The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. 

Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: 

Document Title: Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of 

Operation: Recidivism and Costs (Final Report) 

Author(s): Michael W. Finigan, Ph.D. ; Shannon M. Carey, 

Ph.D. ; Anton Cox, B.A. 

Document No.: 219225 

Date Received: July 2007 

Award Number: 2005M073 

This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. 

To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federallyfunded grant final report available electronically in addition to 

traditional paper copies. 

Opinions or points of view expressed are those 

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect 

the official position or policies of the U.S. 

Department of Justice. 
The Impact of a 

Mature Drug Court Over 

10 Years of Operation: 

Recidivism and Costs 

4380 SW Macadam Ave., Suite 530 

Portland, OR 97239 

(503) 243-2436 

www.npcresearch.com 

Submitted to: 

Linda Truitt, Ph.D. 

Office of Research and Evaluation 

National Institute of Justice 

810 Seventh St. NW 

Washington, D.C. 20531 

Submitted by: 

NPC Research 

Michael W. Finigan, Ph.D. 

Shannon M. Carey, Ph.D. 

Anton Cox, B.A. 

April 2007 

FINAL REPORT 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years 

of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

FINAL REPORT 

Michael W. Finigan, Ph.D. 

NPC Research 

finigan@npcresearch.com 

Shannon M. Carey, Ph.D. 

NPC Research 

carey@npcresearch.com 

Anton Cox, B.A. 

NPC Research 

cox@npcresearch.com 

April 2007 

Informing policy, improving programs 

Please visit www.npcresearch.com to learn about the staff and services of NPC Research. 
Acknowledgements 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This report was made possible through the cooperation and support of local criminal justice and 

substance abuse treatment agencies. NPC Research would like to offer our deepest appreciation 

to: 

• Valerie Moore and Craig Willadsen for their open and supportive attitude toward research and for aiding us throughout the study, giving freely of their time for interviews 

and questions about data in spite of heavy workloads and the ubiquitous budget crises; 

• Phoebe Burns for coming back from school to assist NPC in pulling several versions of 

the needed InAct data; 

• Mike Schrunk, John Hoover, and John Kavorinos at the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office; Doug Bray and Jim Croft at the Multnomah County Circuit Court; Jon 

Collins, Nora Goya, and Thor Johnson at the Oregon Department of Human Services, Office of Mental Health and Addiction Services; Chuck Lang at the Oregon State Police; 

Paul Bellatty and Paul Schroeder at the Oregon State Department of Corrections for 

prison and parole data; and Jim Hennings and Pamelia Brooks at the Metropolitan Public 

Defender’s Office for answering our constant questions and providing us with reams of 

data spanning a 14-year period; 

• Special thanks to the District Attorney’s Office for sponsoring our access to the DSS-J 

data warehouse and to Gail McKeel at Multnomah County IT and Matt Nice at Multnomah County Department of County Management for their aid in extracting so many 

cases and for their time explaining the intricacies of the data; 

• Bentson McFarland and Doug Bigelow for their help in brainstorming the project and 

analyses; 

• Janice Munsterman and Linda Truitt from NIJ for their insight and support; and 

• Finally, and of greatest importance, to the National Institute of Justice (Department of 

Justice) for its funding and support. This study was conducted under contract number 

2005M073. 
Abstract 

ABSTRACT

T his study examined the impact of a single drug court on the total population of drug 

court-eligible offenders over a 10-year period in Portland, Oregon. This drug court, the 

Multnomah County Drug Court in Portland, Oregon, is the second oldest in the United 

States. The Program was originally designed to be a pre-plea offer to individuals arrested on drug 

charges. The program began accepting probationers and parolees (as well as pre-plea clients) in 

1995 and became a completely post-plea program in 2000. This study covers the period from 

program start in 1991 through 2001. 

The entire population of offenders, identified as eligible for drug court by the Multnomah 

County District Attorney’s Office over a 10-year period, from 1991 to 2001, was identified and 

tracked through a variety of administrative data systems. Approximately 11,000 cases were identified; 6,500 participated in the Drug Court program during that period and 4,600 had their case 

processed outside the drug court model. Because the program changed from pre-plea to post-plea 

over time, the population of drug court participants used in these analyses contains a mix of both 

pre- and post-conviction offenders. Data on intermediate and long-term outcomes were gathered 

on each offender, with a particular emphasis on criminal recidivism (re-arrest) as a primary outcomes measure. The outcome data were drawn in late 2005 and early 2006, allowing a minimum 

of 5 years of follow-up on all cohorts and more than 10 years on many cohorts. Data on costs 

were gathered using a modified Transactional Cost Analysis Approach to allow us to conduct a 

cost-benefit analysis. Costs were calculated in terms of investment costs (transactions associated 

with the drug court-eligible case), outcome costs (transactions that occurred after participants 

entered the program, not associated with the drug court-eligible case) and total costs per participant. 

The analysis of the data focused on both the overall impact of the drug court on the target population over time, variations over time on that impact, and external and internal conditions that 

influenced these outcomes. A cost analysis was conducted to assess the overall investment of 

taxpayer money in the court compared to its benefits. 

Results included significantly reduced recidivism for drug court participants up to 14 years after 

drug court entry compared to eligible offenders that did not participate. Drug court judges that 

worked longer with the drug court had better participant outcomes. Judges that rotated through 

the drug court twice had better participant outcomes the second time than the first. Investment 

costs in the drug court program were $1,392 less than the investment costs of business-as-usual. 

Savings (benefits) due to reduced recidivism for drug court participants totaled more than $79 

million over the 10-year period. 
Table of Contents 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY...................................................................................................................... I 

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................ 1

Statement and Discussion of Issues In Research on Drug Courts .............................................. 2 

The Link Between Substance Abuse and Crime ................................................................... 2 

Drug Courts as a Response to This Problem ......................................................................... 2 

The Economic Consequences of Substance Abuse ............................................................... 4 

Issues in an Analysis of the Effects of Drug Courts .............................................................. 5 

Key Policy Questions.................................................................................................................. 8 

DRUG COURT BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................... 9 

Summary Description of the Multnomah County Drug Court’s STOP Program....................... 9 

Summary Description of the Multnomah County Traditional Court Process .......................... 10 

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY....................................................................................... 13 

Administrative Data Collection ................................................................................................ 13 

Cost Methods ............................................................................................................................ 15 

Transactional and Institutional Cost Analysis ..................................................................... 15 

Cost Protocols/Transactional and Institutional Cost Analysis............................................. 16 

RESULTS ........................................................................................................................................ 23 

Description of the Drug Court-Eligible Population .................................................................. 23 

ANSWERS TO POLICY QUESTIONS .................................................................................................. 25 

Policy Question # 1: What is the Overall Impact of the Multnomah County Drug 

Court on Criminal Recidivism? ..................................................................................... 25 

Policy Question #3: Do Internal or External Changes Effecting Policies and

Policy Question # 4b: Do Eras Where Multiple Judges are Conducting Drug Court 

Policy Question # 4c: Did the Drug Court Improve its Success Rate Over Time?

Policy Question # 4d: Do judges improve with experience? Did judges who had 

Policy Question #5: Did the Multnomah County Drug Court save taxpayer 

Policy Question # 2: Does the Drug Court Show Consistent Levels of Success in 

Reducing Re-arrests Each Year of the 10-year Period? ................................................ 29 

Procedures of the Court Affect its Success or Failure? ................................................. 30 

Policy Question # 4: Do Changes in Judicial Leadership Affect the Success of the 

Drug Court? ................................................................................................................... 36 

Policy Question # 4a: Do Judges Differ in Their Success in Reducing Re-Arrests? .......... 36 

Do Worse Than Eras in Which Only a Single Judge is Operating? .............................. 37 

Did Later Judges Do Better Than the Earlier Judges?................................................... 38 

multiple eras improve their success rate in the second era? .......................................... 38 

resources compared to the costs of traditional court processing?.................................. 39 

Investment Costs.................................................................................................................. 41 

Outcome Costs..................................................................................................................... 45 

Cost Benefit Ratio................................................................................................................ 48 

Total Costs ........................................................................................................................... 49 

Limitations to the Study............................................................................................................ 50 

i 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

SUMMARY/CONCLUSION................................................................................................................ 51 

REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................. 55 

APPENDIX A: DESCRIPTION OF DRUG COURT AND NON-DRUG COURT PROCESSING .................... 57 

APPENDIX B: ADULT DRUG COURT TYPOLOGY INTERVIEW GUIDE............................................... 73 

LIST OF TABLES 

Table 1. Investment and Outcome Transactions for Drug Court, Traditional Court and 

Outcome Processes for Both Groups ......................................................................... 19 

Table 2. Demographics and Criminal History of the Eligible Population 1991-2001 ............. 23 

Table 3. GLM Model of Overall Impact of the Drug Court on 5-year Recidivism for 

Eligible Population 1991-2001 .................................................................................. 26 

Table 4. Drug Related Re-Arrests by Year for Drug Court and Comparison Group 

Table 5. Logistical Regression Using Binary Measure of Re-arrest in 5 Years for 

Table 6. Mean Number of Re-Arrests in the 5-Year Period From Petition Hearing 

Table 7. External Factors Affecting the Multnomah County Drug Court’s STOP

Table 8. The History of Substance Abuse Treatment Including the Multnomah 

Table 9. Mean Number of Re-Arrests for a 3-Year Period After the Drug Court 

Petition Hearing for Comparison and Drug Court Participants for Each 

Table 10. Mean Number of Re-Arrests for a 5-Year Period After the Drug Court 

Petition Hearing for Drug Court and Comparison Groups for Each Judge 

Table 11. Mean Number of Re-Arrests for a 3-Year Period After the Drug Court 

Table 12. Mean Number of Re-Arrests for a 5-Year Period After the Drug Court 

Table 13. Mean Number of Re-Arrests for a 5-Year Period After the Petition Hearing 

1991-2001 .................................................................................................................. 28 

Drug Court-Eligible Population from 1991-2001...................................................... 29 

Year............................................................................................................................ 30 

Program...................................................................................................................... 31

County Drug Court’s STOP Program........................................................................ 34 

Judge Era ................................................................................................................... 36 

Era.............................................................................................................................. 37 

Petition Hearing for Single Judge Eras Versus Multiple Judge Eras ........................ 37 

Petition Hearing for First Three Judge Eras Versus Last Three Judge Eras ............. 38 

for Judges with Multiple Eras.................................................................................... 39 

Table 14. Criminal Justice System Costs Invested in Drug Court per Participant ................... 42 

Table 15. Investment Costs for the Traditional Court (Business-as-Usual) Process................ 43 

Table 16. Difference in Investment Cost for Drug Court and Business-as-Usual 

Process per Transaction ............................................................................................. 44 

Table 17. Average Number of Transactions for Each Group After the Eligible Arrest ........... 45 

Table 18. Outcome Costs and Savings for 5 Years from Petition Hearing .............................. 47 

ii April 2007 
Table of Contents 

Table 19. Outcome and Investment Costs per Participant for Graduates and All 

Participants ................................................................................................................ 48 

Table 20. Investment, Benefits and Cost-Benefit Ratio ........................................................... 48 

Table 21. Total Difference in Cost (or Savings) per Participant Over 5 Years From 

Petition Hearing: Drug Court Participants Subtracted From Comparison 

Group ......................................................................................................................... 49 

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Mean 5-Year Recidivism Over 10 Years of Drug Court Operation.......................... 27 

Figure 2. Recidivism in Relation to Target Cities Project (Mean Re-Arrests over 5 

Years)......................................................................................................................... 33 

iii 
Executive Summary 

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

Background and Purpose 

This study was designed to look at the operations and outcomes of a single drug court in Multnomah County (Portland, Oregon) over a 10-year period of court operations through examining 

the entire population of drug court-eligible offenders over that period. By examining the entire 

population, rather than sampling, we hoped to describe for policymakers the effects of drug court 

on the system as it operated during that decade. By examining operations and outcomes, we 

hoped to add to our knowledge about external and internal changes and how they affect drug 

court success or failure. 

The Multnomah County Drug Court in Portland, Oregon, is the second oldest drug court in the 

United States. Multnomah County instituted their drug court, named the STOP (Sanctions 

Treatment Opportunity Progress) Program, in August 1991 at the instigation of Judge Harl Haas, 

using a Byrne grant and local city funds. The program was originally designed to be a pre-plea 

offer to individuals arrested on drug charges. It began accepting probationers and parolees (as 

well as pre-plea clients) in 1995 and became a completely post-plea program in 2000. This study 

covers the period from program start in 1991 through 2001. 

Method 

The entire population of offenders, identified as eligible for drug court by the Multnomah 

County District Attorney’s Office over a 10-year period, from 1991 to 2001, was identified and 

tracked through a variety of administrative data systems. Approximately 11,000 cases were identified; 6,500 participated in the Drug Court program during that period and 4,600 had their case 

processed outside the drug court model. Because the program changed from pre-plea to post-plea 

over time, the population of drug court participants used in these analyses contains a mix of both 

pre- and post-conviction offenders. Data on intermediate and long-term outcomes were gathered 

on each offender, with a particular emphasis on criminal recidivism (re-arrest) as a primary outcomes measure. The outcome data were drawn in late 2005 and early 2006, allowing a minimum 

of 5 years of follow-up on all cohorts and over 10 years on many cohorts. (For some individuals, 

over 14 years of follow-up data were available). Data on internal measures of Drug Court participation, internal changes in the Drug Court over the years and external changes in the criminal 

justice, court and substance abuse treatment systems were also gathered for the same period. 

Data on costs were gathered using a modified Transactional Cost Analysis Approach to allow us 

to conduct a cost-benefit analysis. Costs were calculated from a previous study on this program 

that involved intensive tracking of 155 individuals that entered the Multnomah County Court 

System on drug court-eligible charges. Costs were calculated in terms of investment costs (transactions associated with the drug court-eligible case), outcome costs (transactions that occurred 

after participants entered the program, not associated with the drug court-eligible case) and total 

costs per participant. 

The unit costs for these analyses were based on the unit costs per transaction calculated in a previous study of this Drug Court (Carey and Finigan, 2003) and were updated to reflect 2006-2007 

fiscal year dollars. Analyses were performed controlling for differences in age, ethnicity, gender, 

time at risk and number of arrests in the two-years prior to the Drug Court eligible arrest. Drug 

of choice was not available for the comparison group. Recidivism was defined as re-arrests after 

Drug Court entry, not new convictions. 

I 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Results 

The results were focused around answering some specific policy questions: 

POLICY QUESTION # 1. WHAT IS THE OVERALL IMPACT OF THE MULTNOMAH COUNTY 

DRUG COURT ON CRIMINAL RECIDIVISM? 

Overall, for the entire population of eligible offenders, the Drug Court significantly reduced the 

incidence and frequency of criminal recidivism for participants compared to offenders who did 

not participate. Including all offenders who were eligible for the Drug Court during the total 10­

year period, over 5 years from the Drug Court petition hearing, the incidence of re-arrest was reduced by nearly 30%. 

The Drug Court reduces the incidence of drug crimes substantially for up to 14 years after the 

petition hearing. The effect is statistically significant after controlling for age, gender, race, and 2 

years of prior criminal history for all but year 14, where the number of cases available for the 

analysis drops to only 317. 

POLICY QUESTION # 2: DOES THE DRUG COURT SHOW CONSISTENT LEVELS OF SUCCESS IN 

REDUCING RE-ARRESTS EACH YEAR OF THE 10-YEAR PERIOD? 

The Multnomah County Drug Court, while overall demonstrating a positive effect over the 10­

year period, had better years and worse years. Specifically it had two “rough periods.” The first 

was the first 2 years of the program when there were either no positive results (1991) or small 

gains (1992). The second period is 1996, which demonstrates no success and, interestingly, is the 

year the Drug Court temporarily moved to a location outside the courthouse (and experienced 

other disruptions as well). There are two points that this emphasizes. First, the early implementation period of a drug court is not the best period to choose to examine the court’s effectiveness. 

In addition, it should be remembered that this drug court was the second in the nation and in 

1991-1992 no one knew how to operate a successful drug court (e.g., there were no “10 key 

components”). The second point that these data illustrate is that care should be taken about assessing the performance of a drug court based only on a single cohort year. 

POLICY QUESTION #3: DO INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL CHANGES AFFECTING POLICIES AND 

PROCEDURES OF THE COURT AFFECT ITS SUCCESS OR FAILURE? 

A number of external changes from 1991 to 2001 that might have had an influence on court operations and outcomes were identified. These external changes were categorized as follows: 

criminal justice system changes, changes in the Multnomah County substance abuse treatment 

system, and changes in the Oregon managed care system. With one exception, these changes appeared to have no statistically significant impact on subsequent recidivism for this population 

(drug court and comparison group). The effect of group membership (drug court or comparison 

group) remained statistically significant in the model. We can therefore conclude that these external changes were likely not the source of the found positive effects of drug court. 

There was one exception to the above conclusion. The introduction of a Central Intake System 

under the federally funded Target Cities Project in 1993, and its closure in 1998, are significantly 

and substantially related to subsequent recidivism. The effect of Central Intake was predominantly with the comparison group. This makes sense in that Central Intake’s purpose was to get 

more and better treatment to those offenders that were ”slipping through the cracks in the system” and therefore would have impacted the comparison group more and the Drug Court group 

less. This has interesting implications. It would suggest that during the period of Target Cities 

II April 2007 
Executive Summary 

Central Intake (1993-1998), the Drug Court effect is somewhat understated because the comparison group is also receiving benefits from Central Intake. This also illustrates the importance of 

understanding factors that may have affected the comparison group, as well as the program 

group, in this kind of study. 

Internal changes in drug court policies and procedures were also examined, including changes in 

eligibility criteria (pre- vs. post-plea), changes in funding, and changes in Drug Court Program 

policies around insurance and managed care. These were entered into the logistic regression 

model to see if the changes had an impact on the recidivism (arrest/no arrest) of the drug court 

group when age, race, gender, and prior arrest history are also in the model. The results showed 

that none of these changes appears to be associated with any change in re-arrests in the Drug 

Court group. This, of course, does not mean they had no indirect impact, merely that they show 

no gross direct impact. 

In addition, several instrumental variables relative to success in the drug court program were examined for their effect on subsequent recidivism. A negative effect was found for the use of 

sanctions. Specifically, the use of jail sanctions was related to higher recidivism. Positive effects 

were found for a higher number of days in substance abuse treatment and for several judicial factors. Higher days in treatment was significantly related to lower recidivism. Judicial factors are 

discussed in response to Policy Question # 4. 

POLICY QUESTION # 4: DO CHANGES IN JUDICIAL LEADERSHIP AFFECT THE SUCCESS OF THE 

DRUG COURT? 

There were four sub-questions addressed within Policy Question #4. 

4a: Do judges differ in their success in reducing re-arrests? 

While all judges showed reductions in re-arrests, some judges showed greater reductions than 

others. The reductions in re-arrests ranged from 4% to a substantial 42%, demonstrating clear 

differences. This suggests that drug court results may vary depending on the judge involved. 

4b: Do eras where multiple judges are conducting Drug Court do worse than eras in which 

only a single judge is operating the Program? 

There were no differences between eras of a single court judge and multiple judges, although the 

period of multiple judges was relatively short. Also, the STOP Program may not be a good test of 

this. In the multiple judge eras, there was always a single pre-dominant judge who had “help” from 

a variety of other judges, and many of the judges who “helped” were former STOP Program judges 

and had learned from previous experience. This is a very different situation from a setting where 

different judges are simply rotated through drug court on a regular (e.g., yearly) basis. 

4c: Did the Drug Court improve its success rate over time? Did later judges do better than the 

earlier judges? 

The early drug court judges did not have as positive outcomes (on average) as judges who came 

later. It is likely that judicial procedures and practices improved over time. The Multnomah 

County Drug Court was the second drug court in existence nationally. In many ways it helped 

invent standard drug court procedures. These data suggest that over time the Drug Court learned 

from experience and improved its success rate. One way it worked to improve its success rate 

was to create procedures for passing knowledge learned from experience from one judge to the 

next. The Program noticed a difference in the quality of the judges’ work when each Drug Court 

judge began a more formal process of teaching the drug court model to the incoming judge. 

III 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Policy Question # 4d: Do judges improve with experience? Did judges who had multiple eras 

improve their success rate in the second era? 

Of great interest is the finding that judges who had more than one rotation through the Drug 

Court had better results their second time on the Drug Court bench. This implies that judges 

learn from their experience on the bench and that having the same judge continue to preside over 

a drug court over time will result in better outcomes. Given that one of these judges had several 

years between his two eras, this also implies that a “pool” of judges who have experience in drug 

court could be rotated through a drug court on a regular basis, allowing the program to benefit 

from the judges’ experience while also allowing the judges to preside over traditional court cases 

on alternate years. 

POLICY QUESTION #5: DID THE MULTNOMAH COUNTY DRUG COURT SAVE TAXPAYER RESOURCES COMPARED TO THE COSTS OF TRADITIONAL COURT PROCESSING? 

Consistent with the previous findings from the single cohort study (Carey and Finigan, 2003), the 

data from over 10 years of operation show that the Multnomah County Drug Court actually costs 

less to operate than the cost of “business as usual.” The investment cost per participant for the 

STOP Program was $5,168 while the cost per offender for “business as usual” was $6,560, a difference of $1,392. These data suggest that the finding in 2003 was not simply relevant to the 

specific time period. Overall, this means that, independent of avoided system costs accruing from 

positive outcomes, the Drug Court’s operation itself saved the taxpayer more than $9 million 

over the 10-year period. Sources of this investment cost savings include treatment and probation 

services. 

In terms of outcome cost savings (i.e., avoided costs) to the taxpayer accruing from positive results for Drug Court participants, there are cost savings in outcomes across every transaction. 

The largest benefit is due to less use of jail days by Program participants followed by less use of 

prison beds. The total outcome cost savings over a 5-year period from the petition hearing is 

$6,744 per participant, and $12,218 when victimization costs are included. 

The outcome cost savings, when multiplied by the number of people who entered the Multnomah 

County Drug Court’s STOP Program from 1991 through 2001, result in a total system savings of 

more than $79 million (or $7.9 million per year). 

These positive outcomes were counted for just 5 years after the petition hearing date in order to 

include all 6,502 participants who entered the program during the 10-year period. As described 

earlier, the lower recidivism for the Drug Court participants continues up to 14 years after the 

petition hearing. This means that the cost savings will continue to accumulate for these participants for many years after the 5-year end point used in these cost calculations. If these savings 

continue to accrue at $7.9 million per year, the cost savings after 14 years could be as high as 

$111 million. Note that these numbers are outcome costs (savings) only and do not include the 

investment cost savings presented earlier. 

The opportunity to conduct a longitudinal study on a single drug court and to examine its effect 

on the entire target population does not happen often. Gaining permission to access data and coordinating the data collection is an immense task. Yet, this has offered some insight into the 

long-term operation of drug courts that is extremely useful for both for researchers and policymakers. This paper presents the result of just some of the analyses that are possible for this 

unique set of data. Future work could continue to explore other possible analyses and answer 

other important policy questions, such as cost differences between pre-plea and post-plea cohorts. 

IV April 2007 
I 

Introduction 

INTRODUCTION 

n 2005, NPC Research (NPC) secured a contract 

from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) to 

examine over 10 years of history of the 

operation of the second oldest drug court in the 

United States, the Multnomah County Drug Court in 

Portland, Oregon. Although NPC had performed cost 

studies of this drug court’s STOP (Sanction 

Treatment Opportunity Progress) Program1

 twice in 

the past (in 1996 and 2003), this was a unique 

opportunity since it is seldom possible to examine the 

long-term operations of the drug court model in a 

single location. It was also unique in that there was access to data on the entire population of offenders in Multnomah County that are the traditional targets of the drug court model. This allowed us to examine the overall system impact of the STOP Program on that population. 

Few comprehensive studies of the long-term benefits of drug courts have been conducted. All 

studies to date, including the two previously conducted in this site (Carey & Finigan, 2003; Finigan, 1996), have been based on samples of drug court clients. Non-representative sampling is an 

ever-present hazard to inference because drug courts are affected by large, shifting confounding 

factors including changes in eligibility criteria and changes in the offender population over time. 

This study was conducted with the entire drug court-eligible population over a 10-year period in 

a system that processes on the order of 1,000 clients (or greater) each year, about 50 percent of 

whom participated in drug court and the rest who experienced traditional court processing 

(“business as usual”). This creates the opportunity for a highly dependable case study. 

The following tasks were accomplished under this contract NPC: 

• Collected and examined criminal justice, treatment, and other data on 11,102 cases that 

met eligibility requirements to be in drug court and either participated in drug court or 

were traditionally adjudicated. 

• Analyzed the overall impact of the drug court model on criminal recidivism (re-arrests) 

when pre-existing differences between the two groups were controlled. 

• Examined changes in judges, protocols and procedures in the drug court and their impact 

on subsequent recidivism. 

• Developed cost and cost-benefit estimates for the impact of the drug court during this 10­

year period from 1991 to 2001. (These costs were based on data collected in the previous 

2003 study, which included intensive tracking of 155 drug court-eligible offenders over a 

30-month period.) 

This report is organized into four main sections. The first section is a statement and discussion of 

the problem. The second section discusses our research strategy. The third section details our research methodology. The fourth section presents our results including a discussion of the implications of these results for policymakers. 

1

 Referred to in this paper as “the STOP Program” or “the Program.” 

1 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Statement and Discussion of Issues In Research on Drug Courts 

The following section discusses the link between substance abuse and crime, drug courts as a 

response to this problem, the economic consequences of drug abuse, issues in an analysis of the 

effects of drug courts, project goals and key policy questions to be addressed by this research, 

and, finally, the importance of this research to policymakers, providers, and researchers. 

THE LINK BETWEEN SUBSTANCE ABUSE AND CRIME 

Underlying this project is the notion that “treatment works” for people with drug abuse problems. In other words, the provision of drug abuse treatment services can have an impact on an 

individual’s behavior where the behavior of interest includes criminal activity and substance use. 

