0 - National Criminal Justice Reference Service

a
(Simpson, Wexler, & Inciardi, 1999). Many factors other than need for treatment (e.g., security
concerns, inmate work schedules, mental health or medical problems, minimum length of sentence
remaining, inmate refisal to participate, biases in the referral process) may innuence program
placement decisions in prison (Farabee et al.,
1999; Fletcher and Tims, 1992; ONDCP, 1996,
1999; Pearson and Lipton, 1999).
In the Delaware study (Martin et al.,
999), only a partial randomized design was used.
Random assignment was used only for one cohort of inmates who were randomly assigned to
work release (CREST) or not. No random assignment was used to assign subjects to an
experimental treatment (KEY, the TC program) or control group. No pre-service assessment of
need for drug treatment guided the creation of comparison groups: “The instruments include
much of the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) and MDA’s Risk Behavior Assessment (RBA). It is
important to note that these instruments were administered by the researchers after client selection
and not as part of the client selection process” (Martin et al., 1999:300). Further, analyses of
outcomes (drug relapse, rearrest) relied heavily upon inmate self-reports (Inciardi et al., 1997).
Arrestees’ self-reports underestimate drug use detected by urinalysis by magnitudes of 40 to 60
percent (Taylor et al., 2001), while problems with self-report measures of criminal behavior are
well known (e.g., Cantor and Lynch, 2000; Thornberry and Krohn, 2000).
In the Amity, California prison study (Wexler et al., 1999), researchers used
randomization to assign inmates who volunteered for treatment to either TC or a wait-listed,
“intent-to-treat” comparison group. Volunteers were deemed eligible if they met admission
criteria of having a drug problem (no information on the severity of drug problem or the means of
a
assessment was reported), and having at least 9 to 14 months remaining in their sentence prior to
parole eligibility. Inmates remained in the TC-eligible pool until they had less than 9 months to
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This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not
been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s)
and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice.