The experience of recent years has vividly demonstrated the seriousness of drug abuse among both juvenile and adult offenders. Research and treatment utilization surveys, however, do not typically attempt to identify the level of treatment need among juvenile and adult offenders, the types of programs available, and the treatment utilization rates of offenders. The major long-term objective of the proposed national study is to produce estimates of the treatment need, availability, and utilization that can not only inform the treatment and justice communities about current patterns but also assist in the planning and provision of drug abuse treatment to juvenile and adult offenders.
Specific aims are to: (1) estimate the level of treatment need in the juvenile and adult offender populations; (2) identify the range of programs that are available to juvenile and adult offenders, in institutions as well as in the community, including a separate examination of types of programs that studies have found to be effective for offenders; (3) estimate treatment utilization for the juvenile and adult offender populations overall, in light of the need for and availability of treatment; (4) estimate treatment utilization for as many subgroups of offenders and treatment program types as possible (e.g., females, minorities, treatment modality, geographic areas, institution vs. community, urban vs. rural); and (5) develop protocols for continued secondary analysis of these data to allow projections based on changes in the configuration of the populations of offenders and of treatment programs. Two types of analysis are planned. First, basic estimates of need, availability, and utilization (described above) will be calculated overall and for each subgroup for which data are available. Although the calculations themselves are relatively simple, the preliminary work is complex and must assure that the data are the best available to make the estimates, that the sampling issues have been appropriately dealt with, and that the appropriate statistical techniques and software are used (e.g., SUDAAN). Second, the study will examine the possibility of modeling the factors that may be associated with treatment utilization patterns. Whether and what type of modeling can be conducted is completely dependent upon the characteristics of the data. At a minimum, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression will be investigated as a possible analysis tool for examining characteristics that predict variation in rates of availability and utilization of treatment.
