Drug Treatment Courts are pre-sentence courts introduced in Canada in 1998 that provide individuals facing criminal charges driven by their substance abuse addiction (SAD) with a voluntary alternative to a prison sentence.
Participants in these intensive 18- to 24-month-long programs must plead guilty to the non-violent crimes of which they are accused.
History The first DTC in Canada was a pilot project in Toronto, Ontario in 1998 co-founded by Justice Kofi Barnes and financed with Justice Canada's Drug Treatment Court Funding Program. It was inspired by drug courts that originated in the United States in Miami, Florida in 1989. In Canada, the program expanded to Vancouver, British Columbia in 2001, Edmonton, Alberta in December 2005, Winnipeg, Manitoba in January 2006, and Calgary in 2007. By 2022, there were 14 DTCs in Ontario alone. The first DTC in Saskatchewan opened in Regina in 2006, the second in Moose Jaw in 2009, and the third in Battleford in 2025.
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