Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime (TASC) (From Drug Use and Crime Report of the Panel on Drug Use and Criminal Behavior, P 549-552, 1976 See NCJ-40293)

• NCJ Number: 70675
• Author(s): P Regner; E Cavanugh
• Date Published: 1976
• Length: 4 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

Part of the appendix to the Drug Use and Crime Report, the paper describes the operations and preliminary evaluations of the Treatment Alternatives to Street Crime (TASC) Program.

Abstract

TASC was established in 1972 to reduce drug-related crime and to reduce the burden of drug-using criminals on the criminal justice system by decreasing the numbers of arrests and the time needed to process arrestees for release. There are 37 TASC programs. They identify drug users who come into contact with the criminal justice system, refer them to appropriate treatment, monitor their progress, and return violators to the criminal justice system. The TASC programs interact with the criminal justice system through pretrial intervention, pretrial diversion, or through postrial processing. Evaluations of program capabilities to meet the primary goals of decreasing client rearrest rates have been favorable. As of October 1, 1975, only 8 percent of the TASC clients at 22 reporting projects had been arrested while in TASC. Evaluations have concluded that active TASC clients greatly decrease the types and levels of their criminal behavior. However, more complete evaluations are needed to assess factors in success and failure and to address the cost-benefit ratios, the applicability of the model to other identifiable and treatable criminal subpopulations, the effects on the criminal justice system, and the effects of such a system on the reduction of drug abuse and/or criminal behavior.