Evaluation of Florida's Residential Drug Treatment Program Prison Diversion Program, Final Report

• NCJ Number: 194056
• Author(s): Richard L. Linster
• Date Published: 1999
• Length: 63 pages
• Publication Series: NIJ Research Report
• Grant Number(s): 96-CE-VX-0010
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Sponsoring Agency: National Institute of Justice (NIJ)
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/NCJRS; NCJRS Photocopy Services
• Publication Series: NIJ Research Report
• Publication Format: Document
• Publication Type: Report (Technical Assistance); Program/Project Evaluation
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Dataset may be archived by the NIJ Data Resources Program at the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data

Annotation

This report presents the methodology and findings of an evaluation of a Florida program designed to divert a substantial fraction of nonviolent, drug-involved offenders from a prison sentence to supervision in the community.

Abstract

The Department of Corrections contracted with service providers for both residential and nonresidential programs. The residential programs began taking admissions on September 1, 1991. They involve a structured, live-in non-hospital environment that focuses on all aspects of substance abuse rehabilitation, including ancillary services such as vocation and education programs. Starting with three facilities, the number increased to six over the next few years. Nonresidential treatment programs were made available through contracts with local service providers. They provide therapeutic activities of varying levels of intensity statewide. The evaluation focused on the relationship, if any, between drug treatment and the outcome of community supervision. Data were obtained from the corrections management information system, which allowed for testing of the influence of a number of variables in addition to the subjects' drug program assignments. One section of this report describes the process by which cases were selected for the study from the universe of admissions to community supervision over a 5-year period, beginning in September 1991. Another section presents the means of a set of variables that describe each of the study's six treatment populations. These were the covariates used in logistic regression models to estimate an offender's probability of success or failure during a 2-year period following admission to supervision. The primary evaluation finding is that the requirement of drug treatment as a condition of a community-supervision sentence can increase probation success rates for "drug-involved" offenders, at least over a 2-year observation period. Compared with the rate expected in the absence of treatment, the net effect of all programs amounted to approximately 9 failures averted for every 100 admissions, a reduction of about 15 percent in the expected number of failures. 8 tables and appended results of the legit model estimations