Since 1989, when the first drug court program was established, the number of drug court programs has increased substantially. In addition, DCPO’s oversight responsibilities and funding to support the planning, implementation, and enhancement of these programs have increased. As shown in figure 1, the number of operating drug court programs has more than tripled since our prior report from about 250 in 1997 to almost 800 in 2001 based on information available as of December 31, 2001. The number of operating programs that received DCPO funding, and thus were subject to its oversight, has also grown—from over 150 in fiscal year 1997 to over 560 through fiscal year 2001. As shown in figure 2, the number of drug court programs started by calendar year since our prior report has also increased. Although the number of drug court programs started in 2001 dropped, over 450 additional programs have been identified as being planned based on information available as of December 31, 2001. Based on information available as of December 31, 2001, drug court programs were operating in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Only New Hampshire and Vermont had no operating drug court programs. Six states (California, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, New York, and Ohio) accounted for over 40 percent of the programs. Appendix II provides information on the number of operating drug court programs in each state. Although there are basic elements common to many drug court programs, the programs vary in terms of approaches used, participant eligibility and program requirements, type of treatment provided, sanctions and rewards, and other practices. Drug court programs also target various populations (adults, juveniles, families, and Native American tribes). Appendix III provides details on the number of drug court programs by targeted population, and appendix IV provides details on the drug court programs by jurisdiction and the types of funding, if any, the programs have received from DCPO. Federal funding for drug court programs has also continued to increase. As shown in table 1, congressional appropriations for the implementation of DOJ’s drug court program has increased from about $12 million in fiscal year 1995 to $50 million in fiscal years 2001 and 2002. Since fiscal year 1995, Congress has appropriated about $267 million in Violent Crime Act related funding to DOJ for the federal drug court program. DCPO funding in direct support of drug court programs has increased from an average of about $9 million in fiscal years 1995 and 1996 to an average of about $31 million for fiscal years 1997 through 2001. Between fiscal years 1995 and 2001, DCPO has awarded about $174.5 million in grants to fund the planning, implementation, and enhancement of drug court programs. About $21.5 million in technical assistance, training, and evaluations grants were awarded. About $19.6 million were obligated for management and administration purposes and to fund nongrant technical assistance, training, and evaluation efforts. Since the inception of the DCPO drug court program, a total of $3 million in prior year recoveries have been realized. About $4.5 million through fiscal year 2001 had not been obligated. Congress appropriated an additional $50 million for fiscal year 2002. At the time of our review, DCPO was in the process of administering the fiscal year 2002 grant award program. Appendix V provides details on the number, amount, and types of grants DCPO awarded since the implementation of the federal drug court program. Since 1998, DCPO implementation and enhancement grantees have been required to collect, and starting in 1999, to submit to DCPO, among other things, performance and outcome data on program participants. DCPO collects these data semiannually using a Drug Court Grantee Data Collection Survey. This survey was designed by DCPO to ensure that grantees were collecting critical information about their drug court programs and to assist in the national evaluation of drug court programs. In addition, DOJ intended to use the information to respond to inquiries regarding the effectiveness of drug court programs. However, due to various factors, DCPO has not sufficiently managed the collection and utilization of these data. As a result, DOJ cannot provide Congress, drug court program stakeholders, and others with reliable information on the performance and impact of federally funded drug court programs. Various factors contributed to insufficiencies in DOJ’s drug court program data collection effort. These factors included (1) inability of DOJ to readily identify the universe of DCPO-funded drug court programs, including those subject to DCPO’s data collection reporting requirements; (2) inability of DOJ to accurately determine the number of drug court programs that responded to DCPO’s semiannual data collection survey; (3) inefficiencies in the administration of DCPO’s semiannual data collection effort; (4) the elimination of post-program impact questions from the scope of DCPO’s data collection survey effort; and (5) the insufficient use of the Drug Court Clearinghouse. DOJ’s grant management information system, among other things, tracks the number and dollar amount of grants the agency has awarded to state and local jurisdictions and Native American tribes to plan, implement, and enhance drug court programs. This system, however, is unable to readily identify the actual number of drug court programs DCPO has funded. Specifically, the system does not contain a unique drug court program identifier, does not track grants awarded to a single grantee but used for more than one drug court program, and contains data entry errors that impact the reliability of data on the type of grants awarded. For example, at the time of our review, the system contained some incorrectly assigned grant numbers, did not always identify the type of grant awarded, and incorrectly identified several grantees as receiving a planning, implementation, and enhancement grant in fiscal year 2000. These factors made it difficult for DCPO to readily produce an accurate universe of the drug court programs that had received DCPO funding and were subject to DCPO’s data collection reporting requirement. Although DOJ has been able to provide information to enable an estimate of the universe of DCPO-funded drug court programs to be derived, the accuracy of this information is questionable because DCPO has relied on the Drug Court Clearinghouse to determine the number of DCPO-funded drug court programs and their program implementation dates. One of the Drug Court Clearinghouse’s functions has been to identify DCPO-funded drug court programs. However, the Drug Court Clearinghouse has only been tasked since 1998 with following up with a segment of DCPO grantees to determine their implementation date. Thus, the information provided to DCPO on the universe of DCPO-funded drug court programs is at best an estimate and not a precise count of DCPO drug court program grantees. Noting that its current grant information system was not intended to readily identify and track the number of DCPO-funded drug court programs, DCPO officials said that they plan to develop a new management information system that will enable DOJ to do so. Without an accurate universe of DCPO-funded drug court programs, DCPO is unable to readily determine the actual number of programs or participants it has funded or, as discussed below, the drug court programs that should have responded to its semiannual data collection survey. According to DCPO officials, grantee response rates to DCPO’s semiannual survey have declined since DCPO began administering the survey in 1998. As shown in figure 3, the information in DCPO’s database indicated that grantee response rates declined from about 78 percent for the first survey reporting period (July to Dec. 1998) to about 32 percent for the July to December 2000 reporting period. However, results from our follow-up structured interviews with a representative sample of the identifiable universe of drug court programs that were DCPO grantees during the 2000 reporting periods revealed that DCPO did not have an accurate account of grantees’ compliance with its semiannual data collection survey. Based on our structured interviews, we estimate that the response rate to the DCPO data collection survey for the January to June 2000 reporting period was about 60 percent in contrast to the 39 percent response rate DCPO reported. Similarly, the response rate to the DCPO survey for the July to December 2000 reporting period was about 61 percent in contrast to the 32 percent response rate DCPO reported. The remaining programs did not respond or were uncertain as to whether they responded to DCPO’s data collection survey for each of the reporting periods in 2000. DOJ officials said that some of the surveys they did not receive may have been mailed to an incorrect office within DOJ. DCPO officials acknowledged that this type of error could be mitigated if DCPO routinely followed up with the drug court programs from which they did not receive responses. Furthermore, based on our follow-up structured interviews with a representative sample of DCPO-funded drug court programs that were listed as nonrespondents in DCPO’s database, we estimate that about 61 percent had actually responded to DCPO’s survey for the January to June 2000 reporting period. About two-thirds of these programs could produce evidence that they responded. For the July to December 2000 reporting period, we estimate that about 51 percent of the DCPO-funded drug court programs that were listed as nonrespondents in DCPO’s database had actually responded to the survey. About two-thirds of these programs could produce evidence that they responded. The requirement for grantees to submit DCPO’s semiannual survey is outlined in DOJ’s grant award notification letter that drug court program grantees receive at the beginning of their grant period. In addition, the survey is made available in the grantee application kit as well as on DCPO’s website.