Program Profile: Queens (NY) Treatment Court

This is a drug court program for first-time, nonviolent persons convicted of felony drug offenses who are arrested in Queens County, N.Y. The court provides drug or alcohol treatment services to persons with persistent drug offenses who have a history of substance abuse. This program is rated Effective. There were statistically significant reductions in postarrest and post-program rearrest rates for program participants, compared with the comparison group.

An Effective rating implies that implementing the program is likely to result in the intended outcome(s).

An Effective rating implies that implementing the program is likely to result in the intended outcome(s).

Program Goals

The Queens Treatment Court (QTC) is a drug court program for non-violent persons convicted of a drug offenses for the first time in Queens County, New York. The court seeks to reduce recidivism among persons with a history of substance abuse by providing them with drug or alcohol treatment services. The mission of QTC is to provide them with the tools necessary for long-term sobriety, using court-supervised treatment and case management services as an alternative to incarceration.

Target Population/Eligibility

Defendants are paper eligible for QTC if they are arrested on drug felony charges but do not have a prior felony conviction or a prior violent misdemeanor conviction. The most serious (A–1 and A–2) felony drug charges are excluded. Potential eligible cases are screened at arraignment by an Assistant District Attorney (ADA).

A case manager from the Treatment Alternative for Safer Community (TASC), an independent agency used for case management services by many court-mandated treatment programs in New York City, performs a clinical assessment of paper-eligible defendants. Cases may be rejected if the assessment finds that defendants do not need drug treatment, if defendants refuse the treatment plan, or if defendants appear to have a co-occurring mental illness. TASC does, however, see current illegal drug use, even at low levels, as a potential gateway to future addictive behavior. Therefore, at-risk defendants who currently use illegal drugs but may not yet be an addict are eligible even if drug use is infrequent, such as three times per week or even just one or two times per month. If a defendant is found to be eligible based on the clinical assessment, they plead guilty to the drug charge and enter the drug court program.

Program Components

The QTC uses a postplea adjudication model, which means defendants plead guilty to an eligible drug charge before participating in the program. A standard formula is used by the court to determine the severity of the top charge in the plea agreement. Participants also agree to a sentence of incarceration that is served if they fail out of the program and treatment is not completed. Typical sentences can range from 1 to 3 years, depending on the individual’s criminal history.

After being accepted into the program, all participants must agree to the same treatment mandate, which requires at least 12 months of participation in QTC, divided into three phases of treatment. Each phase of treatment requires 4 consecutive sanctionless months before participants can move on to the next phase. The program does not require all counted time in each phase be drug free; rather, the emphasis is on sanctionless time. This means that if the court decides not to sanction a particular infraction, such as a positive urine test, the participant will not lose time.

QTC participants are also required to appear in drug court each week for the 1st month of the program, which is gradually downgraded to an appearance every 2 weeks, then every 4 weeks. Usually by phase 2 of treatment, participants report to court on a monthly basis. During court appearances, the judge will ask participants about their progress in treatment and any problems they may be having. Judges will impose sanctions on participants that are not complying with the treatment mandate.

Case managers develop an appropriate treatment plan for each participant, based on the duration and frequency of drug use, primary drug of choice, living situation, family support, and criminal history. Participants are referred to one of more than 40 community-based treatment programs spanning all modalities (such as residential, short-term rehabilitation, and intensive outpatient). The treatment plan also includes requirements for regular drug and alcohol testing, medical screening, attendance at educational or vocational programs, and participation in self-help groups, such as Narcotics Anonymous (or NA). While in treatment, participants also set goals to improve other parts of their lives, such as education, employment, and reconnecting with family.

In the event a participant is not in compliance with program requirements or is arrested for a new charge, QTC has a formal sanctions schedule, although the schedule is more advisory, and drug court judges frequently make case-by-base decisions. A new felony arrest will always result in failure from the program, as will repeated noncompliance or opting out.

Key Personnel

The QTC began through the collaboration of the Queen’s District Attorney’s Office, the Legal Aid Society, the Queens County Supreme Court, the New York State Unified Court System, and the Office of the Chief Administrative Judge of New York City in response to the increasing percentage of first-time drug felony cases that accounted for criminal court arraignments in Queens.

TASC performs all of the case management functions, including assessment, treatment matching, and ongoing monitoring. The QTC resource coordinator is crucial in maintaining interstaff coordination of the program. Every morning, the resource coordinator meets with the TASC case managers to review the court calendar and discuss problems with any of the program participants. The resource coordinator also meets with the judge to review the calendar and make decisions on treatment promotions and sanctions.

The drug court team additionally includes the project director, the judge, the judge’s law clerk, the ADA, and defense attorneys. This team, along with the TASC case managers and resource coordinator, meets every week to focus on a select number of problem cases and to discuss any outstanding programmatic issues.

