Drug Courts and Net-Widening in U.S. Cities: A Reanalysis Using Propensity Score Matching

Abstract

Although drug courts were intended to reduce the justice system involvement of drug offenders, a recent study found evidence that drug courts were associated with increased (rather than decreased) arrests for minor misdemeanor drug offenses (Lilley, 2017; Walsh, 2011). However, the previous study did not utilize an equivalent comparison group and may have relied on a large sample size to generate findings. The current study tested the robustness of those findings by analyzing only cities with over 50,000 population, including four additional years of data, and utilizing a more equivalent comparison group that was propensity-matched to reduce the possibility that a preexisting difference may have generated higher arrest outcomes among drug court jurisdictions. Net-widening, arrest, and crime challenges and implications for drug court policies and law enforcement roles are also discussed.

Drug Treatment Courts and Community-Level Crime: A Stacked Event Study Analysis

“…Orrick (2005) and Zafft (2014) found some crime reducing effects that did not stand up to rigor. Lilley (2013) found increases in known offenses, at the community-level, while other studies found increases in low-level arrests (Lilley 2017;Lilley et al 2020), especially of minorities (Lilley et al 2019). These results highlight the possibility of contextual factors either dampening or magnifying aggregation of individual-level results to communities.…”

Adult Drug Treatment Courts and Community-Level Drug Possession Arrests

“…On the other hand, variation in possessions arrests relative to ADC implementation may result from changes in law enforcement behavior. Though this notion has yet to be empirically demonstrated, recent publications aptly argued police may use their discretion in arresting people for low-level offenses in the presence of a program like ADCs (Lilley, 2017;Lilley et al, 2019Lilley et al, , 2020. The larger effect sizes for arrests scaled per 1,000 officers, relative to those per 1,000 population, point toward officer discretion as the more likely channel.…”

“…Programs like this, however, do not operate in a vacuum. The possibility also exists, as proposed by previous work in this vein, that other actors in the criminal legal system may change their behavior in the presence of ADCs (Gross, 2010;Lilley, 2017;Lilley et al, 2019Lilley et al, , 2020. One suggested behavior change comes from law enforcement possibly using their discretion to increase low-level arrests.…”

“…Efforts assessing ADC impact on communities do not return such encouraging estimates. Recent work looking at effects on community-level arrests found increases in low-level offenses, particularly drug possession arrests (Lilley, 2017; Lilley et al, 2020), with the greatest increases found in arrests of minority residents (Lilley et al, 2019). Authors cited changes in law enforcement behavior (e.g., net widening) as a potential mechanism.…”

A kinder, gentler drug war? Race, drugs, and punishment in 21st century America

“…In other words, medicalization and criminalization are not separate and incompatible, but rather overlapping and mutually reinforcing methods of control to which people of all races are increasingly subject (see also Kaye, 2019). Indeed, recent studies indicate that drug courts do not reduce arrests or incarceration (Lilley, 2017; Lilley et al., 2019; Walch, 2011). For example, a recent National Institute of Justice (NIJ)-funded study found no statistically significant differences between the amount of confinement time for people who entered drug court and for those who did not.In fact, the data suggest that drug court participants may end up serving more time spent behind bars (Csete, 2019; Rossman et al., 2011; Sevigny et al., 2013).…”