Know The Risk, Make the Call

If you’re working in a drug treatment court, this post is for you.

This is something I am super passionate about and something that is often missed in Drug Treatment Courts, despite all of the evidence and research that backs this information.

Many leaders operating Drug Treatment Courts would rather operate based on what they think is best, what they like vs. don’t like, rather than what the evidence tells us. This can be a dangerous approach, not only to the program, but the individuals being served.

I hear lots about drug courts taking anyone and everyone, especially if they have an addiction. Sounds fitting due to the name, right? But there is significant risk to this approach.

Let me explain why.

1. Risk is not something you can assume or decide on your own based on judgement. It should be predicted based on assessment tools.

2. Who you work with matters. This is why you should be using a validated risk assessment tool to determine risk. even better if it helps with case management practice and provides treatment planning with a focus on criminogenic and non-criminogenic needs.

3. Drug treatment courts should only be accepting high risk offenders into the program. When I say risk, I am talking about risk to re-offend, not risk to community, those are separate things.

This is important as we can do more harm than good to those who are low risk because of the supervision drug courts provide. This is due to the fact that mixing risk levels are contraindicating and we can increase the risk to low risk offenders by placing them with high risk individuals.

Risk level is also important as it relates to treatment dosage hours, and the required amount to target each need.

Something else I want to highlight is that yes, criminal history is something we cannot change in an individual, but every other criminogenic need can be changed, which is why we call them dynamic risk factors.

Through adequate, targeted interventions, we can reduce the risk, which creates better outcomes for all, including communities.