Additional Information

This program is different from the Queens Misdemeanor Treatment Court, which focuses on providing treatment services to persons convicted for nonfelony (misdemeanor) drug offenses.

Study

Rempel and colleagues (2003) assessed the effects of participating in the Queens Treatment Court (QTC) in New York, using a pre–post design that compared program participants to similar defendants arrested just prior to the opening of the drug court. The comparison group initially included 945 defendants arrested in Queens on a top charge of criminal sale or criminal possession in the third degree in the year prior to QTC’s opening in May 1998. The drug court group initially included all 389 participants who had been arrested by June 2000 (which would allow for a 2-year postarrest recidivism analysis, since data was available through June 2002). Propensity score matching was used to eliminate or reduce any differences between the drug court and comparison groups. Each participant was matched to a comparison group member with the nearest, if not identical, propensity score.

After completing the matching process, 340 drug court participants were matched to 312 comparison defendants. The final drug court sample was 81 percent male, and 54 percent African American, 30 percent Hispanic, and 16 percent white or “other,” with an average age of 27.2 years. The comparison group was 82 percent male, and 61 percent African American, 28 percent Hispanic, and 12 percent white or “other,” with an average age of 26.6 years. There were no significant differences between the final study groups.

Recidivism data was obtained from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. The data set provided comprehensive criminal record information, including criminal history and recidivism, as of June 30, 2002. Recidivism was defined as a new arrest that leads to conviction. The analysis looked at recidivism over postarrest and postprogram time periods. The postarrest time period begins at the time of the arrest that either led to drug court participation or comparison group membership. The postprogram period begins at different starting points for study participants. For drug court graduates, the postprogram period begins on the graduation date. For drug court failures, the period begins on the estimated release date from jail or prison, and for comparison group members, the period begins on the estimated release date (or, if there was no incarceration sentence, on the disposition date).

However, there were methodological limitations when examining recidivism over the postprogram time period: A portion of the drug court group had not achieved the requisite year of postprogram time, for two reasons. First, it takes drug court participants 1 year to complete the program and another year of postprogram time before the analysis can be done. Second, program participants who fail are usually sentenced to 1 year in jail, and the postprogram count does not begin until their release. There were also a number of participants who had not reached final status (graduation or failure) as of the analysis date. Therefore, the final status of drug court participants in the impact sample was determined as of Nov. 3, 2002 (prior to the analysis date). For participants who had not yet graduated or failed as of this date, background characteristics were used to predict whether they were more likely to graduate or fail. This method was only used to impute graduation or failure status for 14 drug court participants, however—4.1 percent of the sample.

The graduation rate was estimated at 71.2 percent, based on the known final status of 326 drug court participants (95.9 percent). Only 201 participants were available for the 1-year postprogram analysis (160 graduates and 41 failures). The disproportionately high number of graduates required the number of graduates to be weighted so as to contribute 71.2 percent toward all postprogram recidivism for drug court participants and the 41 failures to be weighted so as to contribute 28.8 percent.

The study used bivariate comparisons and multivariate analysis, including logistic regression, negative bionomial analysis, and survival analysis. Over the postarrest period, the analysis examined the probability of at least one new conviction; the total number of new convictions; the probability of at least one new conviction for three types of charges (felony, misdemeanor, and drug-related); the specific conviction charges in the first reconviction; the number of crime-free days prior to the first rearrest that led to a conviction; and survival patterns over the total time period. Over the postprogram period, the analysis looked at the probability of at least one new conviction and the probability of at least one new conviction for each of three types of charges (felony, misdemeanor, and drug-related).

Subgroup Analysis

The analysis by Rempel and colleagues (2003) of specific subgroups showed that Queens Treatment Court (QTC) showed a 66-percent reduction in recidivism for participants with prior misdemeanor convictions, compared with a 35-percent reduction for participants without prior misdemeanor convictions. In addition, the results showed a 53-percent recidivism reduction for participants 26 years and older, compared with a 38-percent reduction in recidivism for participants younger than 26. As the results show, the QTC had statistically significant impacts for all participants, but the magnitude was relatively larger for some subgroups. To confirm the results, the study authors performed several logistic regressions, looking at 3-year postarrest data. The outcomes of the regressions showed that overall, QTC participants were less likely than comparison group members to reoffend at 3 years after arrest. In addition, participants with one or more prior misdemeanor convictions were less likely than comparison group members to reoffend.

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

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

Porter, Rachel. 2000. Implementing a Drug Court in Queens County: A Process Evaluation. New York, N.Y.: The Vera Institute of Justice.

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Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

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	Drugs & Substance Abuse - Multiple substances

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Evidence Ratings for Outcomes

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