U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

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
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