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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Randall T. Brown, MD, School of Medicine and Public Health, Department of Population Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin, 777 S. Mills St., Madison, WI 53715, 608-263-6558, rtbrown@wisc.edu

More than nine hundred county, tribal, and territorial jurisdictions in the United States offer drug court treatment programs (DCTP) as an alternative to incarceration for drug offenders with substance use disorders. Although there have been many positive reports on DCTP effectiveness, there has been little research on demographic and clinical factors that predict DCTP effectiveness. The DCTP of Dane County, Wisconsin (including Madison) provided data on their 160 participants who achieved a final outcome of treatment completion or failure during 2001 or 2002. Stepwise logistic regression was undertaken to construct a model of significant predictors of substance abuse treatment completion among these participants. There were no associations between treatment completion and age, gender, socioeconomic status, educational achievement, prior arrests, current criminal charges, substance use history, or treatment history. The only statistically significant predictor of treatment failure, while controlling for age and gender, was presence of an alcohol use disorder [OR 5.89, 95% CI (4.34, 9.09)]. Conclusions include: (1) When considering the probability of treatment completion among drug court participants, substance use factors appear to be of greater importance than demographic, social, and most clinical factors; and (2) alcohol misuse influences likelihood of treatment completion to a greater degree than illicit substance misuse. This finding is an important one, as alcohol use disorders are typically not addressed by drug court treatment programming.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the importance of drug courts as an alternative to incarceration for substance abusing offenders.
• Discuss the impact of drug court participant characteristics upon the likelihood of substance abuse treatment completion.

Keywords: Substance Abuse, Criminal Justice

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered