Matching Services to Client Needs in Drug Court

描述(由申请人提供)： 这是对NIDA补助金#R01-DA-13096的竞争性延续申请，即毒品法院司法地位听证的作用。这项为期四年的研究的目的是实验性地隔离司法地位听证对毒品法庭结果的影响，并确定与地位听证相互作用的客户特征。一项随机对照试验的结果显示，在毒品法庭期间或入院后6个月或12个月，身份听证对咨询就诊、尿检结果、官方再次逮捕和重新定罪、自我报告的药物使用或犯罪活动没有主要影响。然而，有反社会人格障碍或既往药物滥用治疗失败史的“高风险”受试者在被分配到两周一次的听证会时表现更好，而没有这些风险因素的“低风险”受试者在被分配到根据需要举行的听证会时表现更好。 在NIDA和CSAT的补充支持下，我们在农村和城市社区的两个新司法管辖区复制了这些发现中的几个。不幸的是，我们被要求过早地停止复制研究，因为某些高危违规者在需要的情况下表现得异常糟糕。因此，复制样本的小NS可能不能代表目标人群，我们没有足够的统计能力来跟踪其他一些调查结果或进行较长期的结果分析。必须在一项全面的研究中确认这些相互作用的影响，更好地处理如何解释这些相互作用的影响，并确定如何最好地利用这些影响，以造福于毒品法庭客户和毒品法庭项目。 我们开始实施一项前瞻性配对研究，以跟进这些发现。我们预计在现有资金用完之前完成一半的招聘，我们要求再提供三年的支持，以完成招聘，跟踪参与者两年，并传播我们的调查结果。具体目的是评估将毒品法庭客户与适当的地位听证时间表相匹配的影响，考虑到他们的风险水平；找出可能解释地位听证对结果产生影响的过程的潜在中介或调节变量；以及找出与司法地位听证相互作用的其他风险因素或匹配变量。 我们是第一个完成毒品法庭状态听证随机对照研究的研究小组，我们在五个不同法庭的实验条件高度完整的情况下完成了这项研究。我们在法院拥有训练有素的工作人员；制定了安全、道德和有效的研究程序；并召集了由主要毒品法院利益攸关方组成的地方指导委员会，为项目提供指导。这项申请的目标是跟进我们极其重要和实用的发现，维护这一研究基础设施，并继续对涉及毒品的犯罪分子进行异常成功的研究计划。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This is a competing continuation application for NIDA grant #R01-DA-13096, The Role of Judicial Status Hearings in Drug Court. The aims of this four-year study were to experimentally isolate the effects of judicial status hearings on drug court outcomes and to identify client characteristics that interact with status hearings. Results of a randomized controlled trial revealed no main effect of status hearings on counseling attendance, urinalysis results, official re-arrests and re-convictions, or self-reported substance use or criminal activity during drug court or at 6 months or 12 months post-admission. However, "high-risk" subjects who had Antisocial Personality Disorder or a prior failed history in drug abuse treatment performed more favorably when assigned to bi-weekly hearings, whereas "low-risk" subjects without these risk factors performed more favorably when assigned to as-needed hearings. With Supplemental support from NIDA and CSAT, we replicated several of these findings in two new jurisdictions in rural and urban communities. Unfortunately, we were required to stop the replication study prematurely because certain high-risk offenders were performing exceptionably poorly in the as-needed condition. As a result, the small Ns for the replication sample may not be representative of the target population and we do not have sufficient statistical power to follow up on some of the other findings or to conduct longer-term outcome analyses. It is essential to confirm these interaction effects in a fully powered study, to gain a better handle on how to explain these interaction effects, and to determine how best to exploit these effects for the benefit of drug court clients and drug court programs. We began implementing a prospective matching study to follow up on these findings. We expect to complete half of the recruitment before the current funding runs out and we are asking for three additional years of support to complete recruitment, follow participants for two years, and disseminate our findings. The Specific Aims are to evaluate the effects of matching drug court clients to the appropriate schedule of status hearings given their risk level; identify potential mediating or moderating variables that may explain the process by which status hearings exert their effects on outcomes; and identify other risk factors or matching variables that interact with judicial status hearings. We are the first research group to accomplish a randomized controlled study of status hearings in drug court and we have done so with high integrity of the experimental conditions in five different courts. We have highly trained staffs on-site at the courts; developed safe, ethical, and effective research procedures; and convened local Steering Committees comprised of the key drug court stakeholders to provide guidance to the projects. The goal of this application is to follow up on our extremely important and practical findings, to maintain this research infrastructure, and to continue conducting an unusually successful program of research with drug-involved criminal offenders.