There is a well-researched link between substance abuse and criminal behavior. In 1999, the 

ADAM program found that the percentage of adult male arrestees testing positive for an illicit 

drug at the time of arrest ranged from 50% in San Antonio, Texas, to 77% in Atlanta, Georgia 

(ONDCP, 2003). The combined impact of criminal activity and substance abuse is also well 

documented. Summary statistics gathered in 1996 from the Department of Justice suggest that 

nationally 36% of adult offenders were under the influence of alcohol at the time of their offense 

(Greenfeld, 1998). BJS reported in 2002 that 68% of jail inmates reported symptoms in the year 

before their admission to jail that met substance dependence or abuse criteria (Karberg & James, 

2002). 

Furthermore, there is evidence that treating substance abuse leads to a reduction in criminal behavior. For individuals receiving substance abuse treatment, the National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study (NTIES, 1997) found significant declines in criminal activity between the 

12 months prior to treatment and the 12 months subsequent to treatment. Those declines included: 

• Self-reported incidence of selling drugs by 78 percent, 

• Shoplifting by almost 82 percent, 

• Supporting oneself largely through illegal activity by more than 48 percent, and 

• Arrests for any crime by 64 percent. 

Gerstein et al. (1994) found positive effects of drug and alcohol treatment on self-reported subsequent criminal activity in a statewide sample in California. In a study using administrative 

data, comparing those who completed treatment with a comparison group of those eligible but 

not receiving treatment in Oregon, Finigan (1996) also found significant reduction in policereport arrests for those who completed treatment. 

DRUG COURTS AS A RESPONSE TO THIS PROBLEM 

The prevalence of offenders with substance abuse issues in the criminal justice system was the 

primary impetus for the formulation of drug courts specifically designed to handle offenders who 

committed crimes while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Drug courts represent a “combined systems” approach to treating offenders. Rather than the court system handing off an offender to the correction system and/or the treatment system and seeing the offender again only 

when the offender returned to the system as a re-offender, drug courts create a combined team 

effort involving resources from the district attorney’s office, the public defender’s office, probation and treatment providers, all under the leadership of a judge. This combined systems ap2 April 2007 
Introduction 

proach has the potential to provide greater efficiency as well as heightened accountability for the 

offender. On the other hand, it creates complexity in understanding both the costs of the program 

and the avoided costs that may accrue from the impact of the program. 

A relatively large number of impact studies have been conducted examining the outcomes of the 

drug court model (see reviews—GAO, 2005; Belenko, 1998, 2001, 2005). The quality of the research and the validity of the conclusions have varied depending on research design issues. First 

and foremost is the issue of comparison groups in quasi-experimental designs. Impact studies 

must be able to compare outcome results of drug court program participants to a valid comparison group that can represent the conditions of “business as usual” that would occur without a 

drug court. The major problem with comparison groups is the potential that some selection bias 

has been introduced in the development of these groups that will bias the comparison. For example, some drug courts have wanted to compare their graduates with those that enrolled in drug 

court but were terminated before completion. This clearly introduces a selection bias since those 

who graduated by definition represent those who succeeded at drug court and those terminated 

represent a group that failed. The graduates and those that were terminated belong to the same 

group (i.e., drug court participants). There is no comparison group. It is of little value to learn 

that “succeeders succeed, and failures fail” (Goldkamp, personal communication, 2002). 

Most of the better research designs have used some sort of “business as usual” comparison group 

that is similar in fundamental characteristics to those who receive the program (e.g., Carey & 

Finigan, 2003; Carey et al., 2005). While unable to completely remove selection bias, this design 

is nonetheless particularly useful to policymakers trying to make decisions about alternative 

models. Belenko (1998) suggests examples of comparison groups used in valid drug court designs, including the following: 

• Similar drug offenders, adjudicated before the drug court began; 

• Drug court-eligible offenders who were referred to drug courts but did not enroll; and 

• Matched samples of drug court offenders assigned to probation. 

Although selection bias (such as motivational issues2

) cannot be completely ruled out in these 

samples, matching these groups to a drug court sample (e.g., on criminal history, demographics) 

can produce a reasonable comparison for the policymaker between “business as usual” and drug 

court. 

A few studies (e.g., Gottfredson, Najaka, & Kearly, 2003) have been able to conduct random assignment into treatment and control conditions. Although this approach provides the best ability 

to rule out potential selection bias (including motivational issues) in the development of a comparison group, it is not entirely free from problems. Random assignment is an artificial condition 

placed on a system and not truly a “business as usual” comparison. Also, assignment to groups 

early in the drug court referral process may result in mis-assignment.3

 However, Gottfredson’s 

study using random assignment did find positive effects of the drug court program similar to 

2

 Some researchers have questioned whether individuals who are eligible for drug court but choose not to go are less 

motivated to change their drug habits than those who choose drug court. Others have argued that the coercive nature 

of drug court brings non-motivated offenders into a program where they then gain motivation (e.g., Harrell, 2003). 

3

 Gottfredson’s (2003) well-controlled assignment conditions nonetheless experienced some mis-assignment as 9% 

of the treatment group did not participate in drug court, and 7% of the comparison group was enrolled in drug court. 

Random assignment is a difficult condition to maintain in real system settings. 

3 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

those using the comparison group methods outlined by Belenko, lending credibility to positive 

effects found in these research designs. 

In one of Belenko’s early drug court research reviews (1998), he suggested that the research 

findings are consistent with the following: 

1. Drug courts are successful in engaging and retaining offenders in treatment. 

2. Drug courts provide more comprehensive supervision of offenders. 

3. Drug use is reduced for offenders who participate in drug court. 

4. Criminal recidivism is reduced for offenders. 

5. Drug courts can generate cost savings. 

6. Drug courts can successfully bridge the gap between multiple publicly funded systems. 

More recent research supports these conclusions. A recent drug court review by the General Accounting Office (GAO, 2005) concluded that drug courts can be effective in reducing recidivism 

and in reducing taxpayer costs due to positive outcomes for drug court participants. Some drug 

courts have even been shown to cost less to operate than processing offenders through businessas-usual (Carey & Finigan, 2003; Carey et al., 2005). The majority of research indicates that retention and completion of treatment programs have a positive effect in reducing drug use and 

criminal behavior (Belenko, 2001). 

THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF SUBSTANCE ABUSE 

The economic consequences to society of drug and alcohol abuse have long been detailed. From 

a health perspective, untreated substance abusers produce tangible costs to health systems from 

both the health complications of substance use as well as increased accidents that result from the 

use of alcohol and drugs. In addition, substance abuse leads to other negative social behaviors 

that have cost consequences to other systems, such as the criminal justice system. French (1995) 

described an array of tangible and intangible costs of substance abuse. This underscores the fundamental reasoning of a cost-benefit approach to substance abuse treatment: untreated substance 

abuse is very costly to the individual, the individual’s family and friends, and to taxpayers who 

must, in one way or another, fund the consequences of the negative social behaviors that result 

from substance abuse. Policymakers and practitioners need cost-benefit information because 

substance abuse treatment and the courts’ increasing involvement in the treatment system (e.g., 

drug court) are perceived as expensive to implement, and data are needed to demonstrate that 

such treatment reduces costs in the long run. 

Costs are defined here as taxpayer-funded resources (e.g., court time, treatment sessions) required to produce a program intervention. Benefits are avoided taxpayer-funded resources that 

accrue from positive program outcomes. Cost-benefit analysis is sometimes confused with cost 

effectiveness analysis. Cost effectiveness analysis compares the relative cost of several programs 

to achieve some given outcome. It is easier to accomplish than cost-benefit analysis since it does 

not require that the outcomes of the programs be expressed in economic terms. Cost-benefit 

analysis places economic value both on the cost of a program and its outcomes, which allows the 

calculation of a cost-benefit ratio—or the amount of the return on taxpayer investment. 

Much of the literature on cost and cost-benefit research has been focused on assessing the impact 

of substance abuse treatment alone. This is somewhat easier, since the costs are incurred primarily in one system (the treatment system). However, with the advent of drug courts in the last few 

4 April 2007 
Introduction 

years there is a growing need to identify cost-benefit approaches that can be applied to drug 

courts with all the complexities involved in a combined systems model involving collaboration 

between multiple systems and agencies. 

ISSUES IN AN ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTS OF DRUG COURTS 

The purpose of this section is to describe some of the issues that arise in determining costs in 

drug courts. These issues require decisions to be made by the researcher that affect the research 

design. We will discuss some of these issues and the strategies we have adopted in our research 

design in order to address them. These issues are as follows: 

• Sampling Issues 

• Looking Inside the “Black Box” 

• Use of Client Self-Report Data 

• Recipient of the Cost or Benefit 

• Opportunity Resources 

• Linkage Between Publicly Funded Systems: The Transaction Cost Approach 

• Continuum of Treatment 

Sampling Issues 

Most drug court evaluations have examined a specific court during a limited time period of its 

operation (usually 1 or 2 years). In the early period of the drug court movement, this was inevitable since drug courts were new and 1 or 2 years was often representative of the court’s history. 

But as drug courts have matured, this approach raises questions about the representative nature 

of the time periods chosen. There has been some concern that the early years of implementation, 

with its attendant challenges, may not be representative of the court’s long-term operations. Also, 

if drug courts’ effectiveness is influenced by changes in procedures, policies and structures, then 

some time periods of change may not be as representative of their operations as times of stability. A researcher always runs the risk of choosing periods of study (often because the funder 

wants it done within a certain time frame) that are not very representative of stable court operations. Only by looking at the operations of a mature drug court over time can we actually capture 

a full picture of a court’s effectiveness. 

Another sampling issue is the perennial one of sample size and power. Often drug court evaluations do not do a power analysis to suggest the sample size needed for effect sizes that might be 

somewhat modest. It should be recognized that in a court system that processes hundreds or 

thousands of clients a year, even small effect sizes may be substantive. Too often drug court 

evaluation has rested on small (50-75 cases) or modest (100-250 cases) sample sizes, mainly because most drug courts do not have the capacity to process larger numbers of offenders, without 

examining closely the likelihood that these small sizes will detect anything but large effects. 

The current study allows us to look at the entire target population in Multnomah County, both 

those in the STOP Program and those following traditional court processing, over 10 years of 

5 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

court operations.4 In addition, the Multnomah County STOP Court has one of the largest capacities of any drug court in the country, at times processing up to 1,000 participants in one year. 

Looking “Inside the Black Box” 

Goldkamp et al. (2001), in an excellent exploratory analysis of the Portland (Multnomah County) 

and Las Vegas courts, argued that researchers needed to spend more time around the question of 

how drug courts work. Their study was the first to take a longitudinal look at the operations of 

drug court, examining the Portland court over a multiyear period (1991 to 1997). They followed 

a sample of drug court cases (about 75 per year) and two comparison groups: one that attended 

the initial defender orientation but did not enter drug court and a second group that skipped the 

defender orientation and simply did not enter drug court. Their study, which in many ways was a 

precursor to this study, examined both the ways that the drug court results changed over time and 

some factors that influenced those changes.5

 They examined follow-up periods of up to 3 years 

for the 1991 to 1994 period, up 2 years for the 1995 and 1996 period, and 1 year for the 1997 

cases. Our study follows this general approach, but uses the whole population (about 11,000 

cases) for a period from 1991 to 2001. The outcome data were drawn in late 2005 and early 

2006, allowing a minimum of 5 years of follow-up on all cohorts and more than 10 years on 

many cohorts. 

They found an overall positive, though uneven effect in Portland, with some years having better 

results than others. They argued that both drug court treatment functions and defendant characteristics may heavily influence the question of whether the courts “work” and under what conditions. Using their preliminary study to guide us, but using a much larger data set, more time periods, much longer follow-up periods, and adding a cost analysis, we undertook to examine factors 

influencing the changes in Multnomah County Drug Court over a 10-year period of time.6 

Use of Client Self-Report Data 

Some drug court research has relied on self-reported data to assess services utilized in substance 

abuse treatment and also to assess subsequent cost outcomes such as arrests and incarcerations. 

Analysis based on the National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study (1997) and the California Drug and Alcohol Treatment Assessment (CALDATA) study (Gerstein et al., 1994) are 

examples. While there are clear advantages to the extensive data that can be collected with a selfreport instrument, it is difficult to use such data to address the system impact of the drug court or 

the actual costs spent by local treatment and criminal justice systems. In addition, there are troublesome issues such as the respondent’s telescoping of time periods, memory issues, misperceiving police contacts as arrests, and providing “socially desirable” answers. 

The approach taken in this study is not to rely on client self-report for data but instead to use information from administrative databases, budgets, staff interviews and direct tracking of clients. 

We have information on offenders who were eligible for the program over an 11 1⁄2-year period and have collected 

data on them that spans 14 1⁄2 years. However, from a practical point of view we could provide a full analysis (including their prior history) on about 10 years of court operations. 

5 We did not follow suit in dividing our comparison group into these two groups. We were interested in testing the 

whole population of targeted offenders over the 10-year period, divided between those who went to drug court and 

those who did not. We felt this had more relevance to policymakers, rather than a comparison of drug court to a subset of the alternative. In other words, we felt that a finding that drug court had better results over one of these groups 

rather than the other would have less policy relevance than a finding that drug court had positive result as compared 

to the alternative of no drug court. 

6

 A more detailed comparison of the two studies is outside the scope of this report and would require more information about some of the Goldkamp et al. procedures. 

6 April 2007 

4 
Introduction 

Recipient of the Cost or Benefit 

The concept of cost-benefit begs the question, “benefit or cost to whom?” Some recipients of 

benefits and costs may be of less interest to policymakers in the public realm. Koenig et al. 

(2000) contrast an approach focused on benefits to society as a whole and an approach that focuses on benefits to the non-treated population (i.e., taxpayers). The “society as a whole” approach, for instance, would look at food stamps, welfare receipt, or even robbery as transfer of 

income without net gain or loss.7

 This approach considers a broad array of monetary as well as 

“quality-of-life” costs and benefits, but involves daunting measurement challenges. The “cost to 

the taxpayer” approach focuses on the expenditures of taxpayer dollars and looks at costs solely 

from the point of view of the taxpaying public. In this approach, food stamps, welfare receipt, 

and robbery all have obvious costs to the taxpaying public. 

The “cost to the taxpayer” approach was used in this research. It focused on the expenditure of 

economic resources in the publicly funded arena. Although it might be of interest to examine the 

increase in income for clients of substance abuse treatment, the interests of this analysis focused 

on the expenditure of costs within the public budgets of the treatment, court, and correctional 

systems.8 

Opportunity Resources 

Many policymakers have failed to see any declines in actual budgets as a result of the linkage 

between criminal justice and substance abuse treatment. For instance, while substance abuse 

treatment and drug courts have been linked to a reduction in re-arrests in the criminal justice system, many police and jail budgets remain unchanged, and jails remain full. 

The approach used in this analysis viewed publicly funded costs as opportunity costs. The concept of opportunity cost from the economic literature suggests that system resources are available 

to be used in other contexts if they are not spent on a particular transaction. For example, if drug 

court reduces the number of times that a client is subsequently incarcerated, the local sheriff may 

see no change in his or her budget, but an opportunity cost (resource) will be available to the 

sheriff in the form of a jail bed that can now be filled by another person. The term “opportunity 

resources” may be preferable to describe these resources, because it implies that costs saved are 

less in dollars than in budgeted resources (people’s time, jail bed space, residential beds) that can 

be used in another manner to better fulfill the mission of the public-budget-spending agency. 

With this understanding in mind, the “cost savings” described later in this document should be 

viewed as “opportunity resources” rather than literal dollars saved. 

Linkage Between Publicly Funded Systems: The Transaction Cost Approach 

Cost-benefit researchers have looked at avoided costs in various publicly funded systems, considering each system separately. Little effort has been made to understand the cost implications 

of the linkages among systems. Specifically, the substance abuse treatment system is often intertwined with the court and correctional systems. The proliferation of drug courts, day reporting 

 This is true in a strictly economic sense, not a normative sense. Transfers involve costs but provide positive benefits to recipients (and to society in general); conversely, robbery involves transfer of resources but with a negative 

normative valuation. 

8 We have made one exception to this focus on costs that come from the use of taxpayer-financed government agencies. Because crime has a direct cost to taxpayers through victimization, we have also chosen to include victimization costs. 

7 

7
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

centers, in-jail treatment, and pre-treatment programs is an indication that the court and correctional systems have made the need for substance abuse treatment part of their mission. 

Belenko (1998) suggests that cost research modeled on the approach used by Finigan (1996) 

would provide useful information on the costs and benefits of drug court. This approach, greatly 

refined by Crumpton (2001) and Carey & Finigan (2003), has formed the basis for the NPC 

Transactional and Institutional Cost Analysis (TICA) approach utilized in this current research 

and described in greater detail later in this report. 

The TICA approach used in this research examined the provision of opportunity resources by 

publicly funded agencies as a set of transactions. That is, each time a client has a contact with the 

system, a transaction occurs and resources change hands. The approach also follows some trends 

in the literature of organization theory that suggest that organizations can be best understood as 

contributing their resources to sets of transactions (Martinez & Dacin, 1999; Moe, 1984). This 

transaction cost analysis assumes that clients make contact with multiple systems and use resources from all those systems. In order to understand the costs that are spent and to place economic value on the complexity of reduced costs that accrue due to the benefits of a program, one 

must focus on the interaction of multiple systems. In particular, the focus in this study is on the 

treatment system, the court system, and the corrections system. This approach is described in 

more detail in the Research Design and Methodology section. 

Key Policy Questions 

There are five key policy questions this research is designed to answer: 

1. What is the overall impact of the Drug Court on criminal recidivism? Specifically, for the 

cases eligible for Drug Court from 1991 to 2001, did participation in the Program reduce 

criminal recidivism compared to the alternative of traditional processing and adjudication 

(“business as usual”)? 

2. Does the Drug Court show consistent levels of success in reducing re-arrests each year of 

the 10-year period? 

3. Do internal or external changes affecting policies and procedures of the Drug Court affect 

its success or failure? 

4. Do changes in judicial leadership affect the success of the Drug Court? 

5. Did the Drug Court save taxpayer resources compared to the costs of traditional court 

processing? 

8 April 2007 
Drug Court Background 

DRUG COURT BACKGROUND

A s described in the introduction, the Multnomah County Drug Court in Portland, Oregon, 

is the second oldest drug court in the United States. Although NPC had performed cost 

studies of this drug court’s STOP (Sanction Treatment Opportunity Progress) Program9 

twice in the past (in 1996 and 2003), this was a unique opportunity since it offered access to data 

on the entire population of offenders in Multnomah County that are the traditional targets of the 

drug court model. This allowed us to examine the overall system impact of the STOP Program 

on that population. Following is a summary description of the STOP Program. A more detailed 

description can be found in Appendix A. 

Summary Description of the Multnomah County Drug Court’s STOP 

Program 

The Multnomah County Drug Court’s STOP Program was among the pioneer drug courts to be 

established in the United States. Multnomah County instituted the STOP Program in August 

1991, at the instigation of Judge Harl Haas, using a Byrne grant and local city funds. The Program was originally designed to be a pre-plea offer to individuals arrested on drug charges. The 

program began accepting probationers and parolees (as well as pre-plea clients) in 1995 and became a completely post-plea program in 2000. Therefore, this program has contained a mix of 

mostly pre-conviction and some post-conviction offenders. Upon successful completion of this 

intensive program, charges were dropped and a defendant can apply to have them removed from 

his or her criminal history record. 

The STOP Program’s team members include the judge, treatment coordinator, the public defender, the public defender’s legal assistant, and the district attorney. 

The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office is responsible for determining client eligibility for the Program. The STOP Program is offered to people charged with Possession of Controlled Substance (PCS) charges as well as other drug-related charges such as tampering with 

drug records (e.g., forging prescriptions for pharmaceutical drugs). STOP participants may have 

more than one charge when they enter the Program but any prior convictions on violent charges 

exclude offenders from participating. 

The public defender provides an orientation on the STOP Program and offers the program to eligible participants. Clients must attend a “petition hearing” for drug court where they either declare their intention to participate in the STOP Program or decline participation. Those who accept the Program work towards having their charges dropped by attending prescribed treatment 

services, appearing at drug court sessions and paying STOP Program fees. 

The current treatment agency, InAct, has been the sole treatment provider for the STOP Court 

since 1992 (aside from occasional referrals by InAct to inpatient and methadone treatment). InAct provides case management for all participants, including those who receive treatment elsewhere. There are three phases of treatment, starting with more frequent treatment sessions in 

Phase I (group sessions a minimum of three times per week and individual sessions once per 

month) and ending with less frequent sessions in Phase III (group sessions a minimum of once 

per week and individual sessions still once per month). Drug tests (urinalyses) are performed by 

9

 Referred to in this paper as “the STOP Program” or “the Program.” 

9 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

the treatment provider and occur randomly at least once per week. Aftercare is available to all 

participants who have graduated. After graduation, a client is eligible to attend as many group 

counseling sessions as desired, may meet with his or her individual counselor, attend educational 

classes provided at InAct, and remains eligible for mental and physical health services provided 

by InAct. 

Because of the large number of clients in the STOP Program, drug court sessions are held daily 

in Multnomah County. Representative from the Public Defender’s Office, the District Attorney’s 

Office, and InAct attend the drug court sessions. The frequency of court sessions for clients is 

based on the treatment phase they are currently completing and on how well they are complying 

with the program. In general, client attendance at court sessions ranges from a minimum of once 

per month to once every 2 months, and on rare occasions, can be as frequent as daily. During 

court appearances the judge checks on the client’s progress, both from the client’s perspective 

and the treatment provider’s. The treatment liaison provides information to the judge on the client’s progress from the counselors at InAct. The district attorney makes note of subsequent arrests and brings these data to the courtroom. The judge offers encouragement and rewards to clients who are complying with the treatment regime. The judge also imposes sanctions for clients 

who are non-compliant (e.g., not attending treatment, have a positive drug test, etc.), and checks 

on the completion of previously imposed sanctions and the status of their fee payment. 

The STOP Program requires 365 days in treatment to graduate. In addition, clients need six consecutive clean urinalysis tests and a recommendation from their individual counselor to complete 

the Program. Termination occurs at the recommendation of the team members to the judge, although the judge makes the final decision. Reasons for termination include chronic noncompliance with program requirements and arrests during program participation for violent 

charges. 

The number of active clients in the STOP Program has ranged from approximately 500 to more 

than 1,200 in a given year. Between 1991 and 2001, the drug court graduated an average of just 

over 40% of its clients (2,625 out of a total of 6,502), though in some years this percentage has 

risen higher than 50%. The STOP Program participants’ most common primary drug of choice 

was amphetamines (32%) followed by marijuana (19%) and cocaine (17%). However, alcohol 

was the most common secondary drug of choice (26%) followed by marijuana (25%) and cocaine (20%). 

Summary Description of the Multnomah County Traditional Court 

Process 

One element of this study is to compare STOP Program participants with those who were eligible for the STOP Program but did not participate. These individuals go through traditional court 

processing. In Multnomah County, this processing includes having their case heard by a Grand 

Jury, and hearings at a variety of court appearances. 

Defendants who have declined the STOP Program have their cases heard by the Grand Jury. At a 

Grand Jury proceeding, the State calls witnesses and presents evidence to convince jurors of sufficient evidence against a defendant to bring formal charges against them. Neither the defendant 

nor their lawyer is present at these proceedings. The Grand Jury decides whether the district attorney can proceed with the case. 

If the Grand Jury decides the case can proceed, at the request of the defense attorney, a Plea 

Hearing can be scheduled. At a Plea Hearing, defendants enter a plea of “guilty” or “no contest” 

10 April 2007 
Drug Court Background 

to the charges brought against them by the State. Before hearing the plea, the judge will explain a 

defendant’s right to a jury trial and that he or she is waiving that right by choosing to plead to the 

charges. The judge reads the charges and asks the defendant for a plea. After the plea has been 

entered, the judge determines the sentence. 

For cases where the defendant has entered a plea of “not guilty,” the judge will schedule a Trial 

date. The Trial consists of the State and defense attorney’s presenting their cases before a jury. 

After hearing the case, the jury decides on a verdict of guilt or innocence. The judge, in accordance with the law, sentences a defendant that is found guilty. Defendants found guilty will usually receive sentences that include both jail and probation time. Defendants who are acquitted 

(found innocent) have their cases dismissed. 

During the time period of this study, defendants were generally sentenced to 30 days in jail, a 

drug-free zone exclusion, and 18 months of probation. Multnomah County Community Justice 

provides probation supervision. Supervision by a probation officer includes monitoring defendants in the community and ensuring defendants follow through with the conditions of probations set forth by the judge at the time of sentencing. Supervision by probation includes recommendations for treatment based on an alcohol and drug assessment that takes place when a defendant begins probation. However, since these are nonviolent offenders, they are most commonly on a very low level of supervision that does not require regular meetings with a probation 

officer. 

A more detailed description of the Multnomah County Drug Court (STOP Program), as well as a 

description of the traditional “business as usual” court process, can be found in Appendix A. In 

addition, detailed information on each type of court hearing in the drug court and traditional 

court process, as well as the time per participant for each hearing, can be found in the Appendices of the final report for the previous study (Carey and Finigan, 2003). 

11 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

12 April 2007 
Research Design and Methodology 

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY

T his study was unique in that it provided the opportunity to examine the long-term operations of the drug court model in a specific location. It was also unique in that we had access to data on the entire population of offenders in Multnomah County that are the traditional targets of the drug court model. This allowed us to examine the overall system impact of 

the Drug Court on that population. 

Some of the methods used in this study, particularly around the collection of administrative data 

sets, are similar to the methods and data sources used in the previous study performed in 2003 

(Carey & Finigan, 2003). Some of the data gathered on specific costs and resources in the previous study were used again in this study, where appropriate. 

Administrative Data Collection 

The administrative data gathered for this study came from several sources: (1) the public defender’s drug court database; (2) the InAct (the STOP Court’s treatment provider) database; (3) a 

data warehouse (DSS-J: Decision Support System-Justice) that combines data from the Portland 

Police database (PPDS), the Multnomah County Sheriff’s database (SWIS), and the District Attorney’s (DA)database; (4) the Oregon State Police’s database (LEDS) of statewide arrests; (5) 

the Department of Correction’s (DOC) statewide database of prison, probation, parole, and postprison supervision information; (6) the Oregon Judicial Information Network (OJIN); and (7) a 

statewide treatment database (CPMS). 

All data were provided electronically. The data collected for each individual included demographics (most databases); drug court eligibility information (DA, public defender, and InAct); 

criminal history including arrests and charges (PPDS, LEDS); drug court hearing dates, drug 

court treatment dates and types, urinalyses dates and results (InAct database); jail entry and exit 

dates (SWIS); prison, probation, parole, and post-prison supervision start and end dates (DOC); 

and non-drug court treatment start and end dates (CPMS). 

There were challenges in getting and working with the data. Nearly 600 people—primarily 

graduates—needed to be looked up by hand in the criminal justice data warehouse because the 

case numbers for the drug court-eligible events were not found. Since one of the perks of graduation is being allowed to have the case purged, it was suspected this was a special group of motivated people. Just over half of the 600 people were found in the hand search, which provided additional identifiers that could be used to find those people in other data systems. Another challenge was the richness and complexity of the data. While the richness was excellent for the 

study, it also necessitated much care in joining, cleaning, and testing the data. In addition, there 

were some issues with the expected order of events within and across data from each source that 

needed to be resolved and could generally be traced back to data entry errors. 

Categorizing the charges into victimization crimes (person, and property) and drug crimes as 

well as categorizing lesser crimes was a large task. Several data sources provided charge information (DSS-J Prosecution, DSS-J Arrests, DSS-J Bookings, and the State Police/LEDS). Since 

each source usually listed charges in slightly different ways, the categorization needed to be done 

for each source’s list of charges rather than doing it for a single set of charges and applying the 

categorization to all sets. Each set had approximately 500 distinct charges to categorize. 

13 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Despite these challenges, county and state agencies provided an enormous amount of highquality data, allowing a unique and detailed examination of the complex system of drug court 

and traditional case processing. Following is a brief description of each data set used in this 

study. 

InAct 

InAct has been the treatment provider for the Multnomah County Drug Court since 1992 (one 

year after the drug court began operations). Within the first year, InAct began collecting consistent and high-quality data for use in case management and evaluation. This treatment provider 

has been a true partner in the creation and maintenance of this drug court and is one of the rare 

agencies that truly understands the importance of collecting detailed and reliable data. 

The InAct database contained: demographics, dates of individual and group counseling sessions, 

acupuncture, and urinalysis tests; dates of court hearings that clients were expected to attend (as 

opposed to hearings that were rescheduled before they took place) and whether the client attended; status upon exit from the program; and a wealth of other information. This is far more 

information than was provided by other drug courts encountered and evaluated by NPC. It is 

pleasantly surprising considering the paucity of models to draw from at the time the database 

was created and considering the STOP Court was the second drug court created in the United 

States. The limitations of the dataset are minor. Information on treatment was added in 1993, 

meaning it was not available in an electronic format before that date. 

This database was also important because it contained information on cases that had been purged 

from the state and local criminal justice systems (graduates can have their case information expunged from their records). Without these data, information on many graduates—including the 

existence of those cases—would have been missing from the analyses. 

Department of Corrections (DOC) 

The DOC was provided with a list of identifiers for the offenders in this analysis. The electronic 

administrative data returned from the DOC contained information on how the DOC had matched 

each person to their data, demographics, and service data including the start and end dates and 

level of supervision for probation, parole, and post-prison supervision. The challenges of working with these data were typical and minor—mostly there appeared to be clerical/keystroke errors and occasional missing data. 

Client Process Monitoring System (CPMS) 

CPMS is a statewide alcohol and drug treatment database. The data were extracted from two different data systems, one with older data and one with newer data. One of the challenges was 

identifying variables each had in common (the variable names were similar but not always identical) and putting them into compatible data formats so the two datasets could be combined. The 

two datasets had some cases in common—same client, same provider, same treatment, and same 

start date—but the newer dataset contained information on activity for those cases that occurred 

after the agency switched to the new data system. These overlapping cases were identified and 

the older version of the case data removed. 

Decision Support System-Justice (DSS-J) 

DSS-J is a data warehouse containing data from the local police, the local sheriff, the district attorney, and the courts. People are assigned an ID number that identifies them in each of the 

14 April 2007 
Research Design and Methodology 

source systems. DSS-J personnel provided arrest, booking, and prosecution data in separate tables. 

Arrests. Arrest dates and charges were used to calculate recidivism. Information was available 

only on arrests made by the Portland Police, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, and the 

Fairview Police (another city within Multnomah County). Details on arrests made by other police 

departments within Multnomah County were obtained from the Oregon State Police’s Law Enforcement Data System. 

Bookings. All booking and release dates and the charges were available, allowing the calculation 

of days spent in jail. Associated DA and court case numbers—when there was a case being 

prosecuted—were available for most of the bookings, enabling costs directly associated with the 

drug court-eligible cases to be separated from outcome costs. 

Prosecution. Prosecution data included information on the charges for each case prosecuted, arrest ID number, arresting agency, charge and case dispositions, and key dates in the case cycle. 

Public Defender 

Public defender data contained DA and court case numbers for all cases originally deemed eligible for drug court, the charges, the date the client petitioned for the program, and case status at 

the end of contact with the drug court. There were more than 12,200 cases in the time period examined. Just over 1,100 cases were later deemed ineligible for the program and were removed 

from the analyses. 

Law Enforcement Data System (LEDS) 

LEDS is a statewide repository for felony arrests and was used to find arrests that occurred elsewhere in Oregon outside of Multnomah County as well as arrests in Multnomah County but in 

cities that do not contribute to DSS-J. Arrests that were duplicates of arrests found in DSS-J were 

identified and removed. Arrests where the most serious charge is a misdemeanor are not required 

to be reported to the State Police, so the actual number of arrests a person had may be underrepresented in this database. However, the majority of these misdemeanor arrests could be gathered 

from the Portland Police and Sheriff data. 

Oregon Judicial Information System (OJIN) 

This is a case tracking system that stores Oregon State Court case information from multiple 

sources in a single database. It lists all events related to a case, including all hearings scheduled. 

Unfortunately it was not possible to differentiate between hearings that were rescheduled before 

the hearing date and hearings that actually took place (which is important for determining costs), 

but it was still valuable for demographics, key case dates, and case findings. 

Cost Methods 

TRANSACTIONAL AND INSTITUTIONAL COST ANALYSIS 

This cost-benefit study relied upon a Transactional and Institutional Cost Analysis (TICA) approach developed by NPC Research primarily during the 2003 study of the STOP Court (Carey 

& Finigan, 2003). This methodological approach combines process and outcome evaluations 

with organizational, institutional and cost analyses. (See Crumpton, Carey, & Finigan, 2004, for 

a full description of the theoretical and practical basis for this approach). 

15 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

The TICA approach views an individual’s interaction with publicly funded agencies as a set of 

transactions in which the individual utilizes resources contributed from multiple agencies. Transactions are those points within a system where resources are consumed and/or change hands. In 

the case of drug courts, when a drug court participant appears in court or has a drug test, resources such as judge time, public defender time, court facilities, and urine cups are used. Court 

appearances and drug tests are transactions. 

In addition, the TICA approach recognizes that these transactions take place within multiple organizations and institutions that work together to create the program of interest. These organizations and institutions contribute to the cost of each transaction that occurs for program participants. TICA is an intuitively appropriate approach to conducting costs assessment in an environment such as a drug court, which involves complex interactions among multiple taxpayerfunded organizations. 

COST PROTOCOLS/TRANSACTIONAL AND INSTITUTIONAL COST ANALYSIS 

The basic steps of NPC’s TICA methodology are listed below. The protocols involved in these 

steps include administrative data collection protocols and key informant interviews. 

Step 1: Determine drug court and non-drug court flow/process (how clients move through 

the system). 

Step 2: Identify the transactions that occur within this flow (where clients interact with the 

system). 

Step 3: Identify the agencies involved in each transaction (e.g., court, treatment, police). 

Step 4: Determine the resources used by each agency for each transaction (e.g., judge time, 

attorney time, overhead). 

Step 5: Determine the cost of the resources used by each agency for each transaction (e.g., 

cost of judge’s time per hour or per drug court session, etc.). 

Step 6: Calculate cost results (e.g., cost per transaction, total cost of the program per participant). 

Step 1: Determine Drug Court and Non-Drug Court Flow/Process 

There were three general methods for collecting drug court and non-drug court (“business as 

usual” or traditional) process information: Web site and document review, key informant interviews, and direct observation during intensive participant tracking. 

Key Informant Interviews. Key informants from each of the agencies involved in the STOP 

Drug Court were interviewed about drug court processes. These key informants included the 

drug court judges, public defenders, district attorneys, legal assistants, treatment providers, Sheriff staff, and Probation staff (although the Sheriff staff and Probation staff are not highly involved in the STOP Court). They were asked to describe, in detail, the flow of drug court participants through their drug court processes, and in particular, the involvement of their agencies with 

individual participants. Key informants were also asked to describe the non-drug court process in 

the same manner. 

16 April 2007 
Research Design and Methodology 

A Typology Interview Guide10 was designed by NPC Research to provide a consistent protocol 

for collecting structure and process information from multiple drug courts. The information 

gathered through this guide helped the evaluation team focus on important and unique characteristics of the STOP Court. 

The topics for this Typology Interview Guide were chosen from four main sources: the evaluation team’s extensive practical experience with drug courts, the American University Drug Court 

Survey (Cooper, 2000), a paper by Longshore et al. (2001) describing a conceptual framework 

for drug courts, and the 10 key components of drug courts developed by the National Drug Court 

Institute (1997). The typology interview covers numerous areas including specific drug court 

characteristics, structure, processes, and organization. In particular, the guide explores several 

characteristics that may be considered “promising practices” of a drug court model. By noting 

how they vary with the success of drug court programs, the study explores how these practices 

may impact participant outcomes and costs. 

The topics in the Typology Interview Guide include: 

• Eligibility Guidelines 

• Drug Court Program Process (e.g., phases, treatment providers, urinalyses, fee structure) 

• Graduation 

• Aftercare 

• Termination 

• Non-Drug Court Process 

• Drug Court Judge 

• Drug Court Coordinator 

• Drug Court Team/Sessions 

• History/Timeline 

• Drug Court Demographics and Other Statistics 

The interview information was used to create drug court and “business as usual” process descriptions and flowcharts. These descriptions were used to determine the transactions that occur 

within the drug court and non-drug court processes and to provide clues as to where to look for 

administrative data sets and where to find other kinds of necessary data. 

Observations While Tracking an Intensive Sample. In the study of the STOP Drug Court performed in 2003, a small sample (n = 155) of drug court participants and non-drug court comparison offenders (who were eligible for drug court but did not attend) were tracked closely by NPC 

staff. All 155 individuals were followed to each of their contacts with the treatment and criminal 

justice systems (e.g., court hearings, meetings with the public defender, treatment sessions). The 

NPC staff members carried stopwatches and timed each of these contacts to capture an accurate 

measure of the system resources used. The main purpose of this smaller sample was to gather 

detailed data that could then be applied to the larger sample to determine the costs and benefits 

10 A copyrighted version of the Typology Interview Guide can be found online at 

http://www.npcresearch.com/Files/NPC_Research_Drug_Court_Typology_Interview_Guide_(copyrighted).pdf and 

in Appendix B. 

17 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

associated with the STOP Drug Court. These data were also used in this long-term analysis of 

the entire population eligible for the STOP Drug Court from 1991 through 2001. 

Further details on this sample and the intensive tracking can be found in the 2003 report “A Detailed Cost Analysis in a Mature Drug Court Setting: Cost-Benefit Evaluation of the Multnomah 

County Drug Court” (Carey & Finigan, 2003). 

Step 2: Identify the Transactions That Occur Within This Flow 

Transactions Related to the Drug Court-Eligible Case. The detailed description (developed 

during Step 1) of the criminal justice system process for cases that were eligible for drug court 

(the drug court-eligible case) were examined to identify points at which the drug court participants and comparison group members interacted with the system (see Table 1). 

Although every drug court operation differs in its details, there are three primary transactional 

areas that are consistently present among drug courts: court sessions, drug tests, and treatment 

activities. Within each of these areas there are several points at which drug court participants interact with the system, resulting in the consumption of resources (e.g., agency staff time, facilities) that may impact the taxpayer. 

The transactions included for drug court participants take into account those that occur outside of 

the drug court program, as long as they are the result of the drug court-eligible case that led the 

offender to participate in drug court. For example, the case that resulted in drug court generally 

starts with an arrest—and often at least a few days in jail—before the offender is identified as 

eligible for drug court. The arrest and jail time are transactions that occur within the overall system that leads to drug court participation and therefore are parts of the system process (along 

with their associated costs) for drug court participants. These same transactions occur in the traditional court system. The two groups diverge at the point where the drug court participants enroll in the drug court program. Including all transactions associated with the case allows a more 

complete picture of the consequences to the system of choosing the drug court route versus the 

traditional route. 

Outcome Transactions. The transactions related to the drug court-eligible case described above 

are considered “up-front” costs, or investment costs,11 of the drug court process and of the criminal justice system process without drug court. These are all transactions that can occur due to the 

drug court-eligible charge. Both of these processes lead to outcomes that are measured in terms 

of further transactions within the criminal justice system. 

The same types of outcome transactions are possible for both the drug court participants and 

non-drug court participants. Transactions that occur after the drug court-eligible arrest (except 

those due to the eligible arrest) are considered outcome transactions. 

Note: Not all offenders engage in every possible transaction. For example, the majority of drug 

court participants do not receive jail as a sanction. Also, the process can vary depending on attorney advice, defendant choice, defendant criminal history, and type of case. For instance, according to both our data and key stakeholders, most offenders will choose to plea and take the 

district attorney’s offer rather than go to trial. However, all transactions are experienced by at 

least some offenders. 

11 Although the term “investment cost” can be defined as a cost outlay made after conscious deliberation, we are 

defining investment costs as described above, the system resources used in processing the drug court eligible case. 

18 April 2007 
Research Design and Methodology 

The key transactions identified for the drug court-eligible case and with outcomes are listed in 

Table 1. 

Table 1. Investment and Outcome Transactions for Drug Court, Traditional Court 

and Outcome Processes for Both Groups 

Comparison Outcomes: Both Drug 

Drug Court “Business-as-Usual” Court and Comparison 

Arrest Arrests 

Booking 

Arrest 

Booking Bookings 

1st Arraignment 1st Arraignment Court Hearings 

Public Defender Orientation o 1st Arraignment 

InAct Treatment Orientation 

Public Defender Orientation 

InAct Treatment Orientation o Grand Jury 

STOP Court Hearings (drug o 2nd Arraignment 

court hearings) 

Court Hearings 

o Grand Jury o Hearing for New Dates 

Physical exam at InAct treatment o STOP court hearing o Assignment Call; Drug 

agency o Call 2nd Arraignment Alcohol, drug and mental health o Custody Hearing o Plea

assessment at InAct treatment 

o Hearing for New Dates o Sentencing agency 

o Assignment Call Hearing o Motion to Suppress Individual and group treatment 

o Drug Call Hearing o Trial sessions 

o Plea o Substitution of Counsel Urinalyses 

o o Probation Violation Jail as a sanction Sentencing

o Motion to Suppress Hearing o Clean Court Exit Interview 

o Trial o Community Court Graduation 

o o Pre-plea Substitution of Counsel Hearing 

Hearing for New Dates 

o Pre-trial Conference Stipulated Facts Trial 

o Probation Violation Hearing o Further Proceedings Review Hearing 

o Clean Court Hearing Jail Time Jail Time (for those terminated 

after a stipulated facts trial) Jail Time Probation Time 

Probation Time Prison Time 

nated after a stipulated facts trial) 

Probation Time (for those termiTreatment Parole Time 

Post-Prison Supervision Time 

Victimizations 

o Property Crimes 

o Person (Violent) Crimes 

Once the transactions within the process were identified, in order to learn where system resources were being used, it was necessary to determine which agencies were involved with each 

transaction. 

19 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Step 3: Identify the Agencies Involved in Each Transaction 

The agencies involved with each transaction were identified through interviews and observations 

(e.g., observations of court sessions). The interview questions were included in the Typology Interview Guide described in Step 1. Key agency staff members known to be involved in the processes under consideration were asked which additional agencies were involved in each transaction. Observations of some transactions, such as drug court sessions and group treatment sessions, allowed first-hand knowledge of the staff directly involved in these transactions. This 

knowledge was used to prompt responses from key informants during interviews and to verify 

the information gained from these interviews. 

Step 4: Determine the Resources Used by Each Agency for Each Transaction 

Data on the resources used for each transaction include the amount of time used in the transaction itself, the time used in preparing for that transaction, the time used in tasks that occur in consequence of the transaction, as well as the number of times each transaction occurs for each participant. For example, the public defender will spend time preparing for a court session, spend 

time at the session itself, and then will spend time after a session writing up case notes and performing other activities as a consequence of the session. This information was gathered through 

observation and key stakeholder interviews. 

In addition, court appearances generally occur several times for a single client. Other resources 

used for transactions, besides agency staff time, include materials used during a transaction, such 

as paper or, in the case of urinalyses, urine cups. 

There are two main types of resource utilization data that together measure the resources being 

used for each type of transaction. There is the frequency of each transaction (e.g., how many 

drug court hearings occur for each drug court participant) and the duration of a transaction (e.g., 

the length of time used to complete a single drug court hearing per individual participant). 

These utilization data were collected in several ways: intensive tracking (following individuals 

from court sessions to orientations, etc., as described above), chart reviews of treatment files, and 

administrative data. Individual-level utilization data (data on the number of transactions for each 

participant) were collected from the administrative databases described earlier in this report. Further description of the collection of this type of data can be found in the 2003 report (Carey & 

Finigan, 2003). 

Step 5: Identify Costs Associated With Activities Performed by Agencies 

The sources for the identification of costs include budgets, interviews, and calculations performed by agency staff, as well as information from previous studies. In the majority of cases, 

the cost of these activities was gathered in three forms: (1) the hourly direct cost (generally labor 

cost, such as staff salaries, including benefits) associated with the agency staff involved in each 

transaction; (2) support cost (usually as a percentage of direct cost) in the form of the agency or 

department overhead; and (3) jurisdictional overhead cost (also as a percentage of direct cost). 

The direct cost was combined with the support and overhead costs to generate total per hour, per 

activity, and per transaction costs. The information used to generate the cost data was verified by 

key operating and financial management personnel involved with the drug court and non-drug 

court processes. 

In some cases, this sort of calculation had already been performed by the agency involved and 

they were able to give us the fully loaded cost of a transaction. In these cases, we examined their 

calculations and, if they had included all applicable costs, we accepted such cost factors in lieu of 

20 April 2007 
Research Design and Methodology 

our own calculations. This was true for prison days and for some group and individual treatment 

sessions. 

There was one transaction for which we used information gathered from a previous study—the 

cost of victimizations. The victimization costs were calculated from National Institute of Justice’s Victim Costs and Consequences: A New Look (1996). 12 The costs were updated to fiscal 

year 2006 dollars. 

Step 6: Calculate Cost Results 

The costs calculated for this study include the following four cost results: 

1. Cost per transaction 

2. Investment and outcome costs for the drug court and “business as usual” court process 

3. The difference in cost between the drug court and comparison group 

4. Total cost savings (“opportunity resources”) 

These calculations are described in more detail in the cost results below. 

12 The costs for victimizations were based on the National Institute of Justice’s Victim Costs and Consequences: A 

New Look (1996). This study documents estimates of costs and consequences of personal crimes and documents 

losses per criminal victimization, including attempts, in a number of categories, including fatal crimes, child abuse, 

rape and sexual assault, other assaults, robbery, drunk driving, arson, larceny, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. The 

reported costs include lost productivity, medical care, mental health care, police and fire services, victim services, 

property loss and damage, and quality of life. In our study, arrest charges were categorized as violent or property 

crimes, and costs from the victimization study were averaged for rape and sexual assault, other assaults, and robbery 

and attempted robbery to create an estimated cost for violent crimes, arson, larceny and attempted larceny, burglary 

and attempted burglary, and motor vehicle theft for an estimated property crime cost. All costs were updated to fiscal year 2006 dollars using the consumer price index (CPI) for Portland, Oregon. 

21 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

22 April 2007 
Results 

RESULTS

This section contains the results as they relate to the policy questions this study was designed to 

answer. 

Description of the Drug Court-Eligible Population 

There were a total of 11,102 individuals in the final dataset. Individuals were assigned to the final drug court group if they had at least one treatment session at the Program’s treatment agency. 

Individuals with no drug court treatment sessions were assigned to the non-drug court (comparison) group. 

Table 2 provides a description of the population eligible for Multnomah County Drug Court’s 

STOP Program from 1991 through 2001. There were 6,502 cases in the drug court group and 

4,600 cases in the non-drug court group. 

Table 2. Demographics and Criminal History of the Eligible Population 1991-2001 

Demographics 

Drug Court participants 

(N=6,502) 

Non-Drug Court 

participants 

(N=4,600) 

Age 32.8 years 32.7 years 

Gender 74% male 73% male 

Drug of Choice Amphetamines 32% 

Marijuana = 19% 

Cocaine = 17% 

Heroin = 14% 

Alcohol = 14% 

Not available 

Ethnicity/Race * 

70% White 

(non-Hispanic) 

64% White 

(non-Hispanic) 

19% African American 22% African American 

9% Hispanic 11% Hispanic 

# of Prior Arrests * 

(In 24-month period prior to the 

drug court-eligible arrest) 

1.4 2.2 

* statistically significant (p< .05) 

Over half (about 58%) of those eligible for Drug Court entered the Drug Court program rather 

than Criminal Court. About 43% of the total drug court group graduated from the Program. The 

General Accounting Office (GAO) review of drug court studies (GAO, 2005) found participants 

were on average between 30 and 35 years of age. The average age in this study was about 33. 

The GAO found about 70% men. In this study, there were just over 74% men. The GAO found 

great differences in reported racial distributions, with some predominantly White, some pre23 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

dominantly African American, and some evenly distributed among White, African American and 

other. In this study, both groups were mostly White (non-Hispanic), and nearly a fifth were African American. The Multnomah County Drug Court appears fairly typical of drug courts in general in demographics. The most common drug of choice for participants was amphetamines 

(32%) followed by marijuana (19%). Unfortunately, these data were not available for the comparison group. 

Selection Bias 

One potential source of selection bias that could not be controlled for was the possibility of differences in motivation between the two groups. As discussed earlier in the review of the literature, this is the bane of most quasi-experimental designs used in outcome studies of drug courts, 

particularly those collecting retrospective data. In the case of retrospective data collection, it is 

not possible to determine whether those who actually participated in a drug court program were 

more motivated to change their drug habits than those who received traditional court processing. 

It is also not possible to determine the myriad reasons offenders may have for choosing either 

drug court or traditional court processing. However, interviews with key informants, such as the 

public defender, as well as information gathered from interviews with participants in other drug 

court research (Carey & Finigan, 2003; Carey, Weller, & Heiser, 2003; Carey et al., 2005) suggest that the reasons offenders choose for or against participating in drug court are not generally 

related to motivational issues. Many offenders choose drug court because the alternative is extended incarceration and/or court fees. Other offenders refuse drug court because they live too 

far away, or they have children and would be unable to afford childcare, or their defense attorney 

advises them that the case against them is weak and could be dismissed. Harrell (2003) has underscored the coercive elements in drug courts but also suggests that they are not unlike the coercive elements that operate from family and friends to entice individuals to enter treatment in nondrug court settings. In the end, motivation to change may not be as important a factor in choosing 

a drug court option as other legal and personal factors. If that is true, it is less of a concern as a 

selection bias. 

Nevertheless, it is not possible to rule out motivation issues without true random assignment at 

the time eligibility is determined. However, Gottfredson et al.’s recent (2003) randomized design 

study provides outcome results similar to those in this study. Although there are substantial differences between their prospective randomized trial and our retrospective archival data analysis 

using a quasi-experimental design, that fact that two studies suggest the same positive trend for 

drug courts is heartening. Put another way, if the randomized trial results had shown a different 

trend, we might have increased concerns about the data from a quasi-experimental approach, 

suggesting that positive results are simply a function of motivational selection bias. Finally, in 

terms of the cost issues, the end result of importance to policymakers in this type of cost analysis 

is to describe the actual cost of those who participate in drug court and the actual cost of those 

who go through traditional court processing when statistically significant outcomes can be found. 

The cost of the offenders in this study to Multnomah County is the actual cost to the system for 

drug court and traditional court processing. 

A second source of selection bias concerns the lack of availability of drug of choice for the comparison group. It is possible there were differences between the two groups on this important factor for which we were unable to control. 

24 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

ANSWERS TO POLICY QUESTIONS

The following results are organized around the policy questions discussed in Section 1. Each policy question is listed, and then the results are presented along with a discussion of those results. 

POLICY QUESTION # 1: WHAT IS THE OVERALL IMPACT OF THE MULTNOMAH COUNTY 

DRUG COURT ON CRIMINAL RECIDIVISM? 

Specifically, for the cases eligible for Drug Court from 1991 to 2001, did participation in 

the STOP Program reduce criminal recidivism compared to the alternative of traditional 

processing and adjudication (“business as usual”)? 

