An Effectiveness Trial of Contingency Management in a Felony Preadjudication Drug Court

Abstract

This study evaluated a contingency management (CM) program in a drug court. Gift certificates for compliance were delivered at 4-to 6-week intervals (total value 5 $390.00). Participants in one condition earned gift certificates that escalated by $5.00 increments. Participants in a second condition began earning higher magnitude gift certificates, and the density of reinforcement was gradually decreased. No main effects of CM were detected, which appears to be attributable to a ceiling effect from the intensive contingencies already delivered in the drug court and the low density of reinforcement. Preplanned interaction analyses suggested that participants with more serious criminal backgrounds might have performed better in the CM conditions. This suggests that CM programs may be best suited for more incorrigible drug offenders.

Are Non-Pharmacological Interventions Effective in Reducing Drug Use and Criminality? A Systematic and Meta-Analytical Review with an Economic Appraisal of These Interventions

“…The other four studies (producing five publications) were conducted in Sweden [40], China [41], Spain [42,43], and Australia [44]. Six trials did not specify the sample gender [15,40,45,46,47,48], six trials contained female only samples [34,35,44,49,50,51,52], nine trials (and 13 publications) contained only male adult offenders [53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65]; and 22 trials (and 25 publications) contained male and female adult offenders [13,16,41,44,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90]. Eight comparisons considered young and/or juvenile offenders [16,49,56,57,66,…”

“…In the remaining eight studies, five were rated at low risk of bias [50,52,78,83,91] and three were rated at high risk of bias [60,69,84]. …”

“…Two studies were rated at low risk of bias [65,83] and the remaining 12 studies were rated at high risk of bias [16,48,50,60,69,73,75,76,78,84,92]. …”

“…Two compare the effectiveness of interventions providing the absolute cost of the intervention only [49,92]. Research in [69] combined reported on the effectiveness of a contingency management programme attached to a drug court system. The paper contains some detail of the payments made and the costs of such a contingency programme between 2002 and 2004.…”

A Randomized Trial of the Effectiveness of Using Incentives to Reinforce Parolee Attendance in Community Addiction Treatment

“…Low-cost incentives for drug abstinence and/or adherence to treatment plan activities failed to achieve statistically significant improvements in drug use or attendance, most likely due to the greater influence of the judge and the sanctions that he could impose. Likewise, Marlowe, Festinger, Dugosh, Arabia, and Kirby (2008) found no main effects for CM in a drug court when reinforcing for attendance and drug court compliance. Marlowe and Wong (2008) suggest that structured behavioral interventions such as CM are better suited for high-risk offenders.…”