Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court Case Study

from the program. Since 1992 when the local adult drug court was funded, it has successfully graduated about 4,500 people in total.
In addition, the Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court (BCDTC) is a jurisdiction of interest whose success will be examined. The Baltimore City Drug Treatment Court was established in 1994 prior to a response by a report presented by the Bar Association of Baltimore city in 1990. There was a rough estimate of about 85% of crimes committed in Baltimore city were related to addiction. The BCDTC are consistent in intensive supervision, a minimum of three meeting with probation officers per month, two home visits and verification of employment status per month. The experimental research design began in February 1997 with 235 clients randomly assigned to either control for circuit courts or control for district court and all the data were

The BCDTC experienced a great achievement as the program is reduced criminal offending in a population of drug-addicted chronic offenders. What is more? The program appears to have been successful at establishing a credible threat of future punishment for the drug court clients, and sanctions for noncompliance. Gottfredson and Exum Claim that “BCDTC received harsher sentences as a result of their initial arrest than did the control study participants, both in terms of incarceration and probation sentences” (2002). Both circuit and district court especially the circuit court are found to be successful at imposing a threat of future incarceration. On the other side of the coin, the Program fails to differentiate between in-program recidivism and post-program recidivism. Post program client’s behavior might be different from client behavior during intensive supervision and this might cause an overlap in behavior. Reducing criminal activity is clearly a