Treatment Courts

Minnesota DWI Courts: A Summary of Evaluation Findings in Nine DWI Court Programs (PDF)

Since 2012, there have been three major studies released of Minnesota’s drug courts:
 

2012 Drug Court Evaluation:

In 2012, the Minnesota Judicial Branch released the first comprehensive evaluation of the effectiveness of Minnesota’s drug courts. The groundbreaking study, which compared 535 drug court participants to similar offenders who experienced traditional court processes over two-and-a-half years, found that drug courts:

• Significantly reduced recidivism;
• Reduced incarceration and related costs for drug court participants; and
• Improved what the study called, “community functioning measures” for drug court participants. Specific improvements:
  • Unemployment dropped from 62 percent at drug court entry to 37 percent at drug court discharge for all participants – including those who did not graduate.
  • The unemployment rate for participants who graduated from a drug court program dropped from about 50 percent at entry to less than 15 percent at graduation.
  • Twenty percent of graduates raised their highest educational attainment during their time in the drug court program.
  • Almost three-fourths of graduates who were not compliant with their obligation to pay child support at the beginning of their drug court participation were compliant upon completion.

2014 Drug Court Evaluation:
The 2012 drug court evaluation showed the real impact that Minnesota’s drug courts were having on some of the most high-risk drug offenders in the state. At that time, it was decided that continued monitoring of the progress of these drug court participants was in order to learn whether the improved outcomes were sustainable in the long-term.
 
Thanks to this continued evaluation, for an additional year-and-a-half, the long-lasting impact drug courts have on the lives of participants, and the real benefits drug courts provide to Minnesota communities, are now available.

• Drug Court participants continue to have a significantly lower rate of recidivism: Comparing offenders who spent similar amounts of time outside of incarceration (“at-risk time”) during the evaluation period, the new study shows drug court participants consistently had significantly lower recidivism rates. For example, among those offenders who reached four years of “at-risk time” during the evaluation, 28 percent of drug court participants had received a new conviction, compared to 41 percent of non-drug court participants.
• Drug Court participants also spent fewer days incarcerated: Drug court participants spent, on average, 74 fewer days incarcerated in jail or prison compared to similar offenders during the four-year evaluation period. The average cost savings for each drug court participant was $4,288 as a result of this reduced incarceration.

2014 DWI Court Evaluation:

Nine existing DWI courts were evaluated in this study funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The study showed that:

• DWI courts reduce recidivism: DWI court graduates (those who completed a DWI court program) had lower re-arrest rates compared to DWI offenders who experienced traditional court processes at eight out of the nine DWI courts included in the evaluation. The reduction in re-arrest rates ranged from 31 percent to 78 percent among graduates of these programs.
• Minnesota DWI courts have completion rates well above the national average: The nine DWI courts included in the evaluation had completion rates ranging from 65 percent to 86 percent; well above the national average of 53 percent for drug and DWI court programs. In addition, these completion rates are at least double the national completion rate (35 percent) for intensive, non-court-monitored outpatient treatment. According to the evaluation, “this indicates that the court monitoring component in DWI courts may well lead to participants staying in the program longer, and to higher completion rates.”
• DWI courts save taxpayer money: Six of the seven programs that were included in a cost analysis showed cost savings due to reduced recidivism for DWI court participants. The average cost savings to local agencies and the state in these six programs ranged from $1,694 to $11,386 per participant over two years.

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