Session 2: Contingency Management & Behavioral Reinforcement in Justice Settings
Presenter: Chris Wig and Julie Seitz | 75 minutes | Date: May 12, 2026

Session Description
Contingency Management (CM) is one of the most strongly supported interventions in addiction treatment, yet it is frequently misunderstood or misapplied in treatment court and justice settings. Too often, programs substitute punishment, arbitrary incentives, or coercive practices for true behavioral reinforcement, undermining both effectiveness and ethics.
This session provides a clear, practical, and evidence-informed understanding of what Contingency Management is, how it works, and how it can be responsibly integrated into treatment court environments. Participants will explore the neuroscience of reinforcement and motivation, examine the critical distinctions between CM and punitive compliance models, and identify common implementation errors that limit impact.
Through applied examples and justice-specific case scenarios, attendees will learn how to design or advocate for CM approaches that strengthen engagement, support autonomy, and promote sustainable behavior change, while remaining aligned with ethical practice and public safety goals.

Learning Objectives
1. Differentiate true Contingency Management from incentives, sanction-based compliance models commonly used in justice settings.
2. Identify common misapplications of “CM-like” practices in treatment courts and describe why they are ineffective or potentially harmful.
3. Describe what CM can realistically accomplish, and where its limitations lie, within justice-involved populations.

Speaker Bio:
Chris Wig serves as director of the Focus Treatment Court Program at Emergence Addiction and Behavioral Therapies, a position he has held for the past four years. The Focus Program provides substance use and mental health treatment to individuals referred from three treatment courts in Lane County, Oregon—adult treatment court (drug court), veterans treatment court, and mental health court. He is a certified alcohol and drug counselor (CADC II) and a qualified mental health associate (QMHA) in the state of Oregon. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto and his master’s degree from the University of Oregon. He volunteers for many community organizations, including serving as an elected member of the board of directors for the Willemite Lake Park and Recreation District in Springfield, Oregon.