Issue Title: Evaluating Criminal Justice Programs This response argues that the National Research Council (NRC) report, while valuable and thorough, would have benefited from conceptualizing ...evaluation activities along a continuum of knowledge development, with evaluations initially verifying the effectiveness of program concepts, before moving to evaluations of the feasibility and generalizability of anti-crime strategies and, finally, to evaluations of the costs and benefits of implementation of new strategies.PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
This research tested the thesis that adolescent problem drinking may be manifest in any of four independent domains (measured by the 24-item screening instrument, the Adolescent Drinking Inventory: ...Drinking and You): drinking-related loss of control, social indicators, psychological indicators, and physical indicators. Clinical assessments of 264 adolescents referred for screening revealed that more than half of the variation in clinical assessment of problem drinking severity was captured by these four domains and that two of the four domains (loss of control and psychological indicators) made an independent contribution to clinical assessment.
This research presents the results of the evaluation of the Breaking the Cycle (BTC) demonstration project in Jacksonville, FL and Tacoma, WA. The BTC demonstration project tested the feasibility and ...impact of system-wide intervention designed to reduce drug use among offenders. Specifically, the BTC model was designed to identify drug using felony defendants and then apply a combination of drug testing linked to graduated sanctions and drug treatment to promote abstinence among these defendants. The evaluation of BTC revealed that certain elements of the intervention might not be feasible. However, the results of the quasi-experimental impact evaluation discovered that, in spite of partial program implementation, participation in BTC was associated with reductions in criminal behavior.
Harrell comments on various research conducted on the impact of drug treatment courts. The development of drug courts is a paradigm shift from court practices designed for fast and efficient delivery ...of penalties to court practices designed for crime prevention. Research must then focus on how the different policies and practices of drug courts affect offender compliance and subsequent recidivism to guide drug court operations.
The evaluation of the Washington, D.C., Superior Court Drug Intervention Program (SCDIP) compared drug felony defendants randomly assigned to either a docket offering structured graduated sanctions ...in combination with drug testing and judicial monitoring, or a docket using drug tests and judicial monitoring only. Assignment to the graduated sanctions docket was found to reduce drug use prior to sentencing. Program participants were significantly less likely to use drugs prior to sentencing, and, in the year after sentencing, were significantly less likely to be arrested and and had significantly fewer arrests. This paper describes characteristics of the sanctioning program that appear highly correlated with positive outcomes.
This paper presents a cost‐benefit analysis of the returns to the public from reductions in recidivism associated with a graduated sanctioning program for drug felony defendants. Estimates of program ...costs for operating a court‐based drug testing and sanctioning program are presented with estimates of the value of potential benefits of averted criminal incidents and crime control. The results, based on the evaluation of the Superior Court Drug Intervention Program in Washington, D.C., found that the program saved two dollars in averted crime‐related costs for every dollar spent on the program. This paper presents explicit description of the methods used to derive these results so that they may be applied to the evaluation of other experimental/quasi‐experimental programs.
A DECADE OF DRUG TREATMENT COURT RESEARCH Turner, Susan; Longshore, Douglas; Wenzel, Suzanne ...
Substance use & misuse,
2002, Letnik:
37, Številka:
12-13
Journal Article
Recenzirano
As drug treatment courts have multiplied over the past decade, so too have research evaluations conducted on their implementation and effectiveness. This article explores the decade of drug treatment ...court research conducted at RAND, starting with the experimental field evaluation of Maricopa's drug testing and treatment options to the most current 14-site national evaluation of courts funded in 1995-96 by the Drug Court Program Office. The article presents summaries of findings, a brief description of a drug treatment court typology, and suggestion of where future research might focus.
Drug Courts: A Conceptual Framework Longshore, Douglas; Turner, Susan; Wenzel, Suzanne ...
Journal of drug issues,
2001, Letnik:
31, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Structural and process characteristics of drug courts may have a major influence on offender outcomes. However, despite the existence of dozens of outcome evaluations in the drug court literature, it ...is impossible to draw clear conclusions regarding variability in outcomes in relation to drug court characteristics. We describe existing approaches to the description of drug court structure and process and argue that a new approach is needed. To address that need, we propose a conceptual framework of five drug court dimensions: leverage, population severity, program intensity, predictability, and rehabilitation emphasis. These dimensions, each scorable on a range from low to high, lend themselves to a systematic set of hypotheses regarding the effects of structure and process on drug court outcomes. Finally, we propose quantitative and qualitative methods for identifying such effects.
Research Summary
In 1999, three communities were selected to participate in a research demonstration designed to test the feasibility and impact of a coordinated response to intimate partner violence ...that involved the courts and justice agencies in a central role. The primary goals of the Judicial Oversight Demonstration (JOD) were to increase victim safety, hold offenders accountable, and reduce repeat offending using coordinated community services and integrated justice system policies in intimate partner violence court cases. The partnerships differed from earlier coordinated community responses to domestic violence by placing special focus on the role of the court, specifically the judge, to facilitate offender accountability in collaboration with both nonprofit service providers and other criminal justice agencies. This article presents the results of an impact evaluation of this demonstration in all sites. The demonstration received mostly positive responses from justice system agencies, service providers, offenders, and victims. Improvements were made in offender monitoring, consistent sanctioning, and increased supervision. However, these changes did not translate into gains in victim perceptions of their safety or into reductions in repeat violence in all sites.
Policy Implications
The demonstration had minimal impact on changing offender attitudes and behavior. The mixed results of the evaluation indicate that the most effective justice system responses to intimate partner violence must include a focus on protecting victims, close monitoring of offenders, and rapid responses with penalties when violations of court‐ordered conditions are detected. Indications were found that JOD strategies were effective for some subgroups, including younger offenders with fewer ties to the victim and offenders with extensive arrest histories. The observed reductions in intimate partner violence in selected subgroups in the JOD sites may suggest a fruitful way to begin designing new intervention strategies, including prevention programs for men and women.
Recent studies have suggested a classical conditioning explanation for the "core of distress" symptom reported by rape victims that reportedly persists well after most other symptoms have subsided. ...The current study tested an extension of this theory to the long-term reactions of victims of domestic assault and nondomestic assault in addition to victims of rape. Level of long-term psychological distress was found to be strongly related to level of victim exposure to stimuli in the absence of a subsequent attack; long-term distress level was found to be unrelated to short-term distress level when controlling for level of exposure to attack-simular stimuli. Results suggest the tenability of a classical conditioning model of long-term psychological distress experienced by victims of the types of assault studied, thus highlighting the importance of situational variables in the recovery process.
