the 1980s. The dramatic increase in the availability of cocaine and, later, crack cocaine, particularly in America's cities, translated into a new challenge for the criminal justice system that was already at its limits. The volume of court cases exploded, pushing the judicial process to its limits and threatening traditional modes of managing the criminal caseload. Worse, the huge wave of arrests of drug offenders beginning in and accelerating during the 1980s found a correctional system of local jails and state prisons in many locations in the nation that were already chronically overcrowded. With little room in prisons for the new arrestees, institutional crowding was exacerbated and the processing of criminal cases was slowed, causing backlogs in the...