This cost-benefit analysis examines the monetary value of programs or policies to determine whether the benefits exceed the costs from the case management approaches to community reentry and supervision for individuals with a history of drug involvement.
This meta-analysis of case management studies to analyze costs versus benefits of reentry programs or policies excludes those studies that were focused on the “swift, certain, and fair” approach. This document instead reports on the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) research on a variety of case management approaches to community reentry and supervision for individuals involved in the criminal justice system who have histories of drug involvement. The two primary goals of case management for the target population are: to improve collaboration between correctional staff and substance abuse treatment staff; and to increase the individuals’ participation in substance abuse treatment. The approach for this research project was to identify evidence-based programs and policies, and had three main steps: first, to determine what works in improving outcomes through a meta-analysis statistical technique; second, to calculate whether the benefits of a program exceed its costs; and third, to estimate the risk of investing in a program by testing the sensitivity of the research results. The document provides charts such as: benefit-cost summary statistics per participant; meta-analysis of program effects; detailed monetary benefit estimates per participant; detailed annual cost estimates per participant; benefits minus costs over time (cumulative discounted dollars); benefits by perspective over time (cumulative discounted dollars); and taxpayer benefits by source of value over time (cumulative discounted dollars). Each graph and chart includes an accompanying discussion of findings, and the document also provides a list of sources cited and links to relevant technical documentation.