Drug Courts
Drug Courts: A Way to Lower Costs and Reduce Recidivism? by Bob Ellis. Dakota Voice 8/02/2006
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Drug Court Background
Drug courts, combining substance abuse treatment with a pending criminal case, began in the late 1980s and have been promoted as a means of relieving an overcrowded court system and reduce criminal behavior. The March 2004 National Drug Control Strategy Update, issued by the White House, called drug courts “one of the most promising trends in the criminal justice system,” and one cost-benefit analysis calculated that drug courts saved $2,329 in direct cost to the criminal justice system and another $1,301 in victimization costs. As of December 2005, there are more than 1,500 drug courts in the United States with another 391 planned
The 2006 Assessment of Drug Courts
A National Institute of Justice report, Drug Courts: The Second Decade, released in June, 2006 provides an overview of this model, based on the examination of 26 drug courts. Findings include:
- Drug courts can decrease recidivism. Between 1993 and 1997, 53% of drug court participants were rearrested versus 65% not placed in the drug court system.
- Treatment was more effective in programs that were based on formal theories of drug dependence and abuse and implemented evidence-supported therapies. Programs based on mixtures of philosophies or idiosyncratic philosophies were not as effective.
- Drug courts saved $1,442 per participant ($1,172 in incarceration costs and $908 in probation costs) compared to “business as usual” processing of drug convictions.
- 64% of the participants failed to attend the required number of treatment sessions; 36.5% “graduated” from drug court programs without completing the required number of sessions.
- 54% of participants did not receive the minimum number of drug tests (70% of the standard) called for by the program requirements. 33% of participants “graduated” from drug court programs without completing this requirement.
- 76% tested positive for drug use one or more times, and 61% tested positive two or more times.
The report concludes that drug courts can lower recidivism and save money, but the results of a given program is contingent on (1) the use of effective therapies and (2) adherence to program.
Commentary
I selected this report for today’s post because it conveniently disproves the simplistic notion that, with sufficient authority and/or threat, compliance is a given. Adherence is a determinate of success in drug court participants and it is major problem in these court-mandated drug treatment program despite their capacity to leverage criminal charges and imprisonment to enforce compliance.
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