Findings from the Evaluation of the D.C. Superior Court Drug Intervention Program

• NCJ Number: 181894
• Author(s): Adele Harrell; Shannon Cavanagh; John Roman
• Date Published: May 1999
• Length: 169 pages
• Grant Number(s): 94-IJ-CX-K011
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Program/Project Evaluation

Annotation

This report presents the evaluation design, methodology, and findings for the D.C. Superior Court Drug Intervention Program (District of Columbia), which was an experiment to test court-based interventions for drug-involved defendants.

Abstract

The program was based on a comparison of the drug use and criminal activity of drug felony defendants who were randomly assigned to one of three dockets. The "sanctions docket" offered drug-involved defendants a program of graduated sanctions with weekly drug testing, referrals to community-based treatment, and judicial monitoring of drug use. The "treatment docket" offered drug-involved defendants weekly drug testing and an intensive court-based day treatment program; and the "standard docket" offered drug-involved defendants weekly drug testing, judicial monitoring, and encouragement to seek community-based treatment programs. The evaluation is based on program operations between September 1994 and January 1996. Both process and impact evaluations were conducted. This report presents findings for each of the dockets, with attention to program costs and crime reduction benefits. Extensive tables and 56 references