Substance Abuse Treatment and Criminal Justice Involvement for SSI Recipients: Results from Washington State

Abstract

This study examined the association between receiving substance abuse treatment and subsequent criminal justice involvement. The sample consisted of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients in the state of Washington that were determined to be in need of treatment. Fifty-two percent of those clients entered substance abuse treatment during the study period, while 48% did not. Arrests, felony convictions and convictions for less serious crimes were tracked for 8343 adults for one year following the end of an index treatment episode. Results showed that entering treatment was associated with reduced risks for each outcome. In addition, further analyses were conducted just on those entering treatment. Among that subset of the study population, the completion of treatment and having an episode of treatment lasting at least 90 days were both associated with reduced criminal justice risks. These results suggest that efforts to provide substance abuse treatment for SSI recipients have the potential to provide substantial public benefits.

Impact of Access to Recovery services on alcohol/drug treatment outcomes

“…A rich literature documents the association between CD treatment and reductions in subsequent arrests (Campbell et al, 2007b;Denise, 2003;Garnick et al, 2007;Luchansky et al, 2006). Interestingly, the addition of ATR services in the present analysis did not appear to have a significant incremental effect above the known impact of CD treatment.…”

“…A treatment episode was constructed by stringing together all spans of treatment when there was a lag of 30 days or less between discharge from one program and admission to another (Luchansky, He, Krupski, & Stark, 2000). Longer stays in treatment have typically been associated with better outcomes (Arria, 2003;Luchansky et al, 2006). The second treatment-related outcome was treatment completion as recorded in TARGET discharge codes.…”

“…Treatment completion is a provider-determined discharge code that indicates the client has achieved treatment goals. It has often been associated with other positive treatment outcomes such as improved employment (e.g., Arria, 2003;Luchansky, Brown, Longhi, Stark, & Krupski, 2000) or reduced arrests (Luchansky et al, 2006). Other dependent variables included employment and arrests.…”

“…Other dependent variables included employment and arrests. Both of these measures appear to be sensitive to the effects of treatment in other research (Arria, 2003;Campbell, Deck, & Krupski, 2007b;Garnick et al, 2007;Luchansky, Brown et al, 2000;Luchansky, He et al, 2000;Luchansky et al, 2006;Wickizer, Campbell, Krupski, & Stark, 2000). Employment was operationalized as any employment in the three quarters following the index quarter as recorded in the ESD database.…”

Are Washington Circle performance measures associated with decreased criminal activity following treatment?

“…Furthermore, those with treatment episodes of at least 90 days were associated with lower risk for criminal activity. (Luchansky et al, 2006) Luchansky and colleagues (Luchansky, Krupski, & Stark, 2007) also compared outcomes for methamphetamine patients with those who used other substances. Criminal justice involvement for methamphetamine patients was found to be similar to those who used other hard drugs, but was higher than for those who used alcohol and marijuana.…”