Leigh A. Henderson, PhD, Synectics for Management Decisions, Inc., 1901 North Moore Street, Suite 900, Arlington, VA 22209, 410-235-3096, leighh@smdi.com, Lev S. Sverdlov, MD, PhD, Synectics for Mnagement Decisions, Inc., 1901 North Moore Street, Suite 900, Arlington, VA 22209, and Deborah Trunzo, Office of Applied Studies, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 5600 Fishers Lane, Suite 16-105, Rockville, MD 20857.

Compulsory treatment is a way to engage offenders with substance abuse problems in treatment and to reduce the population burden of substance abuse. Criminal and drug courts coerced a significant and increasing proportion of substance abusers to treatment. The effectiveness of this approach is reported at the program, local, and State levels (McPhail & Wiest, 1995; Taxman, 2000 and 2001; Young 2002; Young & Belenko, 2002).

This paper will provide a description of the population of clients referred to substance abuse treatment by the criminal justice system using data from the Treatment Episode Data Set (TEDS). TEDS is the annual compilation of all annual admissions to public funded substance abuse treatment facilities. From 1992 to 2001 the number of substance abuse admissions increased form 1.5 million to 1.7 million. The proportion of admissions referred by the criminal justice system consistently represented about one-third of all admissions. The report will compare the admissions referred by criminal justice with admissions referred by other sources. The comparisons will be made by major demographic, social, and clinical characteristics available from TEDS. The cross-sectional analysis will be complemented with analysis of trends in demographic, social, and clinical characteristics of the populations referred by the criminal justice system and by other sources.

The paper will discuss the contribution of the criminal justice system to substance abuse treatment in the United States and major trends among substance abuse treatment admissions referred by the criminal justice system.

Learning Objectives: