Rehabilitation for court appointed clients are for people in Panama who have been required to attend drug treatment as part of a sentence which has been issued because of a drug or alcohol related criminal activity. Court appointed clients in Panama are often sentenced to enroll into a drug treatment center in lieu of other sentencing options such as heavy fines and jail time. This is sometimes the case with first time offenders. This approach of rehabilitating the criminal instead of punishing and jailing them has proven very beneficial in Panama, not only in getting the individual abstinent or sober, but also in preventing the same alcohol or drug related crimes in the future.