Summary
A meta-analysis was conducted to determine if drug treatment courts reduce recidivism
compared to traditional justice system responses. After a comprehensive search of
both the published and unpublished literature, 54 studies were located and deemed
acceptable according to the study inclusion criteria. Since studies oftentimes contained
information on more than one program, data from 66 individual drug treatment court
programs were aggregated and analyzed. The results indicated that drug treatment courts
significantly reduced the recidivism rates of participants by 14% compared to offenders
within the control/comparison groups. Several variables identified in the analysis, however,
had an impact on the results, including the age of the participants, the length of the program,
the follow-up period used to measure recidivism, and other methodological variables (i.e., the
use of random assignment and the choice of the comparison group). While there are other
issues that were not the subject of this research, such as the cost-effectiveness of DTCs, the
results of this meta-analysis provides clear support for the use of drug treatment courts as a
method of reducing crime among offenders with substance abuse problems.