This paper presents the results of a systematic review of quasi-experimental and experimental evaluations of drug courts' effectiveness at reducing recidivism for juvenile and adult offenders.
This review examined 154 independent evaluations of drug courts in which 92 studies assessed adult drug courts, 34 studies examined juvenile drug courts, and 28 studies examined DWI drug courts. The results of all the evaluations indicate that adult and DWI drug courts are effective at reducing general and drug-related recidivism, and that for adult drug courts, the effectiveness appears to last for 3 years. For studies that evaluated the effectiveness of DWI drug courts, the findings were suggestive of their effectiveness but the conclusions were not definitive. The evaluations of the effectiveness of juvenile drug courts found that the courts had a smaller effect on rates of recidivism for juvenile drug offenders. This paper presents the results of a systematic review of evaluations of drug courts' effectiveness at reducing recidivism among juvenile and adult offenders. A multi-pronged search strategy was used to identify studies that were eligible for inclusion in this review. The studies were coded according to their effect on various measures of recidivism - general recidivism, drug-related recidivism, and drug use. The review of the studies' effectiveness indicates that drug courts are effective at reducing recidivism among juvenile and adult offenders, but the decree of reduction varies by the type of drug court. Suggestions for future research on measuring the success of specific types of drug courts are discussed. References, tables, figures, and appendixes