NCJ Number
207226
Journal
Justice Quarterly Volume: 21 Issue: 3 Dated: September 2004 Pages: 637-658
Date Published
September 2004
Length
22 pages
Annotation
This study examined the effectiveness of a drug treatment court in Baltimore, MD on lowering the recidivism of participants.
Abstract
While a number of studies have assessed the impact of drug treatment court on later recidivism, these studies have suffered from a number of methodological shortcomings. The current study employed an experimental model to reduce the possibility of selection bias, which thereby enhances the internal validity of comparisons between the control group of offenders not enrolled in drug treatment court (N=96) and the experimental group of drug treatment court participants (N=139). Under evaluation was whether assignment in the experimental drug treatment court would increase time until first rearrest compared to traditional case processing. Results of two types of survival analyses, Life Tables and Cox Regression, indicated that the drug court sample was significantly less likely to fail and had a longer time to failure when compared with the control group. However, the difference in time to failure was mainly due to differing failure rates between the two groups. Failure rates between the two groups were identical for the first 4 months of follow-up, after which the control group failed at a faster rate than did the drug court sample. The greatest difference in risk failure between the two groups occurred in the middle to the late part of the first year and at the end of the 2-year evaluation period. Finally, assignment to the drug court significantly reduced drug crime failure during the 2-year study period, but had no effect on person and property crime failure. Future research should focus on identifying the drug treatment court characteristics that most effectively reduce recidivism. Tables, figures, references