Overall Impact on Recidivism 

In order to test the hypothesis of difference in recidivism between the drug court and comparison 

groups, we had to make several decisions in our analysis strategy. The first was to decide 

whether statistical strategies based on sampling designs were even appropriate. Because we had 

captured the entire target population in Multnomah County for over a 10-year time period, we 

had not actually sampled. This raised the question of whether tests of sampling error were even 

appropriate. The mean number of re-arrests for each group was their actual mean number of rearrests.13 However, what this study could not control for was selection bias. Significant differences were found for race (treatment group had more Hispanics) and prior arrests (comparison 

group had higher prior arrests) that led us to be concerned about selection bias. Also, age and 

gender were significantly correlated with our outcome measure. In order to consider the effects 

of potentially confounding factors and their interactions, a multivariate General Linear Model 

(GLM) was developed to determine how well arrest rate could be predicted. In addition to Drug 

Court versus Criminal Court, the principal factors are prior criminal history, age, gender, and 

race. Using arrests during the 2 years previous to the drug court-eligible arrest as a control for 

prior history, Table 3 shows the result of a model incorporating age, gender, race, and drug 

court/non-drug court group. Recidivism after 5 years in the program is given because it is an outcome time period available for all offenders included in the study population from 1991 to 2001 

(that is, those who entered the program most recently, in 2001, have a maximum of 5 years of 

outcome data available). 

13 Data were gathered for up to 14 years after the petition hearing date. However, data for the longer periods of time 

were available only for those in the earliest years. All analyses of recidivism controlled for time at risk (not incarcerated). 

25 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Table 3. GLM Model of Overall Impact of the Drug Court on 5-year Recidivism for 

Eligible Population 1991-2001 

Source 

Type III sum of 

squares df Mean square F Sig. 

Corrected Model 143006.068 13 11000.467 275.477 .000 

Intercept 14290.494 1 14290.494 357.867 .000 

AGE 2624.383 1 2624.383 65.721 .000 

PRIOR ARRESTS 101876.444 1 101876.444 2551.22 

3 

.000 

GENDER 62.763 1 62.763 1.572 .210 

RACE 5167.615 2 2583.808 64.705 .000 

GROUP (Drug Court vs. 

Comparison) 

303.560 1 303.560 7.602 .006 

GENDER * RACE 520.463 2 260.231 6.517 .001 

GENDER * GROUP 39.449 1 39.449 .988 .320 

RACE * GROUP 115.280 2 57.640 1.443 .236 

GENDER * RACE * 

GROUP 

19.608 2 9.804 .246 .782 

Error 376043.319 9417 39.932 

Total 755585.000 9431 

Corrected Total 519049.388 9430 

Dependent Variable: Number of Arrests in the 5 years after pivotal arrest 

R Squared = .276 (Adjusted R Squared = .275) 

Table 3 shows that age, race, prior arrests, and Drug Court (group) are statistically significant 

factors in predicting the arrests in the 5 years following an arrest leading to Drug Court. Not surprisingly, the number of prior arrests is, by far, the strongest single predictor. Gender is not a 

significant predictor. The two-way interaction of gender and race is a statistically significant but 

weak factor. Interactions between gender with Drug Court and race with Drug Court are not significant predictors. The three-way interaction of gender, race, and Drug Court is not statistically 

significant. Participation in Drug Court is a significant predictor. The corrected model is a dependable and strong predictor of the outcomes of drug court. 

Issues With the Race Data 

Examining the interaction between gender and race in the data produces some interesting discoveries that called into question the quality of the data on race. The first discovery was that the interaction effect of gender and race was in part a function of the unusually low re-arrests among 

Hispanic males. This raised the concern that many in this group had INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) holds and that their low recidivism rate resulted from their deportation and/or 

their movement to other parts of the country. 

26 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

The second discovery concerned the source of the race data. Our main source of information on 

race for both drug court and comparison was Decision Support System-Justice (DSS-J) data. 

However, we also had a source of information on each individual’s race for a sub-sample of the 

population that came from their treatment intake forms and was largely a self-identified choice of 

racial category. In contrast, the DSS-J data largely come from police reports where collecting the 

race data is not for census purposes but to identify a person in a “running down a street” situation. Since we had both sources of data for the individuals in the drug court (treatment) group, Mean # of Re-arrests 

we could compare the level of agreement between the datasets. Unfortunately, we discovered 

that, particularly for those not White or African American, there was little consistent agreement. 

Therefore, where race is used in our analyses, it was recoded into three categories: White (nonHispanic); African American, and “Other.” There were 68% of the offenders in the study who 

were White (non-Hispanic), 20% who were African American, and 12% who were classified as 

“Other” (mostly Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans). When this was done, the significant 

effects of race in all models were that male African Americans had a higher arrest rate than female African Americans and both had a higher arrest rate than White (non-Hispanics) and “Others.” The exact reason for this is beyond the scope of this study.14 

Figure 1. Mean 5-Year Recidivism Over 10 Years of Drug Court Operation 

7 

5.9 

6 

5 

4.2 

4 

3 

2 

1 

0 

Drug Court Comparison 

Figure 1 includes all offenders who were eligible for the Drug Court during the total 10-year period, over 5 years from the Drug Court petition hearing. This figure shows that the STOP Program reduced the incidence of re-arrest by nearly 30%. The model also holds for arrests up to 7 

years after the pivotal arrest. (After that, the number of individuals with arrest data for the full 

time period declines dramatically.) This model provides clear support that drug court does reduce 

criminal recidivism. 

Drug Crimes 

Since the rationale for drug courts is to reduce substance abuse, an effective court should reduce 

the incidents of drug-related re-arrests. Table 4 suggests that this is the case. 

14 Drug Court significantly lowered the subsequent re-arrests of both male and female African-Americans but their 

re-arrests remained higher than other race/ethnicity groups. 

27 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Table 4. Drug Related Re-Arrests by Year for Drug Court and 

Comparison Group 1991-2001 

Years from 

petition 

hearing 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 

Comparison 

Mean # of 

drug rearrests 

.68 1.05 1.36 1.63 1.83 2.09 2.28 2.39 2.57 2.81 3.07 3.52 4.09 4.31 

Drug Court 

Mean # of 

drug rearrests 

.50 .79 1.05 1.27 1.46 1.68 1.81 1.98 2.13 2.26 2.47 2.73 3.07 3.26 

% reduction in drug 

arrests* 

26% 25% 23% 22% 20% 20% 21% 17% 17% 19% 20% 22% 25% 24% 

N 10987 10986 10830 10134 9346 8616 7294 6074 4861 3883 2785 2044 1218 317 

*all significant p< .05 using the GLM model except at year 14 

The Drug Court appears to reduce the incidence of drug crimes substantially for up to 14 years 

after the petition hearing. The effect is statistically significant after controlling for age, gender, 

race and 2 years of prior criminal history for all but year 14 where the number of cases available 

for the analysis drops to only 317. It also should be noted that the later years reflect the tracking 

of the earliest drug court cohorts who received their drug court experience during the rocky beginnings of the court. To the degree that later cohorts do better, a long-term tracking of the later 

cohorts might show even better results. 

The most important part of these data is the relative consistency over the years. There has been 

some concern that the drug court effect on recidivism is short term and that over time the effect 

disappears. This does not seem to be the case with drug-related re-arrests. 

Overall Impact on Odds of Being Re-Arrested 

While we have chosen to use a General Linear Model because of our desire to capture the actual 

number of re-arrests (which are needed for our cost model), we are cognizant of the fact that 

much of the criminal justice literature prefers to assess a simpler measure: whether the person 

was ever re-arrested at all. This is a binary measure; each client was either re-arrested at least 

once or not at all. The reasons for this preference are varied but a central reason is that a few offenders have a large number of re-arrests, and this fact tends to distort the averages and can produce misleading models. To ensure that our GLM model is not distorted, we also ran a logistic 

regression on the same data using the binary measure of re-arrest or not (in the 5 years following 

the petition hearing) as the dependent variable. The results are shown in Table 5. 

28 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

Table 5. Logistical Regression Using Binary Measure of Re-arrest in 5 Years for Drug 

Court-Eligible Population from 1991-2001 

B S.E. Wald df Sig. Exp(B) 

AGE -.015 .003 34.896 1 .000 .985 

PRIOR ARRESTS (2 yrs) .487 .020 597.274 1 .000 1.628 

GENDER -.016 .051 .102 1 .750 .984 

RACE 39.615 2 .000 

RACE – White -.034 .070 .233 1 .629 .967 

RACE – African 

American .368 .088 17.618 1 .000 1.444 

GROUP (Drug Court vs. 

Comparison) -.154 .046 11.138 1 .001 .857 

Constant .991 .109 82.916 1 .000 2.693 

The model is very similar to the GLM. Prior arrests are a statistically significant and powerful 

predictor of subsequent arrest. Race is significant but only for African Americans. Age is significant but with only a small influence. Finally, Drug Court membership is a significant and substantive predictor of less recidivism (odds ratio of .857). Coded in the reverse, the odds ratio is 

1.17, meaning there is a 17% greater chance of recidivism by not going to Drug Court. This 

model continues to be a successful predictor of re-arrest from 1 to 5 years after the petition hearing. After 5 years, the number of time periods that can be included in the analysis diminished 

substantially, and the data are dominated by the earliest periods. 

POLICY QUESTION # 2: DOES THE DRUG COURT SHOW CONSISTENT LEVELS OF SUCCESS IN 

REDUCING RE-ARRESTS EACH YEAR OF THE 10-YEAR PERIOD? 

Most previous drug court research has had to struggle with two significant sampling limitations. 

They have generally sampled a relatively short period of time in which to assess the court (usually one or 2 years of its operational history) and have had to sample among the drug court and 

comparison samples rather than assess the entire population. This has opened up two potential 

sources of error in assessing large mature courts. The first is that the researcher may pick a time 

in the court’s history that is not representative of its actual mature operation. The period may be 

too early in its implementation or during a period of change or crisis or, conversely, when it is 

receiving an unusual number of resources or during the term of an unusually effective judge. The 

results then may demonstrate failure when other periods would show success or, conversely, 

would appear to show a successful court when most other periods chosen would not demonstrate 

success. The second issue is that choosing a sample in a large court context always introduces a 

certain amount of sample error. If the sample is large enough to have adequate power and the 

effect size is reasonable, this is not a problem. Yet, if sample size is small and the effects during 

the period are not huge, then researchers may conclude that there are no statistically significant 

effects when real effects do occur. 

29 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Because we have captured the entire target population in Multnomah County during a 10-year 

period, we have a unique opportunity to examine the influence of these two issues. We can see 

whether limiting the analysis to some periods would have produced misleading results and 

whether sampling error connected to small sample sizes might lead to erroneous conclusions. 

Table 6. Mean Number of Re-Arrests in the 5-Year Period From 

Petition Hearing Year 

Mean arrests 

Year of petition hearing 

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 

Comparison 5.3 5.8 4.9 5.0 5.2 5.5 6.3 7.9 6.8 5.4 

Drug Court Participants 5.3 4.7 3.4 4.1 4.2 5.2 4.5 4.4 5.4 3.4 

% Improvement 0% 18% 31% 18% 19% 5% 28% 45% 21% 37% 

Significance NS NS sig sig sig NS NS sig sig sig 

N 317 903 828 742 1100 981 1212 1220 1335 722 

Note: We used the petition hearing date to define the cohort years because in Multnomah County it was a real date 

experienced by both the drug court and comparison groups that defined which group they would enter. 

Sig = Statistically Significant; NS = Not Significant 

Table 6 demonstrates that this drug court, while overall demonstrating a positive effect over the 

10-year period, has clearly better years and worse years. Specifically it had two “rough periods.” 

The first is the first 2 years of the program in which there were either no positive results (1991) 

or small gains (1992). The second period is 1996, which demonstrates no success. There are two 

points that this emphasizes. The first is that the early implementation period of a drug court is not 

the best period to choose to examine the court’s effectiveness. It should be remembered, though, 

that this court was the second in the nation, and in 1991-1992 no one knew how to operate a successful drug court (e.g., there were no “10 key components”). The other point that these data illustrate is that care should be taken about assessing the performance of a drug court based only 

on a single cohort year. 

Table 6 also highlights some issues connected with sampling design. Using our GLM model, we 

find that some periods would not reach acceptable levels of significance using a sample the size 

of the existing target population. In other cases real differences would probably be masked if 

smaller samples had been used. This suggests that the field should use caution in accepting a 

finding of no effect when considerations of power and sample size are not sufficiently addressed. 

POLICY QUESTION #3: DO INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL CHANGES EFFECTING POLICIES AND 

PROCEDURES OF THE COURT AFFECT ITS SUCCESS OR FAILURE? 

It is vital that the drug court field of practice understand what promotes or inhibits success. This 

current study spans a time period long enough to be able to examine some of the internal and external changes in court operations and their influence on recidivism. 

30 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

External Changes 

We identified a number of external changes from 1991 to 2001 that might have had an influence 

on court operations and outcomes. These external changes were categorized as follows: criminal 

justice system changes, changes in the Multnomah County substance abuse treatment system, 

and changes in the Oregon managed health care system. Table 7 lists these changes. We coded 

each change into a series of binary variables: an individual’s drug court participation either took 

place during a period impacted by these changes or it did not. We were then able to enter these 

into our overall model using a logistic regression approach to determine if any of these changes 

had an effect on an individual participant’s odds of being re-arrested. 

Table 7. External Factors Affecting the Multnomah County Drug Court’s 

STOP Program 

Multnomah County Substance Abuse TX (SATX) 

Year 

Criminal justice 

community 

milestones 

Oregon Managed Care 

(OHP and Medicaid) 

milestones 

system milestones and reactions to managed care 

events 

1991 

1992 • Ordinance for Drug Free 

Zones is passed 

• Residential beds set aside for 

drug court clients 

1993 

• Drug Free Zone ordinance modified to include arrest for possession 

• Portland (Oregon) Target Cities Project start date 

• State begins more careful 

monitoring of patient care 

(-1996) 

• Drug Free Zones modified, one zone eliminated, zone size limits • The Health Care Financ1994 

eliminated, and attempt 

crimes added 

• President Clinton signs 

the Violent Crime Coning Administration provided Medicaid waiver 

Oregon Health Plan 

(OHP) begins 

• In Jail Intervention Program 

(IJIP) begins 

trol and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 

31 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Year 

Criminal justice 

community 

milestones 

Oregon Managed Care 

(OHP and Medicaid) 

milestones 

Multnomah County Substance Abuse TX (SATX) 

system milestones and reactions to managed care 

events 

1995 

• Managed care instituted, 

OHP now covers individuals 100% below poverty. Outpatient SATX 

phased into basic health 

benefits for OHP 

• (approx. 13 insurance 

companies providing 

coverage to OHP recipients) 

• Portland Target Cities Project 

Central Intake begins (-1998)* 

• Oregon adopts benchmark diagnosis and level of care recommendations. 

• Capitated chemical dependency benefit added 

1996 

• Measure 11 passes (structured sanctions) 

• Measure 50 passes (limiting property tax increases 

to 3%, reducing county 

funds) 

• Five Oregon health plans 

separated SATX from 

physical health care 

• Methadone program restructured 

1997 

• Senate Bill 1145 

• Portland Police Bureau 

trains Crisis Intervention 

Team (CIT) officers 

• Criminal Justice Diversion 

Program begins (-2001) 

• Relationship of MH and SA 

becoming more important 

1998 

• 85% Medicaid clients are 

enrolled in fully capitated 

health plans 

• County redistribution of MH 

funding 

• Portland Target Cities Project 

ends* 

1999 

• Oregon Office of Alcohol & 

Drug Abuse Programs initiates 

“Track B” 

2000 

• Oregon increases residential 

bed reimbursement rate for 

providers 

With one exception (described below), these changes appeared to have no statistically significant 

impact on subsequent recidivism for this population (either drug court or comparison group). 

However, the effect of group membership (drug court or comparison group) remained statistically significant in the model. We can therefore conclude that these external changes were likely 

not the source of the found positive effects of drug court. 

32 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

There was one intriguing exception to the above conclusion. The introduction of the Central Intake System under the federally funded Target Cities Project in 1993 and its closure in 1998 is 

significantly and substantially related to subsequent recidivism. Target Cities Central Intake was 5-Year Average Re-arrests

an attempt to provide a centralized intake experience that would be better organized, more prone 

to matching offender with appropriate treatment, and hopefully with increased amounts of offender treatment. The lead author of this report (Finigan) was part of the federal evaluation team 

on this cross-site effort. Overall, data based on self-reported interviews using the ASI had mixed 

results, but data using administrative records in Portland showed positive effects (Finigan & 

Wolf-Branigin, 2006). Figure 2 illustrates the results for 5-year recidivism, although the trend is 

the same for all recidivism time periods. 

Figure 2. Recidivism in Relation to Target Cities Project 

(Mean Re-Arrests over 5 Years) 

7 6.4 

6 5.3 

5 

4.2 4.2 

4 

3 

2 

1 

0

In Period of Central Intake Not in Period

i

Drug Court 

Compar son 

Target Cities Central Intake Period (1993-1998) 

This figure illustrates two things. This first is that the drug court effect remained positive within 

each period. The second is that the effect of Central Intake was entirely with the comparison 

group. This makes sense in that Central Intake’s purpose was to get more and better treatment to 

those offenders that were “slipping through the cracks in the system” and would therefore have 

impacted the comparison group more and the drug court group less. This has an interesting implication. It would suggest that during the period of Target Cities Central Intake (1993-1998), the 

drug court effect is somewhat understated, since the comparison group is also receiving benefits 

from Central Intake. A true measure of the impact of the drug court as compared to traditional 

“business as usual” may have been in the periods in which Central Intake did not operate. 

There is a second interesting implication. A review of the recidivism data showed that one source 

of the apparent positive drug court effect was that in the later periods the comparison group recidivism worsened. This led one colleague to speculate that this might be due to greater “creaming” on the part of the Drug Court (accepting more of the most promising offenders into the 

STOP Program and leaving the comparison group with the more hard core offenders). Yet, these 

data suggest an alternative explanation for the worsening comparison group recidivism. They 

33 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

suggest that Central Intake may have had a positive effect on the comparison group during its 

existence and that its closing returned these offenders to a situation in which their non-drug court 

substance abuse treatment was more limited and disorganized and therefore their recidivism 

more typical of their behavior under the conditions of “business as usual.” 

Internal Changes 

Ever since Goldkamp’s landmark study (Goldkamp et al., 2001), there has been great interest in 

looking “inside the black box” of drug court. Looking at a single drug court over a 10-year period has the advantage of examining how some internal changes and other inter drug court practices affect outcomes. Following Goldkamp, we identified some instrumental drug court treatment variables that could likely affect outcomes: the total number of days in the program, the 

total number of days in substance abuse treatment sessions, the total number of hearings attended, the presence or absence of sanctions, and a series of judge characteristics discussed in the 

next section. In addition, we also examined a series of policy and procedural changes that occurred over the 10 years of our analysis. These are listed in Table 8. 

Table 8. The History of Substance Abuse Treatment Including the Multnomah 

County Drug Court’s STOP Program 

Year Multnomah County Drug Court milestones 

1991 

• STOP Program began, Byrne Grant and local city funds utilized to start drug court 

• Eligibility criteria for participants: PCSI or PCS II charge, with “personal use” quantities, new to the program, no evidence of dealing, criminal history is irrelevant, no 

holds from other jurisdictions (available for TX), no gang association, no other felony 

or class A misdemeanors, or DUII pending or associated with this charge 

1992 

• First treatment provider contract terminates. InAct, Inc., begins service as new treatment provider 

• Eligibility changes: Offenders on parole or probation excluded 

1993 • Drug Court has 746 graduated/active cases since inception (78% of participants) 

1994 

• Multnomah County awarded crime bill $ for drug court 

• Drug Court leadership develops clinical procedures for treating clients arrested 

for/suspected of dealing drugs 

1995 

• InAct begins efforts to obtain contracts with managed care insurance companies under 

OHP 

• Eligibility criteria are modified: probationers and parolees now eligible 

• USDOJ awards $512,055 Enhancement grant 

34 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

Year Multnomah County Drug Court milestones 

1996 

• DA expands Drug Court eligibility criteria. Previous failures are eligible, new charges 

can become convictions, with no custody units, and participant remains in program, 

quantity restrictions expanded 

• Policies are modified, more restrictive time limits for completion of Phase I, for payment of fees, and for treatment 

• Referee Lawrence replaces Judge Robinson, court moves to the Justice Center 

• InAct begins enhancements Counseling and health services departments created, MIS, 

integrated MH and SA TX offered 

• Probationer/parolees excluded 

1997 

• DA Expedited Plea (X-Plea) program for drug cases begins 

• Docket expands to 5 days/week 

1998 • Judge Haas returns, drug court returns to the Courthouse 

1999 

2000 

• Formally consider STOP Program post plea. 

• New representative from the Public Defender’s Office begins 

• New special courts are emerging: domestic violence courts, property crimes with 

PCS courts, and mental health courts 

2001 

• Eligibility expands: PCS I, II, attempt PCS I, II, Tampering with drug records 

charges, no other associated or pending charges permitted, no current participants, 

no DUI, no other holds 

The internal changes were categorized in the same way as the external changes discussed above. 

These were then entered into the logistic regression model to see if these changes had an impact 

on the recidivism (arrest/no arrest) of the drug court group when age, race, gender, and prior arrest history are also in the model. The results showed no significant effects for any of the internal 

change variables. In other words none of these changes appears to be associated with any change 

in re-arrests in the drug court group. This, of course does not mean that we are sure they had no 

impact in indirect ways, merely that they show no gross direct impact. 

Internal Instrumental Drug Court Variables 

Sanctions. Goldkamp found a significant negative effect for the use of jail as a sanction (Goldkamp et al., 2001, p.54). Those with sanctions had a higher re-arrest rate. The current study also 

found the same result over the 10-year period, although with a smaller substantive difference. That 

is, the result was statistically significant but with a small effect size. This small effect size may be 

related to our use of administrative data that contained only information on whether the participant 

was sanctioned, but not how many days, while Goldkamp et al., whose smaller sample size allowed for access to paper records, probably had a more detailed data set on the issue of sanctions. 

Yet, it is important for policymakers to realize that both studies demonstrated a significant effect 

of sanctions but in a negative direction. Those with more sanctions had higher rates of re-arrests. 

At least in Portland, this suggests that (even if the participants receiving sanctions have character35 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

istics predictive of re-arrest) the use of sanctions, particularly jail sanctions, which consume jail 

resources, does not lead to offsetting reductions in subsequent recidivism. 

Days in treatment. Days actually in substance abuse treatment is an important instrumental 

variable for any logic model of drug court. The logic of drug court is that its impact will make 

substance abuse treatment occur more often, longer and with greater effect when under the 

judge’s scrutiny. A finding that those with more days in treatment have no better outcomes than 

those with less would call into question the logic of drug court. For this study, as with Goldkamp 

et al. (2001) and Carey & Finigan (2003), greater days in treatment is associated with significantly lower subsequent recidivism. 

Judge characteristics. The judge is a critical component of drug court. Judge characteristics 

have a significant effect on outcomes. Goldkamp et al. suggests this as well. Because of the importance of this topic, the results of this analysis are described in its own section under Policy 

Question # 4. 

POLICY QUESTION # 4: DO CHANGES IN JUDICIAL LEADERSHIP AFFECT THE SUCCESS OF 

THE DRUG COURT? 

There were five judges who took a primary leadership role during the 10-year period. (A sixth 

judge overlapped into the period but had too few clients in the period to be counted). Of these 

five judges, two had multiple eras (i.e., had rotated through the drug court more than once).15 

There were therefore a total of seven distinct judge eras during the 10-year period. We were interested in four sub-questions: 

POLICY QUESTION # 4A: DO JUDGES DIFFER IN THEIR SUCCESS IN REDUCING RE-ARRESTS? 

Table 9. Mean Number of Re-Arrests for a 3-Year Period After the Drug Court 

Petition Hearing for Comparison and Drug Court Participants for Each Judge Era 

Judge era 1A 2 3A 3B 1B 4 5 

Comparison Mean 3.5401 3.578 3.7311 4.568 5.8592 4.4908 4.7521 

Drug Court Mean 3.2572 2.609 3.5737 3.2734 3.4138 3.144 3.1363 

Difference 0.2829 0.969 0.1574 1.2946 2.4454 1.3468 1.6158 

% Improvement 8% 27% 4% 28% 42% 30% 34% 

Significance* NS Sig. NS Sig. Sig. Sig. Sig. 

Comparison N 724 737 424 786 691 909 223 

Drug Court N 1007 1041 769 867 829 1104 543 

Note: In each case a general linear model approach is taken controlling for age, prior criminal history and gender 

*Sig = Statistically Significant; NS = Not Significant 

Table 9 exhibits that, at 3 years after the pivotal arrest, all judges show reductions in re-arrests. 

The reductions range from a mere 4% to a substantial 42%, demonstrating clear differences. Of 

15 One judge had two non-contiguous eras, another had one continuous era followed by an era in which the judge 

was on the bench a little more than half the time. 

36 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

the seven judge eras, two reach statistical significance beyond the .01 level and four beyond the 

.05 level. However, it should be remembered that these numbers represent the entire population 

of eligible offenders during these eras, not a sample, and therefore the differences are true differences and not possible artifacts due to sampling error. 

Table 10. Mean Number of Re-Arrests for a 5-Year Period After the Drug Court 

Petition Hearing for Drug Court and Comparison Groups for Each Judge Era 

Judge era 1A 2 3A 3B 1B 4 

Comparison Mean 5.215 5.162 5.5118 6.3926 8.2126 5.4157 

Drug Court Mean 4.701 3.8665 5.0338 4.4937 4.918 4.2309 

Difference 0.514 1.2955 0.478 1.8989 3.2946 1.1848 

% Improvement 10% 25% 9% 30% 40% 22% 

Significance* NS Sig. NS Sig. Sig. Sig. 

Comparison N 724 737 424 786 691 909 

Drug Court N 1007 1041 769 867 829 1104 

Note: By extending the analysis to 5 years, the fifth judge era becomes too recent for a full set of data. 

*Sig = Statistically Significant; NS = Not Significant 

Table 10 suggests that this variation continues at 5 years from the pivotal arrest (it is similar at 7 

years as well). The trend remains as far out as it is possible to look. 

