The Portland Target City Project (PTCP) aims at improving the public substance abuse treatment system by emphasizing the goals of increasing access to treatment for priority populations, improving treatment effectiveness, promoting inter-organizational linkages, and creating a self-correcting system. Major elements of the program include centralized assessment and referral with a standardized, comprehensive assessment protocol, centralized inmate intake and pretreatment services, and program evaluation. This study compared outcomes of PTCP clients with outcomes from clients from the pre-PTCP system, and considered how these outcomes differed between the two major centralized intake units in PTCP. Clients were interviewed at the time of their initial assessment as well as 6 and 12 months thereafter. Findings of the study indicate that all client groups improved over time in the areas of alcohol, drugs, legal, and psychiatric problems. There was a differential improvement favoring the CIU over provider intake only for legal problems. Clients that went directly to providers for intake reported more problems in alcohol, drug, and psychiatric areas than did the CIU clients. The psychiatric composite score was a powerful predictor of problems in alcohol, drug, medical, and legal areas. The jail CIU clients more frequently reported problems in the legal, psychiatric, and drug use areas than did clients from the freestanding CIU. PTCP was able to centralize and rationalize the system of intake with no damage to client outcome and with some benefit. 2 figures, 4 tables, 11 references