Abstract

Drug courts, a relatively new direction for the judicial system, impose court monitored substance abuse treatment on substance abusing offenders. Working under a therapeutic model, it is believed drug courts are more effective in reducing relapse and recidivism than are traditional, adversarial courts. Drug court clients participate in outpatient treatment and attend status hearings where they have one-on-one interaction with the judge. Upon successful completion, charges are dismissed.

As the number of drug courts continued to grow, evaluations of their success began to transpire. Consistent to these evaluations was the examination of retention as a measure of drug court success. Retention is conceptualized as the rate at which offenders remain enrolled in the drug court program. In using retention rates as measures of success, evaluators assume that the longer clients are retained in the program, the more likely it will be that they will successfully complete the drug court program. In reality, however, clients are often enrolled in the drug court program, but not engaged in treatment.

The current study examines the differential ability of four measures of client involvement in treatment to predict drug court program success, including the length of time in the drug court program (number of days between admission and discharge), the length of time in treatment (number of days between first and last day of treatment), treatment program attendance (total sessions attended), and a hybrid variable that measures the rate of treatment attendance, which was created by using treatment program attendance divided by the length of time in treatment.

As predicted, results indicated that the measure of time in the drug court program was not a significant predictor of drug court completion. However, the variables that capture drug court client's participation in treatment were significant predictors of drug court success. Attending treatment for more weeks, attending more sessions overall, and increasing the frequency of involvement (more sessions per week) were all significant predictors of drug court completion. Policy implications and future research are discussed.