The U.S. criminal justice system is awash with drug abusers. However, few approaches have been developed which focus on criminal justice involved drug abusers as they transition from prison to community treatment. This is alarming because it is estimated that 500,000 prisoners will return to the community each year for the next several years, and 83 percent of those returning are estimated to be drug abusers. This application is presented to focus on examining community transitions by establishing the Central States Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Research System (CJ-DATS) Center. The overall aim of the Central States CJ-DATS Center is to develop information to improve transition interventions for criminal justice involved drug abusers which reduce recidivism, reduce drug abuse, and reduce related crime. The established experience of the University of Kentucky Center on Drug and Alcohol Research is described to continue to carry out rural/urban theoretically grounded criminal justice studies, which build upon current research. These studies include two on-going NIDA trials which are examining an enhanced Probationer HIV intervention and an enhanced Drug Court employment intervention, as well as a project which is examining prison and community health services utilization among drug abusing prisoners in 5 prisons with 12 month follow-up from prison to the community. This application also describes four Central States Center Committees that will be established to (1) Plan, (2) Implement, (3) Collect/Analyze Data and (4) Develop Publications in concert with the Principal Investigator, the Center Steering Committee, and the Center Advisory Board. Letters of commitment from a State Corrections Commissioner, a State Substance Abuse Director, 6 criminal justice agencies, and 8 community treatment agencies present rural and urban subject availability of 15,709 criminal justice participants and 13,087 community treatment participants for the first year and subsequent years. In addition, two study protocols are presented as multi-site trials across CJ-DATS Centers to enhance prison/community transitions: (1) An enhanced employment intervention focused on obtaining, maintaining and upgrading employment, and (2) A case management/criminal thinking error enhanced intervention.
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