Empirical Investigation of "Going to Scale" in Drug Interventions in the United States, 1990, 2003

Despite a growing consensus among scholars that substance abuse treatment is effective in reducing offending, strict eligibility rules have limited the impact of current models of therapeutic jurisprudence on public safety. This research effort was aimed at providing policy makers some guidance on whether expanding this model to more drug-involved offenders is cost-beneficial. Since data needed for providing evidence-based analysis of this issue were not readily available, micro-level data from three nationally representative sources were used to construct a 40,320 case synthetic dataset -- defined using population profiles rather than sampled observation -- that was used to estimate the benefits of going to scale in treating drug involved offenders. The principal investigators combined information from the NATIONAL SURVEY ON DRUG USE AND HEALTH, 2003 (ICPSR 4138) and the ARRESTEE DRUG ABUSE MONITORING (ADAM) PROGRAM IN THE UNITED STATES, 2003 (ICPSR 4020) to estimate the likelihood of drug addiction or dependence problems and develop nationally representative prevalence estimates. They used information in the DRUG ABUSE TREATMENT OUTCOME STUDY (DATOS), 1991-1994 (ICPSR 2258) to compute expected crime reducing benefits of treating various types of drug involved offenders under four different treatment modalities. The project computed expected crime reducing benefits that were conditional on treatment modality as well as arrestee attributes and risk of drug dependence or abuse. Moreover, the principal investigators obtained estimates of crime reducing benefits for all crimes as well as select sub-types. Variables include age, race, gender, offense, history of violence, history of treatment, co-occurring alcohol problem, criminal justice system status, geographic location, arrest history, and a total of 134 prevalence and treatment effect estimates and variances.

尽管学界已日益达成共识，认为药物滥用治疗（substance abuse treatment）在减少犯罪行为方面成效显著，但严格的准入规则限制了当前治疗性司法（therapeutic jurisprudence）模式对公共安全的积极影响。本研究旨在为政策制定者提供决策参考，以判断将该模式推广至更多涉毒违法者是否具备成本效益。由于用于该问题的循证分析所需数据难以直接获取，研究团队采用三份具有全国代表性的数据源的微观层面数据，构建了一个包含40320个案例的合成数据集（synthetic dataset）——该数据集基于人口特征而非抽样观测构建，用于评估扩大涉毒违法者治疗规模所能带来的综合收益。首席研究员结合了2003年《全国药物使用与健康调查》（NATIONAL SURVEY ON DRUG USE AND HEALTH, 2003，ICPSR 4138）与2003年美国被捕者药物滥用监测项目（ARRESTEE DRUG ABUSE MONITORING, ADAM, 2003，ICPSR 4020）的相关信息，估算了药物成瘾或依赖问题的发生概率，并生成了具有全国代表性的患病率估算结果。他们还借助1991-1994年《药物滥用治疗结果研究》（DRUG ABUSE TREATMENT OUTCOME STUDY, DATOS, 1991-1994，ICPSR 2258）中的数据，计算了四种不同治疗模式下，针对各类涉毒违法者的预期犯罪减少收益。本项目计算了与治疗模式、被捕者个体特征以及药物依赖或滥用风险挂钩的预期犯罪减少收益。此外，首席研究员还得出了针对所有犯罪类型以及部分细分犯罪类型的犯罪减少收益估算值。该数据集涵盖的变量包括：年龄、种族、性别、犯罪类型、暴力史、既往治疗史、共病酒精问题、刑事司法系统状态、地理位置、被捕史，以及总计134项患病率、治疗效果估算值及其方差。