It is not often that you encounter a bear in a glass box, but that is the case as soon as you enter Great Falls International Airport in Montana, USA. There are also moose heads mounted on the wall of departures and large armchairs to relax in throughout the airport. It is a beautiful part of the United States, and the setting for the TV show Yellowstone.  

But I was not there for sight-seeing. I was there with my colleague, Dr Emily Hennessy, from Harvard Medical School, as part of a partnership with the National Association of Drug Court Professionals (NADCP) and the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) to train court staff to use the REC-CAP recovery measures I have developed. 

The recovery model is designed for people diverted to therapeutic courts from the traditional justice pathway. The dedicated courts, often referred to as ‘Drug Courts’ are designed to offer help to people who have drug addiction problems. 

Our earlier pilot work has seen us successfully integrate the REC-CAP into drug courts in Boston and Rhode Island and our current partnership with NADCP involves six courts in five cities across Washington State and Montana. During the October visit, we trained staff in Everett, Billings and Great Falls. 

In the therapeutic court in Everett, the full day session was attended by Judge Joe Wilson, a genuine champion and advocate for recovery who is open about the fact that he is in long-term addiction recovery himself. That puts him in a great position to understand and motivate others in their recovery journeys. 

So, what is it that we are actually doing? 

The REC-CAP is an evidence-based assessment tool that measures, not what risks or deficits individuals have, but what their strengths and passions are and how these can be realised. The questionnaire, which takes around 25 minutes to complete, is done online on the Advanced Recovery Management System (ARMS), with the worker (either a peer volunteer or the court administrator) provided with an instant score profile. 

This generates a recovery care plan where the client of the court and the Recovery Navigator (either a peer or a professional who works with them) create an action plan for the subsequent three months, focussed on increasing their personal, social and community recovery capital – the resources they can tap into to support their recovery journey.  

 REC-CAP is now used in more than 200 community organisations across the US, and we have more than 20,000 completed REC-CAP forms. This is creating a new model for supporting people to overcome chronic addiction problems and to build the resources that will allow them to sustain recovery and re-build their lives. 

What is next for the court work? 

Both partnerships are pilot projects. The aim is to test how well REC-CAP works in a court setting – but the two projects are different. The Boston and Rhode Island project is a research grant with the aim of assessing whether a larger research trial is justified based on pilot findings. The partnership with NADCP is more applied – it is really a test of whether the courts engage with the model and see it as something that can improve the outcomes for individuals who are diverted from traditional justice pathways, and if it is, we are moving towards our model becoming ‘best practice’ in therapeutic courts. 

The ultimate aim of all our work is to support people to live better lives and to move away from the addictions and offending. This initial trip was a huge success, and we will now support the courts as they embed and implement this approach. I hope to be seeing that bear again very soon! 

Professor David Best is the Director of the Centre for Addiction Recovery Research at Leeds Trinity University.  

You can hear more about David’s work in his upcoming Inaugural Professorial Lecture on Tuesday 14 November from 5:30pm. The free event is in person and live streamed, and tickets can be booked on our Eventbrite page.