Matching Judicial Supervision to Clients' Risk Status in Drug Court

Abstract

This article reports outcomes from a program of experimental research evaluating the risk principle in drug courts. Prior studies revealed that participants who were high risk and had (a) antisocial personality disorder or (b) a prior history of drug abuse treatment performed better in drug court when scheduled to attend biweekly judicial status hearings in court. In contrast, participants who were low risk performed equivalently regardless of the court hearings schedule. This study prospectively matches drug court clients to the optimal schedule of court hearings based on an assessment of their risk status and compares outcomes to clients randomly assigned to the standard hearings schedule. Results confirmed that participants who were high risk and matched to biweekly hearings had better during-treatment outcomes than participants assigned to status hearings as usual. These findings provide confirmation of the risk principle in drug courts and yield practical information for enhancing the efficacy and cost-efficiency of drug courts.

Figure 1

Study Research Design. High Risk = Meets DSM-IV Diagnostic Criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) or Has a History of Drug Abuse Treatment. Low Risk = Does Not Meet DSM-IV Diagnostic Criteria for APD and Has No History of Drug Abuse Treatment

Figure 2

Proportions of Misdemeanor Drug Court Participants Providing Drug-Negative Urine Specimens by Condition and by Week. NOTE: Groups with Superscripts (^{a, b}) that differ from each other are significantly different at p < .001.