POLICY QUESTION # 4B: DO ERAS WHERE MULTIPLE JUDGES ARE CONDUCTING DRUG 

COURT DO WORSE THAN ERAS IN WHICH ONLY A SINGLE JUDGE IS OPERATING? 

From some prior research in California (Carey et al., 2005), we suspected that multiple judges in 

a short time period are associated with a lack of success in reducing re-arrest. Table 11 suggests 

this was not the case in the Multnomah County Drug Court. 

Table 11. Mean Number of Re-Arrests for a 3-Year Period After the Drug Court 

Petition Hearing for Single Judge Eras Versus Multiple Judge Eras 

Judge era Single Multiple 

Comparison Mean 3.9867 4.861 

Drug Court Mean 3.0357 3.4387 

Difference 0.951 1.4223 

% Improvement 24% 29% 

Significance 0.0001 0.010 

Comparison N 724 737 

Drug Court N 1007 1041 

Total 1731 1778 

37 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Both single judge eras and multiple judge eras seem to be successful and at similar rates. However, the STOP Program may not be a good test of this. In the multiple judge eras, there always 

was a single pre-dominant judge who had “help” from a variety of other judges and many of the 

judges who “helped” were former Drug Court judges and had learned from previous experience. 

This is a very different situation from a setting where different judges are simply rotated through 

drug court on a regular (e.g., yearly) basis. Also, it should be noted that this is one site and only a 

limited number of judges. However, it is intriguing and should be pursued in further research. 

POLICY QUESTION # 4C: DID THE DRUG COURT IMPROVE ITS SUCCESS RATE OVER TIME? 

DID LATER JUDGES DO BETTER THAN THE EARLIER JUDGES? 

It is interesting to examine whether the Drug Court improved over time. In spite of changing 

staff, did the Drug Court as a whole learn from experience and improve its practice as it matured? An analysis comparing re-arrests 5 years out from the petition hearing in the first three 

judge eras versus the last three judge eras is presented in Table 12. 

Table 12. Mean Number of Re-Arrests for a 5-Year Period After the Drug Court 

Petition Hearing for First Three Judge Eras Versus Last Three Judge Eras 

Judge era: first three judge eras vs. last three eras First Last 

Comparison Mean 5.2468 6.7125 

Drug Court Mean 4.514 4.4913 

Difference 0.7328 2.2212 

% Improvement 14% 33% 

Significance 0.006 0.003 

Comparison N 1896 2094 

Drug Court N 2829 2579 

Total 4725 4673 

Table 12 shows that the success rate doubled in the last three eras. The Multnomah County Drug 

Court was the second drug court in existence. In many ways it helped invent standard drug court 

procedures. These data suggest that over time the Drug Court learned from experience and improved its success rate. One way that it worked to improve its success rate was to create procedures for passing knowledge learned from experience from one judge to the next. The Program 

noticed a difference in the quality of the judges’ work when each Drug Court judge began a more 

formal process of teaching the drug court model to the incoming judge. 

POLICY QUESTION # 4D: DO JUDGES IMPROVE WITH EXPERIENCE? DID JUDGES WHO HAD 

MULTIPLE ERAS IMPROVE THEIR SUCCESS RATE IN THE SECOND ERA? 

Some courts have regular rotations of drug court judges so that different judges (often new to the 

drug court model) are assigned to preside over the drug court program on a yearly or bi-yearly 

(every 2 years) basis. There has been some evidence (e.g., Carey et al., 2005) that changing 

38 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

judges more often than every 2 years is detrimental to successful drug court outcomes. The main 

question is: How important is experience for the drug court judge in impacting outcomes? Table 

13 displays the results of an analysis comparing the first and second year for four judges who 

presided over drug court for more than one year. One judge presided for one year, then several 

years later, presided for a second year. The other judges presided during two consecutive years. 

Table 13. Mean Number of Re-Arrests for a 5-Year Period After the Petition Hearing 

for Judges with Multiple Eras 

Judge Era 

First 

period 

Second 

period 

Comparison Mean 5.16 6.75 

Drug Court Mean 4.27 4.40 

% Improvement 17% 35% 

Comparison N 2028 2281 

Drug Court N 2887 2997 

Total 4915 5278 

Of great interest is the finding that judges who had more than one rotation through drug court 

had better results their second time on the drug court bench. This implies that judges learn from 

their experience on the bench and that having the same judge continue to preside over a drug 

court over time will result in better outcomes. Given that one of these judges had several years 

between his two eras, this also implies that a “pool” of judges who have experience in drug court 

could be rotated through a drug court on a regular basis, allowing the program to benefit from the 

judges’ experience while also allowing the judges to preside over traditional court cases on alternate years. 

POLICY QUESTION #5: DID THE MULTNOMAH COUNTY DRUG COURT SAVE TAXPAYER 

RESOURCES COMPARED TO THE COSTS OF TRADITIONAL COURT PROCESSING? 

Cost Calculations 

The costs calculated for this study include the following four cost results: 

a. Cost per transaction 

b. Costs to the system for drug court participants and the business-as-usual comparison 

group members from the time of the drug court-eligible arrest through 5 years post drug 

court entry 

c. The difference in cost between the drug court and comparison group 

d. Total cost savings 

All costs were updated to fiscal year 2006 dollars. Although the majority of participants spent 

their time in Drug Court prior to 2006, the use of 2006 dollars allows us to calculate what it 

would cost today (in present value dollars) to operate the Drug Court in the manner it was operated in previous years. In addition, although the judges have changed and some of the other players (such as the district attorney and public defender assigned to the program) have changed over 

39 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

time, the single treatment provider agency has remained consistent since 1992 (with the same 

director) and the Drug Court has not changed its basic operations (e.g., frequency of court hearings, frequency of required treatment sessions, frequency of drug tests) for many years. 

a. Cost per transaction. The costs incurred by each agency in terms of direct costs (staff time 

and materials) and indirect costs (support costs and overhead calculated as percentages of the 

direct costs) involved in transactional cost areas were combined to create costs for each agency 

for every transaction. The costs for each agency were then added together to get total cost per 

transaction. For instance, in the case of the cost of drug court sessions, the per hour cost for 

courts, law enforcement agencies, the District Attorney’s Office, the Public Defender’s Office, 

treatment agencies, and probation agencies were combined to generate total per hour cost for 

drug court sessions. Using the average number of minutes used per participant for a single drug 

court hearing, this cost per minute was then translated into the cost for a single drug court hearing per participant. (Note: Drug court sessions should be differentiated from drug court hearings. 

A drug court session is the entire session, involving multiple drug court participants. A drug 

court hearing is the court appearance of a single drug court participant.) This cost per hearing 

was then multiplied by the number of hearings for each participant to get the overall cost of drug 

court hearings per participant. 

Non-drug court court hearings were calculated similarly, using the times gathered through intensive tracking of the smaller sample for those who did not participate in Drug Court. This time 

was extrapolated onto the administrative data gathered on the Drug Court population. 

Costs were calculated based on budgets and other financial information from fiscal year 2003­

2004. The exceptions to this are victimization costs (NIJ, 1996) the source of which was described above. All costs were adjusted, as necessary, to fiscal year 2006 dollars using the consumer price index (CPI) for the relevant geographical area for Portland, Oregon. A zero discount 

rate was used, as any change in cost figures due to the discount rate would be negligible. 

b. Costs to the system for the drug court and business-as-usual groups from the time of the 

drug court-eligible arrest through 5 years post drug court entry. Both Drug Court participants 

and the comparison individuals had a case that was drug court-eligible according to the eligibility 

guidelines for the STOP Program. This case was used as the index case for transactions that occurred both prior and subsequent to Drug Court or traditional court processing. As described 

above, any transactions that could be associated with this case were included in the calculations 

of the costs to the system. The costs for all transactions associated with this case (investment 

costs), and any transactions that occurred for 5 years after the petition hearing for entry into Drug 

Court (outcome costs) were summed to determine the total cost per participant. This provides the 

total cost to the system of choosing to process an offender through Drug Court versus processing 

an offender through business-as-usual. 

The choice to include the costs associated with the original arrest and charge that led to drug 

court eligibility would seem at first to be unusual. After all, the interest is to examine what effect 

drug court had on subsequent recidivism. However, our perspective is to provide the policymaker with the total costs over 5 years of the decision to pursue the original charged arrest 

through a drug court approach, as opposed to an alternative business-as-usual approach. This 

must, therefore, include the cost spent on the original charged arrest as it is pursued through each 

route. Drug courts may save taxpayer money (or spend more money) just on the way the original 

arrest is handled, as well as subsequent recidivism. All of these costs need to be captured. 

40 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

The 5-year time period was chosen because it was the longest time period commonly available 

on all the participants in this study. The participants included in this analysis entered the STOP 

Program between 1991 and 2001. Those who entered in the most recent cohort, in 2001, at most 

had 5 years of outcome data available through 2006. 

The total costs are also broken down separately as investment costs (costs associated with the 

drug court-eligible case) and outcome costs (costs for all transactions not related to the drug 

court-eligible case) from the time of drug court entry, or an equivalent date for the comparison 

group, through 5 years after entry. 

The cost per individual in both the drug court group and the comparison group were averaged to 

get the mean cost per individual for each group. This number can then be multiplied by the number of participants in the drug court population to get the total cost to the system for the STOP 

Program. 

c. The difference in cost between the drug court and comparison group. The average cost for 

each transaction per drug court participant can be subtracted from the average transaction cost 

per business-as-usual offender to determine the difference in cost between the two groups. If this 

number is positive, this translates into benefits, or savings (“opportunity resources”), associated 

with drug court participation for each transaction. 

d. Total cost savings (“Opportunity Resources”). Once the average costs per participant for 

the drug court-eligible case and the outcomes were calculated, any cost savings could be determined by taking the difference between the two groups. The term “savings” is used in this section to mean “opportunity resources” as described earlier in this document. It should be noted 

that in most cases, the savings described in this section do not imply actual dollars that can be 

returned to the taxpayer, but that the resources (such as staff time or jail bed days) that were intended for one purpose are now available to be used for another purpose. 

To determine the total cost savings, the drug court-eligible case costs and outcome costs for each 

group were added to obtain the total cost to the system per offender for those who participated in 

the STOP Program and those who did not. The total cost per drug court participant was subtracted from the total costs per offender in the comparison group. A positive number represents 

cost savings. This per-participant number is then multiplied by the number of offenders who entered the STOP Program to determine the total cost-benefits to the system. This difference in total costs is truly the bottom line for the cost to the system of drug court participants versus the 

cost of non-drug court participants. 

INVESTMENT COSTS 

Drug Court: What are the Total Criminal Justice System Costs Invested in Drug Court, not Just for 

Graduates, but for all Participants? 

Table 14 displays the criminal justice system costs invested per drug court participant by transaction. The results reported in this table are investment costs associated with all those who entered 

the STOP Program from the time of the initial drug possession arrest through to the resolution of 

that case. This includes jail, probation, and treatment time for participants who withdrew or were 

terminated from Drug Court and then underwent a stipulated facts trial. This also includes individuals who had as little treatment as a single group session. 

41 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Table 14. Criminal Justice System Costs Invested in Drug Court per Participant 

Drug Court participant 

transactions (Mean number) 

Mean number 

of transactions 

Unit cost per 

transaction 

Mean investment 

cost per participant 

(n = 6,502) 

Arrest 1 arrest $202.96/arrest $203 

Booking 1 booking $299.15/booking $299 

Drug Court (DC) hearings 15 hearings $51.22/hearing $768 

DC Treatment 253 days $6.84/day $1,731 

Non-DC treatment post termination 14 days $19.34/day $271 

Jail time post termination and sanctions 9 days $112.99/day $1,017 

Probation post termination 213 days $4.13/day $880 

Total cost per DC participant $5,168 

Table 14 demonstrates that, consistent with the common drug court goal of getting offenders into 

treatment, the largest investment costs in the STOP Program are due to treatment. Although, 

considering the cost per day of Drug Court treatment ($6.84 per day) compared to the cost of 

non-drug court treatment ($19.34 per day), Drug Court treatment is clearly the less expensive 

option. The cost per day of non-drug court treatment is an average cost across several modes of 

treatment, including residential. The higher cost of non-drug court treatment compared with drug 

court treatment is partially due to the higher cost of residential treatment but is also due to some 

economy of scale with the Drug Court treatment provider seeing an average of 400 new clients 

per year. There is one main treatment provider (InAct) that is contracted directly with the court 

and sees the vast majority of the STOP Program participants. The direct contract facilitates the 

treatment provider in having a clear understanding of the needs of the court and the special circumstances of the STOP Program participants, which increases the efficiency of the program. In 

addition, the treatment experience of people in drug court is markedly different than the experience in a non-drug court setting because of the involvement of the judge and case manager, as 

well as the drug testing. All team members are communicating about the participants involvement in treatment and responding with rewards or sanctions to this involvement.16 In spite of 

this, the economies of scale involved in having a single treatment provider serve hundreds of 

drug court participants still lead to a lower per day cost. 

The next largest investment cost is from the relatively small amount of jail days due to Drug 

Court sanctions (although the STOP Program tends to use these rarely) and due to those who 

terminated unsuccessfully from the Program and then served their time in jail for the original 

charge. Clearly, jail is an expensive option for dealing with drug offenders. 

16 For more detailed information on the STOP Program’s practices and procedures, please see Appendix A. 

42 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

Traditional Court (“Business as Usual”): What are the Investment Costs in Drug Court Over and 

Above the Costs Invested in the Business-as-Usual Process? 

In order to answer this question, it is necessary to first determine the costs per participant for the 

business-as-usual process. These numbers can then be subtracted from the costs due to Drug 

Court to arrive at the costs of Drug Court over and above the business-as-usual process. 

Table 15. Investment Costs for the Traditional Court (Business-as-Usual) Process 

Non-Drug Court 

traditional court 

transactions 

Mean 

number of 

transactions 

Unit 

cost per 

transaction 

Mean investment 

cost per offender 

(n=4,600) 

Arrest 1 $202.96 $202.96 

Booking 1 $299.15 $299.15 

Court time (1475.01 seconds) 24.6 $29.04 $714.38 

Treatment 142 $19.34 $2,746.28 

Jail time 11 $112.99 $1,242.89 

Probation time 328 $4.13 $1,354.64 

Total cost per non-DC 

participant $6,560.30 

Court time costs include the court (judge, judicial assistant, court reporter, etc.), the District Attorney, the public defender, corrections (when an offender is in custody), and the Sheriff (bailiff). 

This court time is that which was determined by the use of stopwatches as part of the 2003 study 

(as described in the methods section of this document). Non-drug court treatment use was estimated based on data from the 2003 study.17 

Although the business-as-usual process is generally thought of as one that does not involve 

treatment, this is erroneous. For many offenders, treatment is a condition of their probation. As 

Table 15 demonstrates, like the cost of Drug Court, the largest cost for the traditional court process is treatment. Although the number of days in treatment is fewer for the comparison group 

than the drug court group, the cost of treatment is higher. 

After the cost of treatment, the next largest investment in the non-drug court process is due to 

time on probation closely followed by the costs of jail. Again, jail is an expensive option when 

dealing with drug offenders and, as the outcome results will show (below), an apparently ineffective option as well. 

Table 16 demonstrates the difference in investment between drug court and non-drug court participants. In this table, a positive number in the difference column indicates that the drug court 

process costs less than the non-drug court process. 

 Due to a poor match rate between the study population and the statewide treatment dataset, it was necessary to 

estimate non-drug court-related treatment use for both investment and outcomes based on a combination of the new 

dataset and the treatment data gathered in 2003 (for which there was a much higher match rate). 

43 

17
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Table 16. Difference in Investment Cost for Drug Court and Business-as-Usual 

Process per Transaction 

Transactions 

Investment cost 

per DC participant (n = 6,502) 

Investment cost 

per non-DC 

offender 

(n = 4,600) 

Cost 

difference 

(benefit)18 

Arrest (1) $203 $203 $0 

Booking (1) $299 $299 $0 

Court time $768 $714 -$54 

Treatment* $2,001 $2,746 $745 

Jail time* $1,017 $1,243 $226 

Probation time* $880 $1,355 $475 

Total cost $5,168 $6,560 $1,392 

*These cost differences are significant at p < .05. 

Consistent with the findings from 2003, the data from over 10 years of operation show that the 

Multnomah County Drug Court actually costs less to operate than the cost of “business as usual.” 

Also consistent with the results found for the smaller sample in the 2003 study, the average cost 

for business-as-usual court processing ($714) is only about $50 less per offender than the average cost of drug court sessions ($768). This is most likely due to drug court sessions being generally quite short in duration, and to less preparation time required for the attorneys and the judge 

for each court appearance. 

Keep in mind that the STOP Program was designed as a pre-plea court. Although it changed to 

post-plea in 2000, participants still do not go through the full traditional court process and are not 

convicted before entering the Program. However, even when the court was pre-plea, participants 

had to stipulate to the facts in the police report and, upon unsuccessful termination, had to participate in an expedited stipulated facts trial and were convicted and sentenced to any probation 

and jail time they would have received if they had not gone to Drug Court. The pre/post-plea 

(pre-conviction) model is an enormous cost savings for the drug court system as there is little 

court time spent on the traditional process before drug court entry and there is little probation 

involvement for active drug court participants. Post-conviction programs generally process drug 

court participants through the full business-as-usual process including sentencing before program 

entry, losing any benefit on the investment side to entering an offender in the drug court system. 

This is a strong argument for the use of a pre-conviction model in drug courts. In addition, the 

pre-conviction model generally results in offenders entering the program and getting into treatment much sooner than if they must go through the full business-as-usual process, which is an 

important component in the efficacy of the drug court model. 

As presented in Table 16, the per-participant investment benefit is $1,392, regardless of whether 

the participant graduates from the program. If this number is multiplied by the number of indi18 What we term “Cost Difference (Benefit)” is also often called “cost averted” or “cost avoided.” 

44 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

viduals who entered the program between 1991 and 2001 (6,502), we find that the STOP Program has saved the criminal justice system more than $9 million in case processing costs alone. 

Cost per person for traditional court minus the cost of drug court processing: 

$6,560 - $5,168 = $1,392 

Cost savings for 10 years of drug court operation: 

$1,392 * 6,502 = $9,050,784 

It is generally assumed that, due to the expense of treatment and multiple court sessions, the drug 

court process will cost more than the non-drug court process. However, as this demonstrates, this 

is not always the case. In addition, previous cost studies performed in California on nine drug 

court sites also found cost savings in the drug court process at one site (Carey et al., 2005). Interestingly, this site is post-conviction and the savings appear to be due to an expedited court process if the offender is interested in drug court. 

OUTCOME COSTS 

What are the Costs or Savings Associated With Outcomes for Drug Court and “Business as Usual” 

Participants? 

In order to establish the costs, it is necessary to determine the outcomes in terms of each transaction for both groups. Table 17 presents the average number, or amount of time spent, per offender by the drug court and comparison group for each transaction not associated with the drug 

court-eligible arrest for 5 years after the drug court petition hearing. There was a significant difference (p < .01) between the two groups on every transaction except for days in treatment.19 

Table 17. Average Number of Transactions for Each Group After the Eligible Arrest 

Outcome transactions 

(mean number) 

Drug Court 

participant 

outcomes 

(n = 6,502) 

Non-Drug 

Court 

outcomes 

(n = 4,600) 

Arrests* 4.2 5.9 

Bookings* 2 2.9 

Court time (in minutes)* 19.6 27.6 

Jail time (days)* 46 75 

Treatment (days) 72 92 

Probation time (days)* 529 661 

Prison time (days)* 80 105 

* These outcomes were significantly different between the two groups (p<.01). 

19 It is difficult to determine the validity of the lack of significance for days of treatment since, as described earlier, 

these numbers are estimates based on the current data combined with the detailed data from the 2003 study. 

45 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

As Table 17 demonstrates, the drug court participant group experienced fewer transactions in 

every area. Drug court participants had significantly fewer re-arrests and bookings. If the number 

of re-arrests and bookings after drug court is taken as a reasonable indication of criminality, it 

appears that public safety is safeguarded more by the drug court process than by traditional court 

processing. In addition, less criminal activity results in less time in court, jail, and prison and less 

time on probation, which in turn results in lower costs. 

The drug court group also had less treatment after leaving the STOP Program. It is difficult to 

interpret the full implications of this finding. The most logical (and positive) explanation is that 

drug court participants (particularly graduates) used less treatment after leaving the program because they were doing well and felt no need for further assistance with their addiction. 

Table 17 provides the costs per participant associated with each transaction for both the drug 

court and the non-drug court group. This table also presents the difference in costs between each 

group per individual and for all participants who entered the Program during the years from 1991 

through 2001. Further, this table includes the costs for victimizations including person (violence) 

and property related charges. 20 Arrests were coded based on whether there were associated person or property charges. Some arrests had both a person and a property charge. In these cases, 

both the person and the property charge were counted as separate victimization costs. 

Table 18 reveals that there are cost savings in outcomes for drug court participants across every 

transaction. The largest benefit is due to less use of jail days by drug court participants followed 

by less use of prison beds. The total outcome cost savings is nearly $7,000 for each drug court 

participant, and more than $12,000 when victimization costs are included.21 These savings, when 

multiplied by the number of people who entered the Multnomah County Drug Court’s STOP 

Program from 1991 through 2001, results in a total system savings due to positive outcomes of 

more than $79.4 million (or $7.9 million per year). Note that these positive outcomes were 

counted for just 5 years after the petition hearing date in order to include all 6,502 participants 

who entered the program during the 10-year period of the participant population. As described 

earlier in this report, the lower recidivism for drug court participants continues through 14 years 

after the petition hearing. This means that these cost savings will continue to accumulate for 

these participants for many years after the 5-year end point used in these cost calculations. If 

these participants continue to accrue at $7.9 million per year, the cost savings after 14 years 

20 The victimization costs in this paper are reported as a point of interest for those who consider victimizations a cost 

that occurs to taxpaying citizens and therefore a cost that should be included in a “cost to the taxpayer” approach. 

These victimization costs are based on the National Victimization Survey. The National Institute of Justice’s Victim 

Costs and Consequences: A New Look documents estimates of costs and consequences of personal crimes (1996) 

documents losses per criminal victimization, including attempts, in a number of categories, including fatal crimes, 

child abuse, rape and sexual assault, other assaults, robbery, drunk driving, arson, larceny, burglary, and motor vehicle theft. The reported costs include lost productivity, medical care, mental health care, police and fire services, victim services, property loss and damage, and quality of life. In our study, arrest charges were categorized as person 

(violent) or property crimes, and therefore costs from the victimization study were averaged for rape and sexual assault, other assaults, and robbery and attempted robbery to create an estimated cost for violent crimes; and arson, 

larceny and attempted larceny, burglary and attempted burglary, and motor vehicle theft were averaged for an estimated property crime cost. 

21 Although victimizations are included in outcomes, other outcome costs are displayed separately from victimization costs for two reasons: 1. Victimization costs are often considered “societal” costs rather than system costs so 

some readers may want to look at these costs separately, and 2. The cost of a single victimization is extremely high 

and therefore even a small number of victimization can make up a large proportion of the total costs, which may 

lead to a misleading interpretation of these costs. 

46 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

could be as high as $111 million. Please note that these numbers are outcome costs (savings) 

only and do not include the investment costs presented earlier. 

Table 18. Outcome Costs and Savings for 5 Years from Petition Hearing 

Outcome 

transactions 

Drug Court 

Participant 

outcome costs 

(per 

participant) 

Non-Drug 

Court 

outcome costs 

(per 

participant) 

Difference in 

cost (per 

participant) 

Drug Court 

outcome savings 

over 10 years 

(n = 6,502) 

Arrests* $852 $1,197 $345 $2,243,398 

Bookings* $598 $868 $269 $1,750,566 

Court time* $569 $802 $232 $1,510,545 

Jail time* $5,198 $8,474 $3,277 $21,305,168 

Treatment $1,392 $1,779 $387 $2,514,974 

Probation time* $2,185 $2,730 $545 $3,544,630 

Prison time* $5,402 $7,091 $1,688 $10,977,002 

Total outcome 

costs without victimizations 

$16,197 $22,941 $6,744 $43,846,283 

Victimization (person) * $11,716 $13,913 $2,197 $14,283,464 

Victimization (property) * $10,624 $13,901 $3,278 $21,310,825 

Total outcome 

costs plus 

victimizations 

$38,537 $50,755 $12,218 $79,440,571 

*These cost differences are significant at p < .01. 

47 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Table 19 presents the investment and outcome costs by graduate and provides the costs for all 

participants for ease of comparison. 

Table 19. Outcome and Investment Costs per Participant for Graduates 

and All Participants 

Total 

outcome Total outcome 

costs without costs including Investment 

victimizations victimizations costs 

Graduates $6,014 $19,661 $4,417 

All participants $16,197 $38,537 $5,168 

The outcome costs for the two groups are substantially different. As demonstrated in the outcome section, the STOP Program graduates recidivate significantly less often than other participants (and the comparison group), which results in lower outcome costs. In addition, the investment cost for the drug court-eligible case is also less for graduates, though not dramatically different. While the average number of days in drug court treatment was substantially more for 

graduates than the average for all participants (406 versus 253 days respectively), graduates had 

less time in jail (1 versus 9 days) and less time on probation (0 versus 213 days) which brought 

the cost of the eligible case for graduates down. 

COST BENEFIT RATIO 

What is the Return on the Taxpayer Dollar? 

The cost-benefit ratio provides the amount of return on every dollar spent. Table 20 presents the 

program investment, the total savings due to lower investment and lower outcomes costs, and the 

cost-benefit ratio for the Drug Court’s STOP Program. This includes the data from all program 

participants entering from 1991 to 2001. 

