Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court: One-Year Results From a Randomized Study

• NCJ Number: 196201
• Journal: Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency Volume: 39 Issue: 3 Dated: August 2002 Pages: 337-356
• Author(s): Denise C. Gottfredson; M. Lyn Exum
• Date Published: August 2002
• Length: 20 pages
• Sponsoring Agency: Maryland Dept of Public Safety and Correctional Services
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Program/Project Description
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America

Annotation

This study evaluated the Baltimore City (Maryland) Drug Treatment Court (BDTC).

Abstract

The drug court program provides an alternative to incarceration for drug-involved, nonviolent offenders. Drug courts offer intensive community supervision, treat drug cases seriously, hold offenders to a high degree of accountability, increase coordination between community providers, and free other courts from processing drug cases. Drug courts have maintained a high rate of participation in treatment. Drug use appears to be reduced while defendants are enrolled in drug court programs. However, there are many gaps in understanding the extent of their effectiveness. The BDTC program is for district and circuit court cases of nonviolent adult offenders supervised by the Baltimore City Division of Parole and Probation. A previous evaluation found that the BDTC program was successfully targeting nonviolent, drug-involved offenders and was associated with a 50 percent decrease in the odds of re-arrest for a new offense. The present evaluation randomly assigned eligible clients to either drug treatment court or “treatment as usual.” Drug court judges imposed harsher sentences but suspended these sentences conditional on compliance with the drug court regimen. Drug court clients were more likely than controls to participate in drug testing and treatment and to attend status hearings. Results show that 48 percent of drug treatment court clients and 64 percent of controls were arrested for new offenses during the 12 months after the date of randomization into the study. Thirty-two percent of drug court clients versus 57 percent of controls were re-arrested among the more serious cases heard in the circuit court. Controls were arrested at a rate nearly three times that of drug treatment court clients when differences in the opportunity to re-offend were taken into consideration. This study did not determine which of the many contextual factors contributed to the program’s success. Future analyses should use this and other local studies to generalize knowledge about drug treatment courts. 6 tables, 7 notes, 13 references