Jail drug and alcohol treatment program reduces recidivism in nonviolent offenders: a longitudinal study of Monroe County, New York's, Jail Treatment Drug and Alcohol Program

Substance abuse treatment has become the new fashion for reducing recidivism among inmates. But the question is, does this work? Various studies have been done tracking the same cohort of inmates over time to assess the validity of treatment. This study assesses one treatment program's success over 5 years to determine if drug and alcohol treatment reduces recidivism among nonviolent, short-term (sentence of less than a year) inmates. Monroe County's drug treatment program demonstrates that for 1 year after receiving the treatment, three different cohorts of nonviolent, short-term inmates (1995, 1998, and 2000) were found to be substantially less likely to be recidivists than control group inmates.     

The predictive and convergent validity of a psychometric battery used to assess sexual offenders in a treatment programme: an 18-year follow-up

Abstract

This study examined sex offender risk and treatment change based on a battery of psychometric assessment measures administered to 267 treated adult Canadian federal sex offenders followed up an average 18 years post release. Several significant pre–post changes that were frequently moderate in magnitude (d>.50) were observed across these measures. A factor analysis of the psychometric battery generated three broad need domains consistent with the extant literature that were labelled Socioemotional Functioning, Anger/Hostility, and Misogynist Attitudes. The three need domains and a Need Total, created by their summation, converged with the Violence Risk Scale—Sexual Offender version (VRS-SO; Wong, Olver, Nicholaichuk, & Gordon, 2003) in conceptually meaningful ways and predicted sexual and violent recidivism to varying degrees. Raw measurements of change obtained from pre-to posttreatment frequently bore weak and non-significant relationships to outcome. However, after creating standardised residual change scores to control for pre-treatment score, treatment changes in the individual measures, need domains and Need Total improved significantly in their prediction of reductions in general and sexual violence.     

Effectiveness of a risk–need–responsivity‐based treatment program for violent and sexual offenders: Results of a retrospective,quasi‐experimental study

Purpose

Relapse prevention is an important goal in correctional settings. Although there is strong evidence for the effectiveness of certain treatment programs for juvenile offenders, those for adults lack such evidence. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a risk–need–responsivity (RNR)‐based intervention.

Methods

A quasi‐experimental, observational study design and cox regression analysis were used to compare treated violent and sexual offenders (n = 171) with untreated offenders (n = 241).

Results

Both groups were observed for an average of 7.9 years. Recidivism rates of treated offenders (11.7%, n = 20) were similar to those of control offenders (15.8%, n = 38; p = .25). When controlling for confounding variables, the hazard of recidivism in the treatment group was 5.2% lower than that in the control group. Subdividing the treatment group resulted in lower hazard ratios for offenders still in therapy when released and offenders cancelling therapy. However, none of the group differences was statistically significant.

Conclusion

Our results show that control and RNR‐based treatment groups had comparable recidivism rates with a trend towards a positive treatment effect, especially for people in outpatient treatment. However, criminal history, age at the start of follow‐up, and actuarial risk of recidivism were significantly associated with recidivism. Future research needs to apply elaborate methodological approaches to detect robust treatment effects and consider different criteria of treatment effectiveness. Furthermore, the influence of prison climate, motivational factors, intervention quality, and factors supporting the success of outpatient treatment should be considered in future studies of larger offender samples.