Table 20. Investment, Benefits and Cost-Benefit Ratio 

Total Investment and 

Investment Outcome Savings Cost-Benefit 

Costs (Benefit) Ratio 

All Participants $16,197 ($13,92 + $12,218) = $13,610 1: 2.63 

For every dollar invested in the STOP Program (for all participants, regardless of graduation 

status), the criminal justice system experiences a return of $2.63. This is a return of 263% on the 

dollar. If other taxpayer dollars were included (such as health care costs, social services costs, 

taxes paid by employed participants) the return would likely be even higher. The original Finigan 

(1996) cost study of the Multnomah County Drug Court included both health care and social services costs and resulted in a cost-benefit ratio of 1:10. Unfortunately, the implementation of the 

Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act (HIPAA) since the time of the 1996 study has made 

48 April 2007 
Answers to Policy Questions 

access to health care and social services data extremely difficult, time consuming and expensive—and therefore beyond the limits of the current study. 

TOTAL COSTS 

What are the Total Costs to the System (Including Investment and Outcome Costs) for Drug Court 

and Traditional Court? 

Table 20 presents the total cost per person (investment and outcome costs combined) for the drug 

court participants and the comparison group from the date of the eligible arrest to 5 years after 

the drug court petition hearing date. This table also provides the total difference in cost (or cost 

savings) for drug court participants versus the comparison group. As noted earlier, this difference 

in total costs is truly the bottom line for the cost to the system of following the drug court route 

versus the traditional, or business-as-usual, court route. 

Table 21. Total Difference in Cost (or Savings) per Participant Over 5 Years From 

Petition Hearing: Drug Court Participants Subtracted From Comparison Group 

Comparison Group Transactions 

Drug Court 

Participants Comparison 

Cost Difference 

(Savings) 

Arrests $1,055 $1,400 $345 

Bookings $897 $1,167 $269 

Court time $1,337 $1,516 $178 

Treatment $3,393 $4,525 $1,132 

Jail days $6,214 $9,717 $3,503 

Probation $3,064 $4,085 $1,020 

Prison days $5,402 $7,091 $1,688 

Total costs $21,365 $29,501 $8,136 

Victimization (property charges) $11,716 $13,913 $2,197 

Victimization (person charges) $10,624 $13,901 $3,278 

Total costs including victimizations $43,705 $57,315 $13,609 

Total program savings over 10 years of 

operation (n = 6,502) $88,491,446 

Table 21 demonstrates that (aside from victimization costs) the system spends the largest amount 

of taxpayer dollars on incarceration (jail and prison) and, interestingly, the next largest amount 

on treatment. Note that in spite of the higher jail costs (i.e., greater number of days in jail) for the 

comparison group, incarceration did not lead to less recidivism (see the cost of arrests in the two 

groups) or greater public safety (see the cost of victimizations). 

The total cost of treatment (investment plus outcome-related treatment) is about 25% higher for 

the comparison group than the for the drug court group. This higher cost for the comparison 

49 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

group is a function of the higher per day cost of non-drug court related treatment rather than indicating that the comparison group received more treatment. The actual number of days in treatment for the drug court group is higher than the number of days for the comparison group (339 

days versus 234 days, respectively) but the majority of the treatment received by the drug court 

participants occurred while they were in the program at a lower cost per day. 

These treatment costs do demonstrate the positive findings that there are offenders participating 

in, and using taxpayer funds for, treatment even without drug court intervention. Yet, this more 

expensive treatment does not appear to lead to the same benefits as the treatment that occurs in 

the drug court setting. 

The costs presented in the above tables include offenders that participated in drug court over 10 

years from 1991 through 2001 and cover a time period of 5 years from the time of the petition 

hearing for drug court entry. This includes all participants, not just graduates. Over a 5-year period, drug court participants save the taxpayers over $14,000 per participant. If this analysis had 

been performed on a time period longer than 5 years, the recidivism outcomes for both groups 

show that drug court participants would continue to accrue even greater cost savings.22 

Using the per participant savings of $13,609 and multiplying it by the number of offenders who 

participated in drug court over 10 years of operation (n = 5,602) resulted in a taxpayer benefit of 

more than $88 million due to drug court participation. 

Limitations to the Study 

The main limitation of this study is its reliance on administrative and operational databases. The 

researchers and the database administrators used crosschecks among the databases to minimize 

errors and omissions. Establishing the correct identity of individuals (that is, the correspondence of 

records across different databases) was a major task. We could not eliminate or check on errors in 

arrest data, the dependent variable. However, it is unlikely there were sufficient, systematic errors 

to eliminate the effect size of participation in the Multnomah County Drug Court. Demographic 

data, primarily race, seem to include a number of errors. Or perhaps a better description is that the 

purpose for collecting race data was different depending on whether the data were being used to 

provide culturally appropriate treatment versus used to identify an individual “running down the 

street,” which led to discrepancies in race identification. Either way, the fact that any errors are not 

compounded by sampling uncertainty (because the study included the entire population of drug 

court-eligible offenders) lends some additional confidence to the results. 

Another limitation is that this study was performed in a single drug court. It is possible that these 

results cannot be generalized to other drug courts. For example, since this program is primarily 

pre-conviction, these results may not be representative of post-conviction programs. 

Finally, because data on motivation level were not available on this population and data on drug of 

choice were not available for the comparison group, there could be some differences in these important factors between the program participants and the comparison group members for which we 

were not able to control. 

22 It was not possible to extend this time period greater than 5 years as the participants who entered in later years did 

not have greater than 5 years of outcome data. 

50 April 2007 
Summary/Conclusion 

SUMMARY/CONCLUSION

T his research has relevance to both drug court researchers and policymakers. By examining an entire target population within a single county over a 10-year period, drug court 

researchers can examine some of the internal and external dynamics that effect outcomes 

in a drug court setting over time. For policymakers, this research provides a unique look at the 

impact of a mature drug court on the target population of offenders over an extended period. 

The results are organized around answering specific policy questions: 

Policy Question # 1. What is the overall impact of the Multnomah County Drug Court on 

criminal recidivism? 

Overall the drug court reduced the incidence and frequency of criminal recidivism as compared 

to those who did not enter drug court over the entire population for out to 5 years. (The maximum we had available for the entire population). These results are consistent with some of the 

individual year studies (Finigan, 1998; Carey & Finigan, 2003) and consistent with the overall 

findings of the multi-year study of Goldkamp et al., 2001. These conclusions hold true when subsequent arrests are measured as a rate of recidivism (arrest/no arrest) or as the actual number of 

arrests. Of course, the major caveat for this work (also true of the other cited studies) is that there 

was no random assignment to conditions, therefore some unmeasured (and perhaps unmeasurable) differences between those who entered drug court and those that did not, might explain these results. 

The Drug Court also appears to reduce the incidence of drug crimes substantially for up to 14 

years after the petition hearing. This is impressive because some have speculated that the effect 

of the drug court might only be short term. The effect is statistically significant after controlling 

for age, gender, race, and for 2 years of prior criminal history for all but year 14 where the number of cases available for the analysis drops to only 317. It also should be noted that the later 

years reflect the tracking of the earliest drug court cohorts who received their drug court experience during the rocky beginnings of the court. To the degree that later cohorts do better, a longterm tracking of the later cohorts might show even better results. 

Policy Question # 2: Does the Drug Court show consistent levels of success in reducing rearrests each year of the 10-year period? 

The Multnomah County Drug Court, while overall demonstrating a positive effect over the 10­

year period, had better years and worse years. Specifically it had two “rough periods.” The first 

was the first two years of the program in during which there was either no positive results (1991) 

or small gains (1992). The second period was 1996, which demonstrates no statistically significant overall success. This year (1996) was also the year the Program moved temporarily to a location outside of the courthouse. 

There are two points that this emphasizes. The first is that the early implementation period of a 

drug court is not the best period to choose to examine the court’s effectiveness. Researchers 

should be cautious in evaluating drug court programs at the very beginning of their operations. It 

should be remembered, though, that this court was the second in the nation and in 1991-1992 no 

one knew how to operate a successful drug court (e.g., there were no “10 key components”). The 

other point that these data illustrate is that care should be taken about assessing the performance 

of a drug court based only on a single cohort year. Some of the variety in outcome results on 

51 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

drug court evaluations may partly be explained by the fact that the researchers may have hit a 

bad year for an otherwise effective court or conversely have found an unusually effective year in 

an otherwise unpromising court. 

Policy Question #3: Do internal or external changes effecting policies and procedures of the 

court affect its success or failure? 

We identified a number of external changes from 1991 to 2001 that might have had an influence 

on court operations and outcomes. These external changes were categorized as follows: criminal 

justice system changes, changes in the Multnomah County substance abuse treatment system and 

changes in the Oregon managed care system. With a single exception, these changes appeared to 

have no statistically significant impact on subsequent recidivism for this population (drug court 

and comparison group). The effect of group membership (drug court or comparison group) remained statistically significant in the model. We can therefore conclude that these external 

changes were likely not the source of the found positive effects of drug court. 

There was one exception to the above conclusion. The introduction of the Central Intake System 

under the federally funded Target Cities Project in 1993 and its closure in 1998 are significantly 

and substantially related to subsequent recidivism. The effect of Central Intake was predominantly with the comparison group. This makes sense in that Central Intake’s purpose was to get 

more and better treatment to those offenders that were ”slipping through the cracks in the system” and would have therefore have impacted the comparison group more and the drug court 

group less. This has interesting implications. It would suggest that during the period of Target 

Cities Central Intake (1993-1998), the drug court effect is somewhat understated, since the comparison group is also receiving benefits from Central Intake. A true measure of the impact of the 

drug court as compared to traditional business as usual may have been in the periods in which 

Central Intake did not operate. 

The internal changes in drug court policies and procedures were also examined, such as changes 

in eligibility criteria (including the change from pre- to post-plea) and changes in insurance procedures. These were then entered into the logistic regression model to see if these changes had an 

impact on the recidivism (arrest/no arrest) of the drug court group when age, race, gender, and 

prior arrest history are also in the model. The results showed no significant effects for any of the 

internal change variables. In other words none of these changes appear to be associated with any 

change in re-arrests in the drug court group. 

In addition, several instrumental variables relative to success in the drug court program were examined for their effect on subsequent recidivism. Positive effects were found for a higher number of days in substance abuse treatment and for several judicial factors discussed below. A 

negative effect was found for the use of sanctions. The positive effect for those receiving increased treatment days is a positive affirmation of the drug court logic model. If increased treatment produced no impact on re-arrest, then the rationale for drug court might be suspect. The 

negative effect of sanctions needs to be explored in more detail (we were only able to tell if a 

sanction hearing was held, not the sentence imposed), but it weakens the argument that increased 

sanction will have positive long-term effects. 

Policy Question # 4: Do changes in judicial leadership affect the success of the Drug Court? 

Judges did differ in their success rates in terms of reducing recidivism, suggesting that drug court 

results may vary depending on the judge involved. There were no differences between eras of a 

single court judge and multiple judges, although the period of multiple judges was relatively 

52 April 2007 
Summary/Conclusion 

short. Also, the STOP Program may not be a good test of this. In the multiple judge eras, there 

always was a single pre-dominant judge who had “help” from a variety of other judges and many 

of the judges who “helped” were former Drug Court judges and had learned from previous experience. This is a very different situation from a setting where different judges are simply rotated through drug court on a regular (e.g., yearly) basis. 

Later drug court judges had more positive outcomes than earlier judges (on average). One reason 

for this may have been that a resource for the comparison group (The Target Cities Central Intake Unit) ended, increasing the negative outcomes for the comparison group. Yet, it is also 

likely that judicial procedures and practices improved over time. The Multnomah County Drug 

Court was the second drug court in existence. In many ways it helped invent standard drug court 

procedures. These data suggest that over time the Drug Court learned from experience and improved its success rate. One way that it worked to improve its success rate was to create procedures for passing knowledge learned from experience from one judge to the next. The Program 

noticed a difference in the quality of the judges’ work when each Drug Court judge began a more 

formal process of teaching the drug court model to the incoming judge. 

Of great interest is the finding that judges who had more than one rotation through drug court 

had better results their second time on the drug court bench. This implies that judges learn from 

their experience on the bench and that having the same judge continue to preside over a drug 

court over time will result in better outcomes. Given that one of these judges had several years 

between his two eras, this also implies that a “pool” of judges who have experience in drug court 

could be rotated through a drug court on a regular basis, allowing the program to benefit from the 

judges’ experience while also allowing the judges to preside over traditional court cases on alternate years. 

Policy Question #5: Did the Multnomah County Drug Court save taxpayer resources compared to the costs of traditional court processing? 

Consistent with the findings from the study conducted by the authors in Portland in 2003, the 

data from over 10 years of operation shows that the Multnomah County Drug Court actually 

costs less (by $1,392 per participant) to operate than the cost of “business as usual.” Also consistent with the results found for the smaller sample in the 2003 study, the average cost for business-as-usual court hearings ($714) is only about $50 less per offender than the average cost of 

drug court sessions ($768). This is most likely due to drug court sessions being generally quite 

short in duration, and to less preparation time required for the attorneys and the judge for each 

court appearance. These data suggest that the finding in 2003 was not simply relevant to that 

specific time period. 

Overall, this means that the court’s operation itself (not including avoided costs due to positive 

outcomes) saved the taxpayer more than $9 million over the 10-year period. 

In terms of avoided costs to the taxpayer accruing from positive results for the Drug Court, there 

are cost savings in outcomes for drug court participants across every transaction. The largest 

benefit is due to less use of jail days by drug court participants followed by less use of prison 

beds. The total outcome cost savings is nearly $7,000 for each drug court participant, and more 

than $12,000 when victimization costs are included. 

These savings, when multiplied by the number of people who entered the Multnomah County 

Drug Court’s STOP Program from 1991 through 2001, result in a total system savings due positive outcomes of over $79 million (or $7.9 million per year). Note that these positive outcomes 

53 
The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

were counted for just 5 years after the petition hearing date in order to include all 6,502 participants who entered the program during the 10-year period. 

As described earlier in this report, the lower recidivism for drug court participants continues 

through up to 14 years after the petition hearing. This means that the cost savings will continue 

to accumulate for these participants for many years after the 5-year end point used in these cost 

calculations. If these participants continue to accrue at $7.9 million per year, the cost savings after 14 years could be as high as $111 million. Note that these numbers are outcome costs (savings) only and do not include the investment costs presented earlier. 

The opportunity to conduct a longitudinal study on a single drug court and to examine its effect 

on the entire target population does not happen often. Gaining permission to access data and coordinating the data collection is an immense task. Yet, this has offered some insight into the 

long-term operation of drug courts that is extremely useful for both for researchers and policymakers. This paper presented the result of just some of the analyses that are possible for this 

unique set of data. Future work could continue to explore possible analyses and answer other important policy questions. 

The results of this study demonstrate that the Multnomah County Drug Court has a significant 

impact on recidivism over time, reducing recidivism by up to 44% for time periods over 10 years 

past the time an offender entered the STOP Program. This study also demonstrated that different 

judges do have an impact on the success rate for drug court participants and that judges with 

more experience have better participant recidivism outcomes. The operation of the STOP Program in the Multnomah County Drug Court has a significant impact on system costs, saving the 

taxpayers more than $88 million during a 10-year period due to lower investment costs and decreased recidivism for drug court participants. 

54 April 2007 
References 

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Review, 1(1) 21. 

Belenko, S. (2001). Research on Drug Courts, A Critical Review. National Drug Court Institute 

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Belenko, S. (2005). Research on Drug Courts, A Critical Review. National Drug Court Institute 

Review, V(1) 21. 

Carey, S.M., & Finigan, M.W. (2003). A Detailed Cost Analysis in a Mature Drug Court Setting: 

Cost-Benefit Evaluation of the Multnomah County Drug Court. Journal of Contemporary 

Criminal Justice, 20(3) 292-338. 

Carey, S.M., Weller, J.M., & Roth, R.J. (2003). Clackamas County Juvenile Drug Court Process 

Evaluation: Final Report. Available at www.npcresearch.com. 

Carey, S.M., Weller, J., & Heiser, C. (2003). Clackamas County Adult Drug Court Process 

Evaluation: Final Report. Portland, OR: NPC Research. 

Carey, S.M., Finigan, M.W., Waller, M.S., Lucas, L., & Crumpton, C.D. (2005). California Drug 

Courts: A Methodology for Determining Costs and Avoided Costs, Phase II: Testing the 

Methodology, Final Report. Submitted to the California Administrative Office of the Courts. 

Final revision submitted to the Bureau of Justice Assistance, April 2005. Available at 

www.npcresearch.com. 

Cooper, C. (2000). 2000 drug court survey report: Program operations, services and participant 

perspectives. Retrieved from http://spa.american.edu/justice/pubcats.php?subnumber=50; 

http://spa.american.edu/justice/publications/execsum.pdf 

Crumpton, C.D. (2001). A Transactional and Institutional Cost Model of the Multnomah County, 

Oregon, Criminal Justice System Dedicated to Serious Adult Crimes. [Report]. 

Crumpton, C.D., Carey, S.M., & Finigan, M.W. (2004). Enhancing Cost Analysis of Drug 

Courts: The Transactional and Institutional Cost Analysis Approach. Submitted to the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, December 2004. Can be found at 

www.npcresearch.com. 

Finigan, M.W. (1996). Societal outcomes and cost savings of drug and alcohol treatment in the 

State of Oregon. [Report to the Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs.] 

Finigan, M.W. (1998). An outcome program evaluation of the Multnomah County S.T.O.P. drug diversion program. [Report to the Multnomah County Department of Community Corrections.] 

Finigan, M.W., & Wolf-Branigin, M. (2006) Effects of Substance Abuse Central Intake on 

Treatment and Justice Costs. Journal of Social Work Practice in the Addictions, 6(4) 115­

129. 

French, M. T. (1995). Economic evaluation of drug abuse treatment programs: Methodology and 

findings. American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 21(1), 111-135. 

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The Impact of a Mature Drug Court Over 10 Years of Operation: Recidivism and Costs 

Gerstein, D. R., Harwood, H., Fountain, D., Suter, N., & Malloy, K. (1994). Evaluating recovery 

services: The California Drug and Alcohol Treatment Assessment (CALDATA). Washington, DC: National Opinion Research Center. 

Goldkamp, J., White, M, & Robinson, J. (2001). Do Drug Courts Work? Getting Inside the Drug 

Court Black Box. Journal of Drug Issues. 31(1), 27-72. 

Goldkamp, J. (2002). Personal communication. 

Gottfredson, D., Najaka, S., Kearly, B. (2003). Effectiveness of Drug Treatment Courts: Evidence from a Randomized Trial, Criminology and Public Policy, 2(2). 

Government Accounting Office (GAO, 2005). “Adult Drug Courts: Evidence Indicates Recidivism Reductions and Mixed Results for Other Outcomes.” Available at 

www.gao.gov/new.items/d05219.pdf . February 2005 Report. 

Greenfeld, L. A. (1998). Alcohol and crime: An analysis of national data on the prevalence of 

alcohol involvement in crime. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. 

Harrell, A. (2003). Effectiveness of Drug Treatment Courts: Evidence from a Randomized Trial, 

Criminology and Public Policy, 2, 2. 

Karberg, J.C., & James, D.J. (2002). Substance Dependence, Abuse, and Treatment of Jail Inmates. 

Rockville, MD: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. 

Koenig, L., Harwood, H. J., Sullivan, K., & Sen, N. (2000). Do the benefits of more intensive 

substance abuse treatment offset the costs? (NEDS Contract No. 270-97-7016) Fairfax, VA: 

Caliber Associates. 

Longshore, D. L., Turner, S., Wenzel, S. L., Morral, A. R., Harrell, A., McBride, D., Deschenes, 

E., & Iguchi, M. Y. (2001). Drug courts: A conceptual framework. Journal of Drug Issues, 

31(1), Winter 2001, 7-26. 

Martinez, R. J., & Dacin, M. T. (1999). Efficiency motives and normative forces: Combining 

transactions costs and institutional logic. Journal of Management, 25 (1), 75-97. 

Moe, T. M. (1984). The new economics of organization. American Journal of Political Science 

28(4), 739-777. 

National Association of Drug Court Professional Drug Court Standards Committee (1997). Defining drug courts: The key components. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Drug Court Programs Office. 

National Institute of Justice, Department of Justice (1996). The Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring 

(ADAM) Data. Washington, DC. 

National Institute of Justice, Department of Justice (1996). Victim Costs and Consequences: A 

New Look. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/nij/pubs-sum/155282.htm. 

NTIES (2002). National Treatment Improvement Evaluation Study (1992-1997). U.S. Dept. of 

Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 

Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. Downloaded from 

http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/SAMHDA/NTIES/ebm-reports.html 

ONDCP (2003). Office of National Drug Control Policy. Drug Policy Information Clearinghouse 

Fact Sheet, downloaded from 

http://www.dojconnect.com/docs/pubs/DrugDataSummaryFactSheet.pdf 

56 April 2007 
APPENDIX A: DESCRIPTION OF DRUG COURT AND 

NON-DRUG COURT PROCESSING

57 
58 
What Do We Know About the STOP Drug Court Program? 

History and Overview 

Multnomah County instituted its drug court program in August 1991 using a Byrne grant and 

local city funds. Judge Harl Haas; Jim Hennings, Metropolitan Public Defenders; Norma Jaeger, 

Multnomah County Behavioral Health (A & D); and Tamara Holden, Adult Community Justice, 

were instrumental in devising the first Oregon drug court. Haas visited the Dade County, Florida, 

drug court, which was 1 year old at the time, and saw that churches and the local county paid for 

treatment for those arrested on drug charges. He learned more about this drug court model and 

decided to establish a similar specialized court in Multnomah County. He negotiated with the 

Multnomah County District Attorney and the leader of the local Public Defender’s Office. The 

STOP (Sanction Treatment Opportunity Progress) Program was among the pioneer drug courts 

to be established in the United States. The STOP Program was designed to be a pre-plea offer to 

individuals arrested on drug charges. Upon successful completion of this intensive program, 

charges are dropped, and a defendant can apply to have them removed from his or her criminal 

history record. 

Conditions of eligibility have included no evidence of distributing illegal drugs, no holds in other 

jurisdictions, no gang associations, no other felony or class A misdemeanors, and no driving under the influence of intoxicants (DUII) associated with this charge. Participants were given one 

chance; if they tried the STOP Program and failed they would not be invited to participate a second time if arrested again. Eligibility for the Program has changed over the years to include or 

prevent new participants based on funding availability and treatment provider capacity. For example, in 1992, the STOP Program closed the invitation to those defendants currently on probation or parole, but in July 1995, those defendants were once again eligible. Most likely as a result 

of a $500,000 USDOJ award the previous fall, eligibility changed again in the Spring of 1996 to 

include those who had not successfully completed the Program. 

A single drug treatment provider supplied outpatient treatment to participants when the STOP 

Program began in 1991 and the Program was open to individuals charged with possession of a 

controlled substance (PCS). However, due to some questions about the quality of treatment, that 

treatment provider was dismissed, and in July 1992 the current provider (InAct) took over as the 

sole treatment provider. 

STOP Program Participants 

The STOP Program is offered to people charged with Possession of Controlled Substance, Possession of More Than an Ounce of Marijuana and Tampering with Drug Records (forging prescriptions for pharmaceutical drugs). All of these charges fall under Oregon Revised Statute 

#475. The STOP Program was pre-plea for the first 10 years of operation. That is, participants 

did not have to plead to the charge or charges for which they were accused. Upon agreement to 

participate in the STOP Program, clients must formally acknowledge that they have waived their 

right to a trial by jury and have agreed to the facts stipulated in the police report. Instead, upon 

self-termination (repeated failures to appear) or termination (treatment non-compliance) clients 

receive a stipulated facts trial. This alternative consists of the Drug Court judge reading the police report and determining guilt or innocence without the benefit of a jury or witnesses. 

Between 1991 and 2001, the Drug Court graduated an average of just over 40% of its clients 

(2,625 out of a total of 6,502), though this percentage has risen higher than 50% in some years. 

59 
The number of active clients in the STOP Program has ranged from approximately 500 to over 

1,200 in a given year. Budget cuts in some years have led the DA’s Office to temporarily stop 

prosecuting simple drug possession clients so that population was no longer being sent to the 

Drug Court in those years. 

STOP Program Enrollment 

Defendants will be informed by the public defender at their arraignment if they are eligible for 

the STOP Program. These defendants are court-ordered to attend an orientation at the Metropolitan Public Defender’s Office at 8 a.m. the following morning. Following their orientation and 

after the public defender has confirmed their eligibility, clients must appear at the Drug Court 

that day to declare their intentions. 

Eligibility Screening 

Eligibility criteria have changed over time due to changes in funding, space availability at the 

treatment agency and politics. The Program is offered to participants based on: arrest charge, 

criminal history, probation status, additional charges, status at other jurisdictions (holds or retainers) and previous participation in the Program. As in all criminal justice areas, discretionary 

power can be exerted by the District Attorney or the judge in determining who is eligible. The 

Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office is responsible for determining client eligibility for 

the Program. 

Participation has been denied based on prior convictions, prior STOP Program participation, and 

probation/parole status. Convictions of a violent offense make a client ineligible. Major violent 

offenses such as Assault I and Armed Robbery are the types of crimes for which a client would 

be denied entry to the STOP Program. Simple Assault and charges of this nature do not usually 

prevent a client from entering the STOP Program. STOP participants may have more than one 

charge when they enter the Program. A client may have two PCS charges or a Criminal Trespass 

or Theft charge as well as the Possession charge. 

Public Defender Orientation 

The Metropolitan Public Defender’s STOP Program orientation begins with a 45-minute description of the Program. The legal assistant in charge of the STOP Program presents this orientation. 

Curriculum for the session describes the benefits of the STOP Program, including: treatment 

functions, acupuncture, drug testing, and dismissal of charges upon completion of program. The 

sanctions participants could receive for non-compliance are also covered. These include jail time, 

the stipulated facts trial, “sit” sanctions, detoxification programs, inpatient treatment, and forest 

work camp. The legal assistant provides a clear picture of what a year in the STOP program will 

be like. The participants then meet individually with their attorney to discuss their case. The attorney reviews the police report and gives the client advice on accepting the Program or taking 

the case to trial. The client ultimately has the final decision and must appear in STOP Court at 

1:30 p.m. that afternoon to pronounce their intentions. 

