An Empirical Investigation of "Going to Scale" in Drug Interventions

The primary goal of this research is to estimate the population of drug dependent offenders that could be effectively served by partnerships between courts and drug intervention programs. The secondary goal is to use simulation and economic models to project the costs and benefits of that expansion. Currently, these are stringent restrictions on eligibility for most intensive programs for drug involved arrestee's. Thus the size of the population that can be served by these programs is severely limited. This study will use ADAM data and other national data to develop estimates of the size of the offender population in need of court-based drug intervention programs, and test assumptions about the appropriateness of treating offenders in community-based interventions that are limiting the number of drug court participants. Drug courts were selected for this evaluation because drug courts are planned or operational in every state. The broader goal of this research is to develop a general model for developing rigorous, empirically-based definitions of the size of the target population ' e.g. what it means to 'go to scale' ' for other drug intervention programs.