Acupuncture in Drug Treatment: Exploring Its Role and Impact on Participant Behavior in the Drug Court Setting

• NCJ Number: 217856
• Journal: Journal of Experimental Criminology Volume: 2 Issue: 1 Dated: Spring 2006 Pages: 45-65
• Author(s): Michael D. White; John S. Goldkamp; Jennifer B. Robinson
• Date Published: 2006
• Length: 21 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study examined the impact of acupuncture on offender behavior and treatment progress under the Clark County Drug Court (Las Vegas, NV), using a prospective modified experiment in which 336 new participants were randomly assigned to acupuncture and no-acupuncture conditions (the latter group received relaxation therapy).

Abstract

The findings showed no significant difference between the acupuncture and no-acupuncture groups on a range of criminal justice and treatment outcomes, with the exception of one measure of treatment progress. The outcome variables examined were the number of follow-up arrests; time to first follow-up arrest; number of days confined; number of follow-up confinements and failures to appear in court; time to first sanction, positive drug test, and missed appointment; number of sanctions, positive drug tests, and missed appointments; days in treatment and number of treatment contacts; and number of days in each treatment phase. The only significant difference between the groups was that those receiving acupuncture spent more time in phase III of treatment. Based on prior research that examined the impact of acupuncture in traditional substance abuse treatment (not in a drug-court context) and the findings from the current modified experiment, the evidence supporting acupuncture's expected impact (an effective adjunct to help alleviate detoxification symptoms) has still not been found. Future research should be designed so as to provide better separation of the effects of acupuncture from other treatment and court interventions. The authors note that in the current study, significant treatment contamination hindered straightforward analysis, since nearly 40 percent of the control group received at least some acupuncture. In order to compensate for the treatment compliance problem, two-stage least-squares regression was used, with original group assignment as an instrumental variable and acupuncture exposure as a predictor. 5 tables, 7 notes, and 32 references