Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Drug courts emerged in the 1990s in response to frustration with the criminal justice system’s ineffective policies toward drug crimes and as an alternative to incarcerating drug offenders.  While drug courts have received a great deal of attention from criminologists, many finding substantial reductions in recidivism, only a handful of these studies were able to identify unbiased estimates of the effect of the program (Mitchell, Wilson, Eggers, & MacKenzie, 2012).  These studies typically have small sample sizes and are only able to observe outcomes up to two years after program entry.   Recently, drug courts have been criticized by groups favoring a public health approach to drug-use and by those concerned over the courts’ restrictions on due process.  These groups have pointed out that while the number of drug courts in the United States has grown dramatically in recent decades, so has the number of incarcerated drug offenders, from 41,000 in 1980 to half a million in 2014 (Carson, 2015).

In this paper, we use detailed criminal court records and leverage county-level variation in the rollout of drug treatment courts in Oklahoma with a difference-in-difference strategy to estimate the impact of these courts on mortality and on recidivism behavior over a long time-horizon (10 years).  This approach compares the outcomes of defendants with similar drug charges in the same county before and after the implementation of a drug court in that county.

We also use detailed administrative data obtained from Oklahoma drug courts to contribute further to the existing literature by measuring the impact of additional mentoring and services in combination with the usual drug court program.  Specifically, in a difference-in-difference framework, we compare the recidivism and mortality outcomes of veteran drug offenders in the same county before and after the implementation of special veteran treatment courts.  Not only is this population of particular interest to policymakers, but we are able to capture a parameter that is especially relevant for drug policy: the effectiveness of wrapping additional services around traditional drug treatment courts.