Drug courts across the country are helping substance-abusing offenders stop using drugs and start on the path to recovery through a combination of judicial supervision, mandatory drug testing, escalating sanctions, incentives, and treatment. The drug court movement continues to grow rapidly: This year alone, almost 300 jurisdictions applied to our Drug Courts Program Office to plan or implement a new drug court or enhance an existing one. As it becomes evident that drug courts can significantly reduce drug use and recidivism, the interest in this problem-solving approach to managing substance abusing offenders grows among the court and treatment communities.
A critical factor to increasing our knowledge about the effective outcomes of drug courts is program evaluation. This document highlights the importance of evaluating drug courts and the inextricable link between evaluation and effective data collection and information systems. Our Drug Courts Program Office (DCPO), headed by Marilyn M. Roberts, has taken a number of steps to develop the capacity for data collection and evaluation among its grantees. The office convened a meeting in March 1997 that focused on, among other things, the need for program evaluation and ways to overcome obstacles associated with obtaining data on program participants to adequately monitor and evaluate the impact of drug court programs. The drug court professionals who attended this focus group developed a basic data set of information that drug courts should maintain. This data set is included as appendix A to this document and has been developed into a form that will be used by the DCPO to collect data from current and future drug court grantees.
The importance of data collection and management information systems to drug court daily operation, as well as to drug court process and impact evaluations, was the focus of a second meeting convened by the DCPO last September. This meeting brought together drug court practitioners, researchers, court managers and management information specialists.
This document reports the best thinking of drug court practitioners and experts on these important topics of evaluation and management information systems. The collaboration between the DCPO and practitioners to produce the material presented here is the kind of joint effort that strengthens our ability to provide quality support to the field through our drug court grant program. The DCPO is using the recommendations provided in this report to formulate a specialized technical assistance program focused on the development of drug court program evaluations and management information systems.I hope every community that currently has a drug court or is considering initiating a drug court program can use this publication to improve the design of its management information system and how it monitors and evaluates its program. The knowledge gained through these assessments can help ensure that the drug court movement will continue to grow and can truly make a difference in communities across this country.
Office of Justice Programs
U.S. Department of Justice
May 1998