Drug treatment courts and community-level crime

Patrick F. Hibbard and Jason E. Chapman

Journal of Criminal Justice, 2024, vol. 94, issue C

Abstract: Research has recognized Adult Drug Treatment Courts (DTCs) as benefitting participants, with a wide body of research demonstrating lower levels of recidivism and drug use. A budding community-level body of research, however, has returned mixed results, some studies showing increases in arrests and crime relative to DTC initiation. Since DTCs cover over three-fourths of the US population, results showing such unintended consequences must be validated and rectified if held. This study estimated effects for DTCs for community-level crime effects from 1990 to 2018 using a stacked event study identification strategy. Most results indicated no significant effects. However, for population groups between 10,000 and 50,000, DTCs were associated with reductions in some crime categories. Violent index offenses offered the most robust results, and there was a small increase in non-index crimes in communities with populations between 50,000 and 100,000.

Keywords: Drug courts; Econometrics; Fixed-effects analysis; Quasi-experimental criminology; Stacked event study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047235224001168
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jcjust:v:94:y:2024:i:c:s0047235224001168

DOI: 10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2024.102267

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Criminal Justice is currently edited by Matthew DeLisi

More articles in Journal of Criminal Justice from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().