NCJ Number
136400
Journal
American Jails Volume: 6 Issue: 1 Dated: (March/April 1992) Pages: 21-23
Date Published
1992
Length
3 pages
Annotation
A study designed to statistically assess the impact of an in-jail substance abuse treatment program on recidivism to the Hillsborough County Jail system illustrates the kinds of data analysis tasks that a personal computer can perform and demonstrates that virtually any jail-based program that collects quantifiable information may benefit by employing this technology as part of its program evaluation strategy.
Abstract
Focusing on the merging of the three separate datasets which had stored the data for this substance abuse treatment project, this article identifies the computer on which the analysis was run, an 80-386 machine with a math co-processor and a 120 megabyte hard drive, and details the construction from the mainframe's data base of files for all 185 treated inmates, a control group of an additional 200 inmates, and an analysis of these files. The analysis process took about one month, required no data entry by assistants, and was well within the capacities of the personal computer alone.