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Tell Me about the Test

The Construction of Truth and Lies in Drug Court

Claflin University

Paul Higgins

University of South Carolina-Columbia

Through a multiyear participant observation study in three southeastern drug courts, we explore how staff members react to clients' responses when confronted with positive tests for illicit drug use. Within their professional beliefs about drug addiction, treatment, and testing, staff members interpret the clients' responses as truths or lies, though some lies are worse than others and some truths are better than others. The staff's evaluations of clients' responses are part of their construction of moral identities for drug offenders. Staff members produce the client outcomes that some observers and evaluators attribute to client characteristics or conduct. To understand how staff members produce organizational outcomes as they manage clients, interpretive studies that look beyond the most public arenas of drug and other problem courts need to be conducted as they have been in exploring other service agencies.

Key Words: drug court • social construction • moral identity

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