Public Safety Canada Research Summary on Effectiveness of Drug Treatment Courts

The most recent issue of the Weekly Checklist of Canadian government publications refers to a research summary done by Public Safety Canada on the Effectiveness of Drug Treatment Courts.

These are courts that seek to divert non-violent offenders who are drug abusers into treatment programs. There are some 1,700 drug treatment courts around the world, including here in Canada.

Public Safety Canada looked at 96 existing studies to evaluate them:

"This study highlights the issue that there are very few methodically-sound studies on which one can assess the effectiveness of drug courts at reducing recidivism (...)"

"Although reductions of 4 to 8% in recidivism were found, these findings must be tempered by the generally poor methodologies used in evaluations of drug treatment courts and the quality of treatment. "

(...)

"Program evaluators and agencies that provide funding support for drug treatment programs should insure that methodologically sound evaluations are conducted in order to draw more reliable conclusions on the effectiveness of drug treatment courts."

The Weekly Checklist includes a listing of book and serial titles which have been released during the previous week by the Parliament of Canada, federal departments, and Statistics Canada.