First Drug Court Appearance 

All clients offered the STOP Program must appear before the judge at the STOP Court the day 

following their arraignment. If a client declines the STOP Program they will be assigned a new 

non-drug court attorney from the Public Defender’s Office, if necessary, and their next court date 

will be set out to a future date on the “Call Docket.” A client that decides to enter the Program is 

told to report to InAct, the treatment provider, the following morning at 9 a.m. The client is 

60 
given a 2-week “set-over.” The 2-week set-over is a 14-day trial period that provides a chance 

for the client to see if the STOP Program is suitable for them. 

InAct Orientation 

The admissions staff at InAct conducts the orientation. The potential clients participate in a 1­

hour group orientation. The admission staff describes what a year in the STOP Program will entail. Clients then have individual meetings with an admissions staff member to complete the intake paperwork and create their treatment schedule. The admission counselor assigns the client to 

a group for group counseling and to an individual counselor. The counselor also schedules acupuncture treatments, the intake assessment with their new counselor, and a date for a physical 

examination with the InAct naturopathic doctor. The admission counselor also discusses insurance options with the client. If a client has private insurance he or she will self-pay for treatment. 

Participants with no insurance are assigned an Oregon Health Plan (OHP) appointment. 

Declaration Day 

After 2 weeks of participating in the Program, clients appear in STOP Court and declare their 

intentions. If they are staying in the Program, they will continue with treatment and future court 

appearances will be scheduled (typically 1 month from the declaration day). Clients do not have 

to plead to the charge for which they are entering. If a client declines the Program, his or her case 

will be set back on the trial docket and will be heard by a non-drug court judge. A client declining the Program will be given a new lawyer at Metropolitan Public Defenders if necessary and 

have his or her case set on the Trial Docket. 

The STOP Program (Drug Court) 

Clients who accept the Program will be working towards having their charges dropped by attending prescribed treatment services, appearing at the Drug Court, and paying STOP Program fees. 

InAct provides treatment for most clients. Resources are made available to clients such as Oregon Health Plan enrollment services and connections with community resources. 

Court Appearances 

Clients appear before the judge based on the treatment phase they are currently completing. During court appearances the judge checks in with the client’s progress, both from the client’s perspective and the treatment provider’s. The treatment liaison provides information to the judge on 

the client’s progress from the counselors at InAct. The District Attorney makes note of subsequent arrests and brings these data to the courtroom. The judge offers encouragement and rewards to clients who are complying with the treatment regime. The judge also imposes sanctions 

and checks on the completion of previously imposed sanctions and the status of their fee payment. Bench warrants are issued and lifted based on a client’s appearing in court as scheduled. 

Warrants 

Most appearances require a defendant’s presence in the courtroom. If a defendant fails to appear 

in the courtroom, a bench warrant will be issued for his or her arrest by the judge. If the defendant is stopped by law enforcement for any reason and has a warrant, he or she is taken into custody and held at Multnomah County Detention Center until the warrant is processed. Clients remain in custody until they can appear at the Drug Court, usually the next business day. 

61 
Sanctions 

Sanctions are used in the STOP Program as tools to help enforce the rules and to assist clients in 

their completion of the Program. Sanctions are employed as punishments as well as motivation 

for participants. Individual judges have their own style of imposing sanctions. An important motivational tool used by the Drug Court judges is the “impose but suspend” rule. This is accomplished by the judge imposing a certain sanction, but suspending it until the client’s next court 

date. This is often used when a client is doing poorly in the Program. At the following court date, 

if the client is doing better or completed specific tasks required by the judge, the sanction is not 

imposed. The judge may leave the sanction in “impose but suspend” status for the following 

court date. This approach can be described as “the ball is in your court” approach. If a client at 

the following court date has not performed up to expectations, the judge imposes the promised 

sanction. Sanctions can only be imposed by the judge, with or without recommendations from 

the treatment counselors. Sanctions are often graduated; that is, they steadily increase with the 

severity of the non-compliant behavior. The court always follows through with its threat of sanctions and imposes them swiftly after they are ordered. Sanctions are consistently imposed across 

individuals for similar noncompliant behavior or actions. The types of sanctions used by the 

Multnomah County Drug Court’s STOP Program include sit sanctions, forest work camp, jail 

sanctions and community service. 

Sit Sanction. A sit sanction is usually the first sanction that is handed down by the court when a 

client begins to fail to comply with treatment and court orders. A client that receives a sit sanction is required to sit in court and observe the day’s proceedings. Sit sanctions usually last for 2 

days but can be as long as a week. Clients receiving a sit sanction are often required by their 

counselor to write an essay describing their observations in the court room, what they learned 

from the sit sanction, and how it can be applied to their recovery. 

Forest Work Camp. Forest work camp is more severe than a sit sanction. Forest work camp is 

in a wooded area about an hour outside of Portland where people are sent to do conservation 

work. Participants can be sentenced to 2 to 3 weeks at the camp for violating the Program rules. 

A client sanctioned to forest work camp will also attend treatment while at the camp. Groups and 

counseling sessions are conducted at the camp. Forest work camp removes clients from their current problems and gives them the opportunity to reflect on their issues. It is used as a sanction, 

but clients have mentioned anecdotally that it helped to turn them around. Participants have been 

sentenced to forest work camp for as little as week and as long as a month. 

Jail Sanction. The jail may be used as a sanction in several ways. Occasionally a judge will impose a jail sanction as an immediate detoxification. Participants are given a chance to locate a 

detoxification facility on their own. If they are unable or unwilling, the judge sentences them to a 

5-7 day “jail detox.” Jail is occasionally used as a motivational tool as well. The judge may give 

a client a 1-day jail sanction for every treatment function missed; suspend the sanction until next 

court date and see how the client performs. For example, if the client attends all treatment sessions, no jail days are ordered. However, if a client misses three group counseling sessions and 

one urinalysis (UA) test, the client might receive 4 days in jail at his or her next court appearance. The judge may impose 1 day of jail for each positive urinalysis test. Jail is also used to 

hold participants in custody while they are waiting for a residential bed. This is usually on the 

advice of the client’s personal counselor. A client in custody waiting for a residential bed could 

remain in jail as long as 6 months due to the lack of available treatment facilities. Counselors 

caution clients that waiting in custody for a residential bed is imminent when they are unable to 

avoid substance use; this sanction is never a surprise. In spite of all the possible ways to use jail 

62 
as a sanction, this sanction is imposed rarely. On our intensively tracked clients, an average of 

0.4 jail days were imposed. 

Community Service. Community service is used as an alternative to forest work camp for female clients (there are no forest work camp facilities for women), but may also be imposed on 

men. The judge will assign 8 hours of community service for each positive urinalysis test and/or 

each treatment function missed. The client is always warned that a full day of community service 

will be forthcoming if they are unable to comply with treatment requirements. 

Rewards 

A client is succeeding in the Program when he or she is making an effort toward—or is free 

from—drugs, according to urinalysis tests and good attendance at the treatment provider. Clients 

can be rewarded in several ways. A “quick list” of individuals who are doing well or making a 

commendable effort is compiled by the treatment liaison. Clients on the quick list are called first 

on the docket. Being called first can mean the difference between sitting in court for 10 minutes 

and sitting in court for 4 hours. Another reward is the 6-week set-over. Participants performing 

well earn the right to appear in court every 6 weeks instead of every 4. 

Program Fees 

A $400 fee is required to be paid before a dismissal disorder will be signed by the judge. Clients 

can graduate if they have paid at least half. Participants failing to pay the $400 fee in a month of 

entering treatment are charged an additional $50 in interest. No pre-determined monthly installment is expected; however, the judge makes monthly inquiries about each client’s fees. Once entering the Program a client is bound to pay the fee regardless of his or her outcome. A client who 

is terminated from the Program is still responsible for the fees. The judge has discretionary 

power on imposing an individual’s Program fees and may waive all or a partial amount. Participants receiving Social Security Income and those facing economic hardships may have their fees 

waived. 

STOP Program Treatment Options 

InAct, the only contracted treatment provider for the STOP Program, provides case management 

for all participants, including those who receive treatment elsewhere. Clients may receive treatment elsewhere if they require residential services, methadone treatment for heroin abuse, or live 

outside Multnomah County and prefer to attend counseling sessions in their community. For 

most clients, treatment involves attending counseling sessions, submitting to drug testing, and 

acupuncture treatments at InAct. Successful clients complete three phases of treatment. 

Drug Court Treatment Phases 

The STOP Program has three phases that vary in length by client need. For example, a client can 

move rapidly through Phases I and II and spend the majority of his or her time in Phase III. 

One of the requirements for graduation is that clients must have spent 365 days in the Program. 

A client has what is called a “STOP clock.” The STOP clock is the amount of treatment days a 

client has in the program. If a client absconds and is placed in bench warrant status by the judge, 

their STOP clock is stopped. For example, if a client is in bench warrant status for 45 days his or 

her time in the program is extended by 45 days to make up those days in treatment. Days away in 

bench warrant status are not counted toward treatment time. When a client returns to the Program 

from bench warrant status, his or her STOP clock starts again. 

63 
During Phase I, a client is expected to attend three group counseling sessions and three acupuncture treatments per week. The client will also have at least one monthly meeting with his or her 

personal counselor and a minimum of one court appearance per month. 

Phase II program requirements are often adjusted based on client needs. Clients in Phase II typically attend two group counseling sessions per week. Clients may stop attending acupuncture 

treatment if their counselor determines it is no longer necessary. During this phase, the client 

may also be put on “one-on-one” status. One-on-one status is weekly individual sessions with 

their counselor. In Phase II, the client will have at least one court appearance every 6 weeks. 

Phase III includes one group counseling session per week and one individual counseling session 

per month. The judge and InAct staff work together to determine the number and frequency of 

court appearances. Clients complying with Program requirements may be given a 6-week setover or monthly set-over. Participants performing poorly may be ordered to appear in court 

weekly or bimonthly. People who are in danger of relapse, harming themselves or who are waiting for space availability at a detoxification program or inpatient treatment may be given daily 

court appearances. The judge and court team are able to provide structure and incentives to stay 

clean until assistance in the form of inpatient treatment or detoxification is available. 

Urinalysis 

InAct performs the STOP Program urinalysis drug testing. All clients are randomly tested at least 

once a week. Clients are assigned a number upon entry into the Program and are responsible for 

calling the “UA line” (a phone number) each day to see if their number has been chosen. Numbers may be called more than once a week. A client having trouble staying clean or suspected of 

dishonesty may be randomly tested up to three times a week. Clients treating at the methadone 

clinic or in a residential center are also required to have weekly random urinalysis testing at their 

treatment center. Clients in jeopardy of missing a drug test may also have an off-site certified lab 

perform a urinalysis if they are unable to get to InAct. The results must be sent to InAct for verification. 

Aftercare 

Aftercare is not a requirement for the STOP Program. One year of Aftercare is available to all 

participants who have graduated. Aftercare programs are designed based on client needs. After 

graduation, clients are eligible to attend as many group counseling sessions as desired, may meet 

with their individual counselor, attend educational classes provided at InAct, and remain eligible 

for mental and physical health services provided by InAct. Although strongly encouraged, participants are not required to participate in aftercare activities. In recent years, the 1-year limitation has been lifted. 

Client Outcomes 

The goal of the Program is to keep clients engaged until they have completed the graduation requirements. The Program seeks to graduate as many clients as possible. Clients are introduced to 

a drug-free existence. Ideally at graduation, clients have jobs or career prospects, have started or 

are into looking into GED classes or college coursework, have adequate housing and are working 

on family issues. Termination from the Program is a last resort. The Program philosophy is to 

support clients and give them as many opportunities to succeed as possible, as it may be the last 

chance for some to get off drugs. Even if clients are using substances while participating in the 

Program, the STOP Program will continue to work with them if they are attending treatment and 

court sessions. Often the judge will say, “You’re a drug addict, we know you might use, but you 

64 
must at least fill the chairs.” Participants are far more inclined than the Program to give up. Selfterminations are far more common than Program-staff-initiated terminations. 

Self-Termination 

Self-termination can happen at any time during the Program. Clients choose to end their participation in the Program for many reasons. Anecdotally, the most frequent reasons include: choosing not to go to jail to wait for a space at a residential treatment center, time commitment issues, 

or the client is just not interested in the Program anymore. Historically (and during the time of 

our sample), a client who terminated received a stipulated facts trial, was usually convicted of 

the charges, and was sentenced to 30 days in jail and 18 months on probation. As of June 2001, 

STOP clients plead guilty to their charges when they choose to participate in the Program and are 

sentenced at their termination to 10 days in jail and 18 months on probation and are also sent to 

the alternative drug court (Clean Court). 

Termination 

The District Attorney and the treatment provider recommend terminations to the judge, who ultimately has the final decision. Clients charged with a violent crime during the Program are 

automatically terminated. Terminations occur for a number of reasons. Clients who repeatedly 

abscond from the Program may be terminated. Clients who tamper with their urine samples for 

drug tests may be terminated. Clients who constantly use drugs may be terminated. Clients who 

are unable to engage in treatment for extended periods of time may face termination. Termination is used as a last resort in the STOP Program. Participants are given many chances before 

they are terminated. Clients are warned in advance of a possible termination and given alternatives before it actually happens. Terminations rarely happen if a client is engaged in treatment. 

After the judge has exhausted all other sanctions, he or she will order a 90-day “up or out.” An 

“up or out” is the participant’s last chance. The client has 90 days to graduate the program or 

face termination. This gives the client one last opportunity to comply with Program. 

Graduation 

The Program requires 365 days in treatment to graduate. In addition, clients need six consecutive 

clean urinalysis tests and a recommendation from their individual counselor to complete the Program. Graduates complete an exit interview two days before the formal graduation. The exit interview is private discussion between client, judge, public defender, and the District Attorney. 

Clients are asked to share thoughts and feelings on the Program, make suggestions for program 

improvement and highlight the most helpful aspects of the Program, especially what helped them 

avoid drugs. Graduation is held at the Drug Court during a regular court session. Graduations 

begin the proceedings for that day and last for about an hour. Graduation is used to inspire other 

Program participants. At graduation, clients receive a certificate of Program completion, gift certificate for a local restaurant, and their booking photo from their original arrest. The treatment 

provider, judge, District Attorney, and public defender give speeches to the graduates. The judge 

then allows each graduate to speak. Friends and family members of the graduates and InAct staff 

are also given an opportunity to speak. The District Attorney then requests all charges be 

dropped against the defendants, and the judge finalizes the order. 

The STOP Program Drug Court Team 

The drug court team acts a cohesive unit to help each client complete the Program. Unlike standard court proceedings, there are no adversarial relationships between team members. The public 

defender and District Attorney have the same goal in this courtroom—to help each client stop 

65 
using substances and remove the pending felony from his or her record. Each team member’s 

role is vital to the success of the participants. The team members include the judge, treatment 

coordinator, the public defender, the public defender’s legal assistant, and the District Attorney. 

The team meets daily. 

Drug Court Team Meetings 

The drug court team meets informally everyday to share information on participants. The treatment coordinator informs the team of clients who are at risk of failing to comply with treatment, 

clients who are doing poorly, or clients who are having a relapse. They also discuss any special 

circumstances arising for a client. These informal meetings provide a forum to discuss at-risk 

participants before the court proceedings begin. This ensures that everyone is on the same page 

before the court session begins. The drug court team also has monthly formal operations meetings to determine new policies and resolve questions and concerns of the team members. 

Judge 

The judge plays a unique and very important role in the STOP Program. The judge is the only 

team member who can impose sanctions, terminate a client from the Program, or order a client to 

attend either a detoxification program or residential treatment. The judge uses judicial discretionary power where necessary. The treatment coordinator and District Attorney can only recommend sanctions for the judge to consider. Clients look to the judge for guidance as they struggle with their recovery and for praise when deserved. The judge’s compliments or criticisms are 

quite significant to some participants. The participants are held accountable for their actions by 

the judge. 

Most judges for the STOP Program have an understanding of substance abuse issues and strive 

to be compassionate to the clients as they work on their recovery. Participants have serious issues 

in their lives and their addictions must be taken into account. The judge uses his own attitudes to 

assist clients in complying with Program requirements. He knows there is a time for harshness 

and a time for understanding. The judge understands this is not a one-chance program. Each client is given time and patience to turn his or her addiction around. 

Treatment Coordinator/Court Liaison 

The main function of the treatment coordinator is to provide a link between the treatment counselors and the court. The treatment coordinator discusses each client on the docket with each personal counselor before attending the team meeting. The treatment coordinator speaks in court for 

each client’s personal counselor. This connection provides a direct account of the client’s progress. The treatment coordinator makes recommendations on sanctions and rewards to the judge. 

The treatment coordinator in the STOP Program is also a certified substance abuse treatment 

counselor and is able to offer participants guidance in their recovery. 

The current treatment coordinator has a great understanding of the drug court and treatment. He 

has persuaded participants from terminating the STOP Program on numerous occasions. His role 

in court as acting counselor is invaluable. Participants turn to him for guidance in the court on a 

wide range of issues. The treatment coordinator always has an open ear for his participants. 

Public Defender 

The public defender’s role in drug court is different than regular court. While mindful of clients’ 

interests, the public defender understands that a client’s best interest may be jail time. Sanctions 

and the judge’s ability to determine when to use them are part of the Program’s curriculum. The 

66 
public defender rarely objects to sanctions imposed by the judge. Working as part of the team, 

the public defender understands that sometimes protecting participants from sanctions would undermine the court’s intentions. There is one occurrence that the public defender will defend his 

participants vehemently, and this is termination. The public defender will do his best and make 

his best argument to stop his participants from being terminated from the Program. A client faced 

with termination will have the public defender doing everything in his power to stop his client 

from being terminated. The public defender also makes recommendations to the court about participants. The public defender may recommend certain sanctions that he believes would be beneficial to his client’s efforts to stay clean. 

Public Defender’s Legal Assistant 

The legal assistant for the public defender plays a vital role between the client and the STOP 

Program. She introduces the Program to the participants and instructs clients in how to work 

within the criminal justice system as they complete the Program. She offers information on how 

to rescind a bench warrant, schedule their community service hours and add their name to the 

docket for court appearances if needed beyond their scheduled drug court date. She is responsible for the daily monitoring of participants and their current situations and reporting this information to the court. If a client is unable to attend a court appearance, the legal assistant is the client’s contact person. The legal assistant for the STOP Program organizes, maintains, and updates 

participants’ files. The participants rely on the assistant as they navigate the Program. 

District Attorney 

The District Attorney represents the interest of the State during STOP Court proceedings. S/he 

makes recommendations to the judge on sanctions and terminations. The District Attorney is focused on the success of all participants but is also ensuring the integrity of the Program and will 

sometimes suggest termination as a reminder to the client to take their participation seriously. 

The recommendation is often a bluff to remind the client of the potential felony conviction if 

they fail to comply with Program requirements. 

Program Challenges and Successes 

The current average graduation rate of 47% is probably the greatest reward for the STOP Program team. This drug court was the second drug court to be developed and has been replicated 

nationwide. Drug court teams from across the country come to observe the Multnomah County 

Drug Court’s STOP Program for educational purposes and to ask for guidance on how to run a 

successful drug court program. The largest challenge faced by the team is administering the program without enough or consistent funding. 

Other successes include: 

• Good collaboration among team members 

• Frequent and highly structured court and treatment session 

• A system of graduated sanctions 

• A holistic view of treatment 

• Listening to participants and taking a genuine interest in them as people 

• Helping participants with tangible successes such as obtaining a GED 

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• Having dedicated team members who devote their time and energies to a program that they 

really believe in 

Challenges include: 

• The availability of consistent funding 

• The Program is often at or near capacity (More funding is needed to treat all eligible participants. InAct is working with the most clients in its history with the smallest amount of 

staff.) 

• Inpatient services are needed and InAct would like to be able to provide these services, but 

lacks the funding to do so 

• The large numbers of clients needing treatment 

• How to handle participants in bench warrant status for long periods of time 

• Educating judges about substance abuse treatment 

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Description of Non-Drug Court Processing

O ne element of the NIJ-funded cost study is to compare drug court clients with those who 

were eligible for the STOP Program but did not participate. These individuals go 

through traditional court processing. In Multnomah County, this processing includes 

having their case heard by a Grand Jury, and hearings at a variety of court appearances that could 

include Assignment Call, Drug Call, Motion to Suppress Hearings, Pre-Plea Hearings, Plea 

Hearings, and Trials; Defendants are expected to attend most hearings. If they fail to appear, a 

warrant will be issued for their arrest. 

Warrants 

Most appearances require a defendant’s presence in the courtroom. If a defendant fails to appear 

in the courtroom, a bench warrant will be issued for his or her arrest by the judge. Indictment 

warrants are issued for defendants whose charges have been dismissed pending further evidence 

but are then indicted based on the presence of additional substantiation. If the defendant is 

stopped by law enforcement for any reason and has a warrant, he or she will be taken into custody and held at Multnomah County Detention Center until the warrant is processed. Defendants 

remain in custody until a hearing can be scheduled and takes place (usually the next business 

day). The hearing serves to assign a new court date returning the case to active status and addresses release. 

“Set-Overs” 

Set-overs are requests made of the judge to schedule a court appearance for a date in the future. 

Defense attorneys and the State are both allowed a fixed number of set-overs. For example, the 

defense may request a set-over if more time is needed to interview witnesses or to further investigate the charges. The State may request a set-over if a police officer scheduled to be questioned 

as a witness is not available or if a key witness cannot be located. The judge allows the first few 

set-overs without much explanation, but will request an explanation after recurring instances of 

requests for set-overs, and may deny the request. 

First STOP Court Appearance 

If clients decide to commit to the 2-week trial period in the STOP Program, their case is set over 

at this first appearance. The 2-week period is intended for clients to see if the STOP Program is 

appropriate for them. Clients who decide to decline the STOP Program are assigned a new attorney and their case is added to the Assignment Call Docket for a future court date. 

Grand Jury 

Defendants who have declined the STOP Program have their cases heard by the Grand Jury. At a 

Grand Jury proceeding, the State calls witnesses and presents evidence to convince jurors of sufficient evidence against a defendant to bring formal charges against them. Neither the defendant 

nor his or her lawyer is present at these proceedings. The Grand Jury decides whether the District 

Attorney can proceed with the case. Three dispositions are possible: “true-bill,” “no complaint,” 

or “cannot proceed.” A defendant’s case will be “true billed” if the defendant is indicted and the 

DA can proceed with charging the defendant. “No complaint” denotes that the case is dismissed, 

and the defendant will not be charged. The case will receive a “cannot proceed” disposition when 

an indictment is not being pursued at that time, but the case is left open and the State may charge 

the defendant for up to 3 years. Grand Jury results are reported before the start of Arraignments 

69 
the following day in court. The District Attorney reads the Grand Jury Report. If a case has been 

dismissed (3 years) the defendant is free to go; if a case has been indicted, the defendant is required to schedule another arraignment date with his or her attorney. At this arraignment an Assignment Call date is set. 

Assignment Call 

When defendants are indicted by the Grand Jury, their cases are set out for Assignment Call. Defendants are required to attend this appearance. Assignment Call is essentially a status check; the 

State and the defense attorney inform the judge of the status of the case and either ask for a setover or to be scheduled for Drug Call. In most cases, Drug Call is scheduled for a date four to six 

after Assignment Call. 

Drug Call 

Drug Call is also a status check hearing. Defendant attendance is required. At Drug Call, the defense attorney and the State report their readiness for the case to proceed or make requests for 

set-overs. Drug Call is an opportunity for the defense attorney and the State to announce their 

intentions for the case. A case may be resolved with a plea made by the defendant or scheduled 

for a trial. If the case is determined to be ready for a plea, the judge will then send the case to another judge’s courtroom for the plea to take place that same day. If a case is ready for trial, the 

judge will send the case to another judge’s courtroom for a trial to start within a few days. A case 

at Drug Call can also be set for a Motion to Suppress proceeding. 

Motion to Suppress Hearings 

A Motion to Suppress proceeding is requested by the defense attorney in an effort to suppress 

evidence being presented by the State. If the defense proves to the judge that the evidence should 

be suppressed, the state will often dismiss the case. Most Motion to Suppress proceedings involve the defense attorney attempting to prove that narcotics found on his or her client were obtained through an illegal search and seizure. During a Motion to Suppress Hearing, police officers will often testify on how they obtained evidence. The State and defense are provided time to 

present their cases, call witnesses, and cross-examine each other’s witnesses. There is no jury 

present at a Motion to Suppress Hearing. The judge examines the testimony given and decides on 

the legality of the obtaining of evidence. If the judge rules in favor of the State and the motion is 

denied, the case will be sent back to Drug Call to be scheduled for a Trial or Plea Hearing. If the 

judge rules in favor of the defense, the evidence will be excluded from the case. The State has 

two choices: to return to Drug Call to have the case heard without the evidence or to dismiss the 

case. Typically, the State dismisses the case. 

Plea Hearings 

At the request of the defense attorney, a Plea Hearing can be scheduled at Assignment Call, Drug 

Call, or before a Trial. At a Plea Hearing, defendants enter a plea of “guilty” or “no contest” to 

the charges brought against them by the State. Before hearing the plea, the judge will explain a 

defendant’s right to a jury trial and that he or she is waiving that right by choosing to plead to the 

charges. The judge reads the charges and asks the defendant for a plea. After the plea has been 

entered, the judge determines the sentence. Usually the State recommends sentencing based on 

the agreement made previously between the defense attorney and the District Attorney’s Office. 

Judges typically follow the State’s recommendations, but may choose not to. 

70 
Trial 

For cases where the defendant has entered a plea of “not guilty” or has lost a Motion to Suppress 

Hearing, the judge will schedule a Trial date at Drug Call. The Trial consists of the State and defense attorneys’ presenting their cases before a jury. After hearing the case, the jury decides on a 

verdict of guilt or innocence. The judge, in accordance with the law, sentences a defendant that is 

found guilty. Defendants found guilty will usually receive sentences that include both jail and 

probation time. Defendants who are acquitted (found innocent) have their cases dismissed. 

