California Drug Courts: A Methodology for Determining Costs and Benefits is our site of the day

This new report commissioned by the Administrative Office of the Courts and the Judicial Council of California finds that California drug courts , which combine treatment of substance abuse with judicial supervision as an alternative to “traditional prosecution,” have a rearrest rate of 17 percent compared with 41 percent for those in the traditional court process.

This is a 209 page report and represents the completion of phase 2 of 3 in the research that is being conducted. Despite its length, there are many graphs and charts. There is an executive summary. There is a treasure trove of information for policy makers in these documents.

Amongst its other findings:

No two drug courts function in the same manner. Each drug court program operates in a different context, serves a different population, and involves multiple agencies contributing varying levels of resources. Each drug court is an independent program with unique practices and requirements. These differences in policies and practices influence the distribution of resources.

There is a the wide range in investment between jurisdictions and counties
both in the drug court process and in traditional court processing. Investment in drug court ranges from about $5,000 to nearly $19,000 per participant while the range in traditional court processing is surprisingly similar, from just under $5,000 to over $15,000 per offender.

Using a sophisticated cost-benefit analysis, eight of the nine drug courts in this study produced substantial net benefits (savings) over the four-year period of this study. For each year a “cohort of participants” entered these drug courts, the state saw a combined net benefit of over $9 million. This number will continue to grow each year if the drug court participants in this cohort continue to experience positive outcomes. In addition, as long as these nine drug courts continue to operate, each new cohort of participants can be expected to generate similar net benefits.

The report also identified “promising practices” of the individual programs, which include these findings:

1. Those drug courts where more agency staff attended drug court meetings and courts sessions tended to have more positive outcomes.

2. The courts that start participants at one court session every 2 or 3 weeks, 1 to 3 group treatment sessions per week and individual treatment sessions “as needed” appear to have the best outcomes.

3. Sites with either a single provider or with multiple referral options but a single overseeing provider had the most positive outcome benefits.

4. Judges on voluntary assignment to drug court, with either no fixed term or a term of at least two years, help produce the most beneficial outcomes.

5. The sites that required participants to be “clean” for at least six months had lower outcome costs and higher net benefits.

Drug test frequency greater than 3 per week did not appear to have any added benefit. However, lower frequencies were associated with less positive outcomes.