An Assessment of Prison-Based Drug Treatment

In response to increasing problems associated with drug-abusing offenders, the 1991 Texas Legislature provided a statutory foundation for the development of a comprehensive drug treatment program within the state's criminal justice system. In an effort to assess the impact of the prison-based treatment component of this legislative mandate, the Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse funded the Institute of Behavioral Research at Texas Christian University to conduct a comprehensive prison-based treatment assessment (PTA) including studies of the In-prison Therapeutic Community (ITC) treatment process and posttreatment outcomes. This article provides an overview of the research project and findings from the 6-month follow-up study. Preprison and during-treatment information was collected from 293 ITC program participants. Six-month follow-up interviews were completed with 222 ITC program graduates and compared with a comparison sample of 75 parolees who were eligible but not sent to ITC treatment. Results showed that 80% of the inmates referred to the ITC during this study graduated, and that program graduates demonstrated marked reductions in their criminal and drug use activity from the 6 months before entering prison to the 6 months after leaving prison. Finally, ITC graduates-particularly those who completed the first phase of their aftercare program-had lower relapse and recidivism rates in the 6 months after prison than did the parolees in comparison sample. They also reported highly favorable opinions about both the program and the counselors. Implications of these findings are discussed; and longer term follow-up evaluations are in progress.