Program Profile: Brooklyn (NY) Treatment Court

This drug court program offers substance abuse treatment for nonviolent felony and misdemeanor drug offenses. The program is rated No Effects. There were no statistically significant differences between the drug court participants and the comparison group in 2-year post-program recidivism or 4-year post-arrest convictions for a drug offense.

A No Effects rating implies that implementing the program is unlikely to result in the intended outcome(s) and may result in a negative outcome(s).

Program Goals

The Brooklyn Treatment Court (BTC) is a drug court in New York City that offers substance abuse treatment for people convicted of nonviolent felony and misdemeanor drug offenses. Through court-monitored treatment for eligible defendants, the program aims to break the cycle of addiction, crime, and incarceration. BTC uses a postplea model in which defendants plead guilty to an eligible drug charge before participating in the drug court and agree to a specific jail or prison sentence to be served in the event of program failure. Upon graduation, the plea is vacated, and the case, dismissed.

Target Population/Eligibility

BTC begins with an automatic screening process at arraignment. Paper-eligible cases (cases that involve defendants arrested on drug felony charges within Brooklyn) are identified and referred to BTC for legal and clinical screening. The legal screening is used to determine whether a case involves heavy trafficking as opposed to sales to support a drug habit, sales that occurred inside a store, and sales that occurred near school property. For cases found legally eligible, the clinical screening is conducted by an onsite case manager to determine whether the defendant has a drug addiction and whether certain other criteria are met (such as U.S. legal residence and no severe co-occurring physical or mental illness).

Depending on the charges in the plea agreement and the defendant’s prior criminal history, BTC participants must agree to one of four treatment mandates: misdemeanor, first felony, multiple felony, or predicate felony. The treatment mandates determine the minimum length of participation in BTC and the amount of time defendants must serve if they fail the program. For example, defendants who plead guilty to a misdemeanor are mandated to a minimum of 8 months in BTC and face 6 months in jail if they fail. In addition to the time requirements, defendants who plead guilty to a misdemeanor must complete two community service projects; all other defendants must complete three.

Each treatment mandate is divided into three distinct phases of treatment. All three phase minimums must be completed as consecutive drug-free and sanctionless time. To complete phase 1, for example, a defendant must complete 4 consecutive months of treatment and remain drug free and sanctionless. If a participant does receive a positive drug test or a sanction, the time count starts over at month 0. This makes it more challenging for defendants to complete phase 1 than to simply total 4 cumulative months of treatment time.

BTC participants must also agree to a treatment plan that specifies an initial assignment to a specific treatment modality, such as detoxification, residential, intensive outpatient, methadone maintenance, or halfway house. Once participation begins, the court can change the treatment plan as deemed appropriate and necessary.

Services Provided

A case management team is responsible for all key clinical decisions, including eligibility, initial treatment plan, placement in a specific program, and decisions to change the treatment plan during participation. Program participants continue to see their case manager during treatment to discuss progress or problems. During these visits, case managers can provide support for participants doing well with treatment, or, in some cases, provide warnings to those who are doing poorly. Participants are drug tested whenever reporting for a scheduled visit with their case manager.

In addition to visits with a case manager, BTC also requires regular court appearances before the drug court judge. The appearances are usually every 1 to 2 weeks at the beginning of participation, and then monthly thereafter. The judge is in charge of administering a system of graduated rewards and sanctions. Rewards may include verbal encouragement, requests for courtroom applause, or a formal certificate of achievement. The judge may sanction a participant by requiring extra court visits, reassigning participants to a more intensive treatment modality, or ordering a temporary jail stay. BTC has a formal schedule to help standardize and clearly convey to participants the likely consequences of each type of infraction; the judge, however, can deviate from the schedule on a case-by-case basis.

Study 1

Rempel and colleagues (2003) used a quasi-experimental design with propensity-score matching to evaluate the effectiveness of the Brooklyn Treatment Court (BTC). The study included 793 drug court participants arrested in 1997 or 1998, matched to a comparison group of 504 defendants who were arrested in 1997 on a top charge of either criminal sale or criminal possession of a controlled substance in the third degree, and who had no contact with BTC.

Propensity scores were obtained from the regression model to improve the comparability of the treatment and comparison groups. Each program participant was matched to a member of the comparison group with the nearest propensity score. Even after the matching process, BTC participants were still more likely to be female, without a prior felony conviction, non-Hispanic, and white. The final drug court sample was 60 percent male, and 56 percent African American, 36 percent Hispanic, and 8 percent white/other, with an average age of 33.5 years. The comparison group was 72 percent male, and 54 percent Black, 42 percent Hispanic, and 4 percent white/other, with an average age of 32.4 years.

The study examined recidivism over both postarrest and postprogram periods. The post-arrest period began at the time of the arrest that led either to drug court participation or comparison group membership. The follow-up periods extended to 4 years postarrest. The post-program period began on the graduation date for program graduates, on the estimated release date from jail or prison for program failures, and on the estimated release date or the disposition date for comparison group members. The post-program period was approximately 2 years.

Recidivism was defined as a new arrest leading to a conviction. Recidivism data were obtained from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. The study examined data using bivariate analysis and multivariate analysis (including survival analysis and logistic regression models). Multivariate analysis controlled for the statistically significant differences between the treatment and comparison groups on three variables (prior felony conviction, sex, and race/ethnicity).

Re-review

In 2011, Brooklyn Treatment Court received a final program rating of Effective based on a review of a study by Rempel and colleagues (2003).

In 2019, a rereview of the same study, using the updated CrimeSolutions Program Scoring Instrument, resulted in a new final rating of No Effects. Studies that are rated as No Effects have strong evidence indicating that the program had no or limited effects on measured outcomes when implemented with fidelity.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

Adult Drug Courts

Drug courts are specialized courts that combine drug treatment with the legal and moral authority of the court in an effort to break the cycle of drug use and drug related crime.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

	Crime & Delinquency - Multiple crime/offense types
	Crime & Delinquency - Drug and alcohol offenses
	Drugs & Substance Abuse - Multiple substances

Rehabilitation Programs for Adults Convicted of a Crime

This practice includes programs that are designed to reduce recidivism among adults by improving their behaviors, skills, mental health, social functioning, and access to education and employment. They may become participants in rehabilitation programs during multiple points in their involvement with the criminal justice system. This practice is rated Promising for reducing recidivism among adults who have been convicted of an offense.

Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

Crime & Delinquency - Multiple crime/offense types

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?