Sentencing 

In the recent past, defendants were generally sentenced to 30 days in jail, a drug-free zone exclusion, and 18 months of probation. Jail time is assigned with a “turn self in” date or the defendant 

is taken into custody at the Hearing. Conditions of probation can include: a drug evaluation, successful completion of treatment, random drug testing, obey all laws, submit person/residence/vehicle/property to search by probation officer, maintain full-time employment or 

school, community service work, driver’s license suspension and no firearms. Due to current 

budget cuts (February 2003), the DA’s Office cannot prosecute simple drug possession charges 

at this time; therefore, no adjudication or sentencing is occurring in these cases. 

Probation 

Probation sentences for PCS charges are usually 18 months long. Multnomah County Community Justice provides probation supervision. Supervision by a probation officer includes monitoring defendants in the community and ensuring defendants follow through with the conditions of 

probations set forth by the judge at the time of sentencing. Supervision by probation includes 

recommendations for treatment based on an alcohol and drug assessment that takes place when a 

defendant begins probation. Treatment may include attendance at 12-step programs, inpatient 

treatment, and random drug testing. If the defendant fails to follow the conditions of probation, 

the probation officer has the authority to file a Violation of Probation with the court, which usually results in a hearing, and the defendant could be taken into custody. 

Probation Violation Hearing 

Defendants who violate probation will be ordered to attend a Probation Violation Hearing. A 

lawyer will represent defendants at the hearing. A representative from the probation department 

recommends a sanction. The decision made by the judge may be to continue the defendant’s probation with or without a sanction (for example, community service or treatment) or to revoke 

probation, which may earn a defendant up to 6 months in jail. 

Successful Completion of Probation 

Defendants who comply with the terms of probation for 18 months have their probation terminated. They have no further obligations to their probation officer or the courts. A record of this 

charge, indictment, verdict, and time served will remain on the person’s criminal record. 

71 
72 
APPENDIX B: ADULT DRUG COURT TYPOLOGY 

INTERVIEW GUIDE

73 
74 
_________________________________________________________ 

___________________________________________________ 

_________________________________________________________ 

Adult Drug Court

 Typology Interview Guide23 

Time period of sample ___________ 

Respondent Information (please check accuracy and spelling) 

1. Interview Date: ______________________________________ 

2. Drug Court Site: _____________________________________ 

3. Respondent’s Name: __________________________________ NPC ID 

#___________ 

4. Respondent’s Title: 

5. Respondent’s Organization: 

(Get the precise designation- including categories such as: division, bureau, unit, etc.) 

6. Respondent’s email: 

7. Respondent’s direct telephone number __________________________ 

23 Copyright 2004 Northwest Professional Consortium, Inc. (dba NPC Research). To ascertain whether you have the 

current version or for other information about this instrument, please contact Shannon Carey at NPC Research, 4380 

SW Macadam Ave., Ste. 530, Portland, OR 97239, (503) 243-2436, carey@npcresearch.com, or 

www.npcresearch.com. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute copies of this work for nonprofit 

purposes, provided that this copyright notice is included on each copy. Development of this tool was funded by the 

Bureau of Justice Assistance, Department of Justice. 

75 
CONTACT LOG 

DATE RESULT 

Background 

8. When was this drug court implemented? (T1) 

9. When did you become involved in the drug court program? (T22-T30, Contacts Database) 

10. Were you involved with the implementation of this drug court? If so, would you please 

describe the implementation process? Who was involved? (T1) 

Role (Activities and Time Spent) 

One of the main purposes of this study is to determine more accurate costs for Drug 

Court-related activities. To determine these costs we need to learn about any activities 

you pursue for the Drug Court program and your estimate of how much time you spend 

performing those activities. 

1. What is your role (or what do you do) in this Drug Court program (or at your agency)? 

(Probe: briefly describe your activities, e.g., attending sessions, team meetings, writing 

progress reports, case management, counseling, phone calls, prep time, coordinating 

services, supervising employees, etc.). (T22-T30, Cost Table, Contacts Database) 

2. (For Public Defender and State’s/District Attorney) How is your role in drug court different from your role in non-drug court processes? Do you feel that the traditional mission as the (defense/prosecutor) has been upheld in your role in the drug court? (Traditional role for DA: getting restitution and justice fulfilled for victims) (Traditional role 

76 
for PD: protecting the rights of defendants and seeing that they get due process in the system)(T27, T28) 

3. What services does your agency provide to Drug Court clients and/or to the general public? (T11, T20-T30) 

4. How many hours in an average week do you spend on Drug Court activities? How many 

hours per week is spent on other NON-Drug Court activities? (Probe: About how much of 

your FTE is spent on drug court?) (The hours should total up to 40 hours for the average 

week, unless the person works part-time (T22-T30, Cost Table) 

5. If you had to divide up the time you spend on Drug Court activities into the following 

categories, how many hours in an average week do you think you would put into each 

category? (Your best estimates are fine.) 

-DRUG COURT (attending court sessions, attending team meetings & planning meetings, preparing for court, and doing progress reports on participants) 

-CASE MANAGEMENT (meeting with clients and making referrals, phone calls, answering 

questions, determining appropriate treatment, home visits, monitoring progress, contacting 

treatment providers, screenings and evaluations, assessments) 

-TREATMENT SESSIONS (preparing for and conducting individual or group treatment sessions) 

-DRUG TESTS (administering UAs and other drug tests)

 -COORDINATION AND/OR SUPERVISION (writing grants, data management, doing reports for the state, supervising employees, program development, doing the budget, billings and 

invoices, coordinating the courts, trainings) 

6. Who else does drug court activities in your organization? What do they do? Can you estimate how much time they spend on it? (Some of these people will be interviewed separately to determine their time spent. Would you recommend I speak to them directly about 

their drug court activities, or can you tell me about what they do?) (T22-T30, Cost Table) 

7. What kind of training have you received related to drug courts? Have you attended 

classes, workshops, or conferences? If yes, how often have/do you attend(ed)? (T31) 

Drug Court Goals 

8. What are the main goals of your drug court? (T15) 

9. What do you think would be good measures for whether you have reached the goals? 

(T15) 

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Eligibility 

(If you have created a flow chart refer to Pre-Drug Court Flow Chart) Will you please take me 

through the details from when someone is arrested up to the time they enter the drug court? (Below questions might be answered) Probe: Can you describe the step-by-step process for determining eligibility? 

10. Is the program pre-plea or post-plea (Note: post-plea includes post-conviction. Also include any further explanation from respondent) When in the adjudication process does 

this decision/referral occur? (T3) 

11. Describe the case referral process. (How are eligible participants identified?) Who does 

the initial screening? (DA, PD, Probation Pre-trail services?) (T6) 

12. What assessments are performed in determining eligibility? Is there a clinical substance 

abuse assessment conducted before entry? What screening instrument is used? Is there a 

mental health assessment conducted in the process of determining eligibility? Is mental 

health treatment a component of drug court or are mental health cases excluded (What is 

the assessment tool called? Is it a risk/needs assessment? What are the criteria? What is 

the cut-off score? Who completes this assessment? How, if at all, is participant eligibility 

affected by the results?) (Ask for copies) (T6) 

13. Can you describe the eligibility criteria? (Only nonviolent offense? Limit on number or 

prior convictions?). (T6) 

14. Which charges are targeted for entry? (Misdemeanors, felonies, or both? Possession, trafficking, under the influence, property offenses, etc.? Are non-drug offenses allowed in 

drug court? Violent charges?) (T6) 

15. What are the criteria that would exclude someone from drug court? (e.g., types of offenses, mental health issues) (T6) 

16. Who is responsible for final determination about program entry? (DA, PD, Judge?) (T6) 

17. Do you think that everyone who is eligible (based on their criminal history or other criteria) is always referred to drug court? What are the circumstances under which you would 

not refer someone who is technically eligible? (T6) 

18. Are there ever exceptions to the eligibility restrictions? (Are some people allowed in that 

don’t exactly fit the requirements or that have one or more disqualifying factors?) How 

are those clinical/professional judgments made/handled? (T6) 

19. How is drug court offered to each potential participant? (Is there an official letter from 

the District Attorney, are the offenders just asked in open court, etc.) Are participants 

asked if they are willing to enter drug court? How often do people refuse and what reasons do people give for refusing? What is the alternative to drug court? What are the incentives to decide in favor of drug court? (T6,T7) 

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20. Has the eligibility determination process changed (since implementation)? If yes, what 

was it at the time of our sample? (T6) 

21. What is the length of time between arrest (or incident that triggers referral) and referral to 

drug court? (T4) 

22. What is the length of time between referral to drug court and entry into the drug court 

program? (T4) 

Drug Court Participants 

23. Can you describe your drug court participants? (What are the most commonly used drugs 

by your drug court participants? Are your participants experimental or beyond experimental, or a mix?) (T5) 

Drug Court Program Capacity and Enrollment 

(If the Coordinator does not know these numbers off hand ask for copies of recent reports or 

statistics that could be mailed to you that would give us this information.) 

24. What is the annual program capacity? (How many are in the program at one time? How 

long do people stay in the program, on average? How many new participants each 

year?) (T2) 

25. What is the total number enrolled (ever) to date? As of what date? (T2) 

26. What is the number of graduates to date? As of what date? (T2) 

27. What is the number of active participants? How do you define active? (If the definition 

includes youth not participating, probe number not actively participating.) (T2) 

28. What is the number of unsuccessful terminations to date? As of what date? (T2) 

29. What is the primary drug of choice for drug court participants? (Percentages of: Marijuana, Crack or Cocaine, Heroin, Methamphetamines, Poly Drug, Alcohol, Other) (T5) 

30. Do you have any statistics or reports on your participants? If so, can we have copies? 

(T2) 

Drug Court Judge 

31. How is the judge (how were you) assigned to drug court? (Voluntary? Rotating assignment?) Is the length of time presiding over the drug court limited? What is the limit? If 

rotating assignment, how does the rotation work? (T23) 

32. Is there only one drug court judge? If only one judge, does he/she (do you) hear other 

cases in addition to drug court? If there is more than one judge, how many are there and 

what are their roles and responsibilities? (T23) 

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33. What are the judge’s other roles and responsibilities? (T23) 

34. Have there been other drug court judges before (“you” or “the current judge”)? If so, 

who was the drug court judge (at the time of our sample)? (T23) 

35. Does the judge spend time on drug court activities beyond the time officially allocated for 

it? If yes, how much time and for what activities? (T22) 

36. How does the judge interact with participants in court? (T22) 

Drug Court Coordinator/Judge 

37. How is your Drug Court funded now and in the past? Have you ever written a grant proposal for drug court funding? (T24) 

38. Have you had to fill out paperwork or surveys on statistics or costs for your drug court? 

(T43) 

39. What kind of information have you needed for grant proposals/paperwork/surveys? (T40) 

40. Do you have an evaluation and monitoring aspect to the drug court program (Have you 

had process or outcome evaluations performed on your drug court?) If so, what type of 

information was collected, summarized, and/or analyzed? (Ask for a copy) (T40) 

41. What kind of cost information would be useful for you to have? (T43, Cost Table) 

Drug Court Team 

(Note: Most of these questions will be asked either in the initial phone calls or directly to the 

person who belongs to each role) 

42. Is there a drug court coordinator for this drug court? If not, who is responsible for operations? How many drug courts is the coordinator responsible for? By what agency is the 

coordinator employed? Who supervises the coordinator? (T24) 

43. Is there a drug court team? Who is part of it? (Prompt: Are there others who you feel are 

key to the drug court process who are not on the team?) (T18) 

44. Does the team meet outside of drug court hearings? (Prompt: How often and for what 

purpose? Who attends regularly and who attends as needed? Do they talk mainly about 

policy issues or participant progress?) (T19, Cost Table) 

45. How much do you interact with staff from the other agencies involved in drug court? 

(Prompt: What activities do you do together? Team meetings? Do you communicate outside of team meetings?) (T19-T20) 

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46. Who attends drug court sessions? (Prompt: Please include everybody in the courtroom, 

and whether they attend regularly or as needed. Specify their agency and position) (T21, 

Cost Table) 

47. When are drug court sessions held and how long are they? How many clients typically attend one session? About how much time do you think is spent per participant in a typical 

drug court session? (T21, Cost Table) 

48. Are the bailiff/court security positions paid for by the court or by the Sheriff’s Department? [21, Cost Table] 

49. How are Drug Court policy decisions generally made (e.g. by the team, judge)? (T19) 

50. How are decisions about responses to participants’ behaviors made (e.g. by the team, 

judge)? (T20, T34/T35 if applicable) 

51. What is the role of the judge? (Duties both outside & during drug court sessions?) (T22) 

52. What is the role of the coordinator? (Duties both outside & during drug court sessions?) 

(T24) 

53. What is the role of law enforcement? (Duties, level of involvement?) Which agencies are 

involved? (sheriff, state policy, city police, school-based) What meetings do they attend? 

Do they attend staffings? What do they do differently with drug court vs. non-drug court 

cases? Do they do home visits? If so, how often and how long do they take? Are home 

visits required as part of the program? (T29) 

54. Are home visits done for all drug court participants? Who does them? What percentage of 

participants get home visits? How many home visits does the average drug court participant receive during his or her time in drug court? (T11, T22-T30, Cost Table) 

55. What is the role of the Probation Department? (Duties, level of involvement?) What do 

they do differently with drug court vs. non-drug court cases? Do they do home visits? If 

so, how often, how long do they take, and who is involved? (T26) 

56. Do you have active warrants (in which law enforcement goes out to pick someone up) or 

do you have open bench warrants (in which a participant is picked up when stopped for 

something else)? How/where are they recorded? How often does that occur? How much 

time is spent per warrant? (T29, Cost Table) 

57. What is the role of the Public Defender or other defense counsel? (Level of involvement, 

etc. Do they attend staffings? Court sessions?) What proportion of cases are served by 

public defenders? (T27) 

58. What is the role of the State’s/District Attorney? (Level of involvement, etc. Do they attend staffings? Court sessions?) (T28) 

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59. (For Public Defender and State’s/District Attorney) How do the Public Defender and 

State’s (District’s) Attorney interact inside and outside of court sessions? (Are their roles 

in drug court different than what they would be in a regular court case?) If there is a cooperative relationship between the Public Defender and the District’s Attorney do you 

feel like you are still able to up hold the traditional role of PD and DA? (T20) 

60. Who provides primary case management and coordination of treatment and rehabilitation 

services? (Probation, treatment services, drug court staff?) (T25) 

61. Does the drug court team receive any training or continuing education regarding drug 

court? (Which team members?) (How often?)(T31) 

62. How well do you feel the agencies involved in DC work together? (Give examples. Do 

the agencies integrate any services? Have partnerships developed between key agencies 

and with local community organizations? Is there cooperation and communication 

among team members?) (T12,T20) 

63. What kind of relationships or connections do you have with community agencies in relation to drug court? (T12) 

Drug Court Process/Phases 

64. Does your program have phases? If so, how many and how long do they last? (T16) 

65. What are the requirements for each phase? (Include number of number of court appearances, UA’s, group and individual sessions, and the number of hours in each group and 

individual session) (T16) 

66. Are there any specific requirements or criteria to move from one phase to the next phase? 

(T17) 

67. Are requirements written? (Do you have a copy you can give to us?) If so, are the written 

requirements shared with participants? 

68. Have the phases or the process changed (since implementation)? (T16, T17) 

69. What kinds of services, besides drug and alcohol treatment, are offered to drug court participants? (T11) 

Treatment 

70. Does your agency provide treatment directly to drug court clients? (as compared to referrals, administrative oversight, etc.) Are the treatment providers directly contracted with 

the court? (T8, T9, T11, Cost Table) 

71. How many treatment providers are involved with drug court? Do you have the names and 

contact information for these providers? (T8, Cost Table, Contacts Database) 

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72. Is there a central intake to treatment? (T8) 

73. (If more than one treatment provider) How is it decided which clients go to which treatment provider? (T8) 

74. What assessments are performed on drug court clients? (Please describe these tools. 

What are they called? Can we get a copy of the tool? Who completes this assessment? 

Who reviews it? How, if at all, is the treatment plan affected by the results?) (T8) 

75. What specific treatment services does each one offer? (Individual and group counseling, 

residential treatment, case management, acupuncture, mental health services) How long 

does each session typically last and how many participants attend each session? (T11, 

Cost Table) 

76. What other services are offered? (Parenting classes, GED, anger management, life skills 

training, job training, physical health services, AIDS education , cognitive restructuring 

etc.) (T11, T12, Cost Table) 

77. How many counselors at each provider are directly involved with drug court participants? 

(T8) 

78. Who else at the treatment agencies are directly involved in drug court? (T8) 

79. How many drug court clients does the treatment provider (do the treatment providers) 

serve? Who is required to report to court staff on treatment progress/compliance? Who 

performs case management for Drug Court clients? (T14, Cost Table) 

80. What type of information does the treatment provider share with the court and how is it 

shared? (Prompts: progress reports, reports of missed treatment sessions, groups attended, UAs) Is this information useful? Is it shared in advance of drug court session? 

(T14) 

81. Are participants encouraged or required to attend other treatment support groups? (12-

step or other self-help programs) (T13) 

82. Do the treatment providers serve non-drug court drug offender cases? How often, and 

how is this coordinated with probation? 

83. What is the primary philosophy or treatment model used? (At each agency. Prompt: strict 

boot camp, strengths based social work?) Does it vary? (e.g., by counselor, by client 

characteristics) (T10) 

84. Are you (is the treatment agency) involved in drug testing (UAs)? If yes, please describe 

the testing and process. (Who pays? How is it funded?) (T33) 

85. Which agency/agencies are responsible for UA’s? Who pays? How is it funded? (T33, 

Cost Table) 

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86. What funds are used to pay treatment providers for services for Drug Court clients? (Specific agency, Drug Court funds, private insurance, Medicaid, or other 

state/county/federal funds) How much is covered by each funding source? Which agency 

is the keeper of these funds? (In which agency’s budget are such funds allocated?) [Cost 

Table] 

87. Are the providers paid per client or service, or are they paid with a blanket, fixed-cost 

contract? [Cost Table] 

88. Have the treatment providers and/or the services they provide changed since implementation? (We need to find out which providers were operating at the time of our sample and 

find out information for them. Who was providing treatment during the time of our sample)? (T11) 

Probation 

89. Does your agency provide treatment directly to drug court clients? (as compared to referrals, administrative oversight, etc.) (T26) 

Drug Testing 

90. What is the urinalysis and other drug testing process? (Frequency per participant, what 

types of tests are given, who is responsible, who coordinates them, who administers them, 

and how are they conducted—observed or not?) (T33) 

91. Are drug tests assigned randomly? If not, how are they assigned? (T33) 

92. Who performs the analysis? (For UA’s and any other tests they use.) If contracted with a 

tech. company, what is the billable cost per UA? (T33, Cost Table) 

93. (If not contracted out) How much do you pay for each type of drug test? (What are the 

materials involved, how much of each are used per drug test, and what is the cost per 

unit?) (T33, Cost Table) 

94. Do clients pay for the full cost of their drug tests? Do they pay for some of the cost of 

their drug tests? What percentage would you estimate? (T39, Cost Table) 

95. Has the drug testing process changed since the drug court was implemented? (T33) 

Fee Structure 

96. Is there a fee required of drug court participants? If yes, how much is the fee? Is it on a 

sliding scale? If so, what is the scale, and how is the client’s eligibility determined? What 

percentage of participants would you estimate pay the entire fee? (T39, Cost Table) 

97. Is full payment required for graduation? Is payment reduced if the participant successfully completes the program? (T36, T39, Cost Table) 

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98. Who collects the fees? Where does the money go? What is the money used for? (T39, 

Cost Table) 

99. Has the fee structure changed over time? If yes, when and how? (Was it the same at the 

time of our sample?) (T39, Cost Table) 

Rewards/Sanctions 

100. What is considered good behavior? (T34) 

101. What kinds of rewards are given for good behavior? (Applause, physical rewards such 

as key chains or movie tickets, less frequent court appearances) How often do you use 

rewards? Are rewards given as consistently as sanctions? Do you feel that you use rewards more or less often than sanctions? (T34) 

102. Does the drug court team work together to determine sanctions and rewards? Does your 

drug court have any new or creative/different sanctions or rewards? (T34, T35) 

103. Has the reward/sanction process changed (since implementation)? (T34, T35) 

104. What behaviors are considered non-compliant? (Failure to appear at court or treatment 

sessions, positive UAs, subsequent criminal referrals) (T35) 

105. What kinds of sanctions are imposed as a result? (Bench warrants, writing papers, sit 

sanctions, community service, residential treatment, more frequent UAs or court appearances, detention, etc.) (T35) 

106. Are sanctions graduated? How frequently are sanctions given? (Rare or quite common?) What is the process for determining sanctions? (T35) 

107. How consistently are sanctions imposed for similar non-compliance behaviors? Are all 

offenders treated alike? If not, what characteristics affect decisions regarding sanctions 

(e.g., risk level, number of offenses)? How are the sanctions administered? (T35) 

108. How swiftly/quickly are sanctions imposed after non-compliant behavior? (Immediately? At the next court session?) (T35) 

109. Who imposes the sanctions? (The Judge only? Probation officer? Treatment provider? 

Anyone else?) (T35) 

Failure 

110. What would prompt removing an offender from participation in the drug court program? (Note: some drug courts call graduation “successful termination” and failure 

“unsuccessful termination” Prompts: New arrest for drug possession or trafficking? Arrest for violent offense? Arrest for other non-violent offenses? Nonparticipation or noncompliance with treatment or court orders? Failure to appear? Dirty UAs? Other?) 

(T38) 

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111. If a participant is terminated/does not complete drug court, what happens next? (Standard court process, stipulated facts trial, or another part because they have already pled 

guilty?) (T38) 

112. Has the termination process changed (since implementation)? If yes, when and how? 

(T38) 

Graduation 

113. What are the incentives to complete the drug court program? (Charges dismissed, guilty 

pleas stricken, probation in lieu of incarceration, probation shortened, felony reduced to 

misdemeanor, other incentives?) (T7) 

114. What are the requirements for graduation? (Number of days clean, payment of fines 

and drug court fees, employment, suitable housing, GED, other requirements) (T36) 

115. Please describe the drug court graduation and the graduation activities. (T36) 

116. How often is a graduation ceremony held? (T36) 

117. What funds are used to pay for the graduation ceremony? (T36) 

118. Does graduation from drug court mean an end of probation? (T36) 

119. In your experience, do you think certain types of program participation have different 

graduation rates? (For example, first timers versus repeat felons, type of addiction, a 

particular age group, etc.) (T36) 

120. Has the graduation process changed over time? If yes, when and how? (What was it 

like at the time of our sample?) If yes, do you know what factors have affected the 

graduation rate? (T36) 

Aftercare 

121. Is there an aftercare program for the drug court? Is it mandated? Does aftercare occur 

before or after graduation? (T37) 

122. What are the requirements of the aftercare program and what services are offered? 

(T37) 

123. What agency administers aftercare? Is it an in-house or contractual activity? If it is a 

contractual program, how is the contractor compensated? (e.g., per client per period of 

time, lump sum per period of time, per service consumed, etc.) (T37, Cost Table) 

124. Who is involved with aftercare activities? What are those activities? How much time do 

they spend on each of those activities? (Time per client?) (T37, Cost Table) 

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125. How long does it last? (T16, T37) 

126. What happens upon completion? (Incentives to complete?) (T7) 

127. Has the aftercare program changed since the program was implemented? (What was it 

like at the time of our sample?) (T37) 

Regular (non drug court) court process 

(Ask State’s/District Attorney, PD, Judge, Probation): 

128. Are you (or your agency) involved with non-drug court activities? (Regular Process 

Table) 

129. Do you attend court for non-drug court cases? What kinds of cases? How often? 

(Regular Process Table) 

130. What is your role for these kinds of cases? (What activities are you involved in?) 

(Regular Process Table) 

131. (If you’ve created a flow chart refer to Business As Usual Flow Chart) In order to understand what happens to the comparison group, please describe the general court process and options for a person who is arrested on a drug court-eligible charge, but not involved in drug court. Please go through the whole process starting with the arrest and 

ending with the different types of sentencing. In particular, explore the flow and who is 

involved. (Probe: Are offenders placed on probation? Do they usually complete probation requirements, or can they be released from probation early?) (Regular Process 

Table) 

132. Who appears at a typical regular court (non-drug court) hearing? (Name the position of 

everyone in the courtroom who would appear for an average, typical case, as well as 

their corresponding agency. Probe: Public Defender, State’s/District Attorney, treatment providers, Court Clerks, Court Reporter, Judge, Bailiff, etc.) (Regular Process 

Table, Cost Table) 

133. Is treatment ever a condition of the offender’s sentence? (e.g., as a condition of probation) How often? What is the probation process in these instances? What is the treatment process in these instances? (Regular Process Table) 

134. Do you know who or what agency performs the UA testing for non-drug court offenders? What agency handles treatment for cases not involved in drug court? (Regular 

Process Table) 

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Other IMPORTANT Questions (Ask these of every interviewee!) 

135. What do you feel are some notable or unique characteristics of your drug court? (Character of court, reputation) (T42, any other relevant section) 

136. What do you think are the most promising practices of this drug court? ) (T42, any 

other relevant section) 

137. Are there any changes you would like to see happen that you think would improve the 

program or make it more effective? (T42, any other relevant section) 

138. Are there any issues (idiosyncratic problems) that you have found at your particular 

part of the drug court process? ) Do you face any challenges while performing your 

job? (T42, any other relevant section) 

139. We need to find a group of individuals who would be eligible for drug court, but have 

not participated. If you were attempting to find this kind of group, how would you go 

about it? ) (T43)

 Ending the Interview 

Is there anything else that you’d like to add about all the questions I’ve asked you? Is there 

anything that you think I’ve missed? 

Thank the respondent for their time and ask if they have any questions for you. Ask if they 

would be willing to be contacted should you have any follow-up or clarifying questions for 

them. If they agree, ask if they prefer to be called or emailed. 

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