Drug Court for Violent Offenders: A Review of Recidivism Outcomes

Abstract

Drug courts often limit eligibility criteria to serve nonviolent offenders only. This systematic review examines recidivism outcomes among drug court programs that do and do not accept violent offenders. Using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) and Synthesis without Meta-analysis (SWiM) guidelines (Campbell et al., 2020; Page et al., 2021), this review identified 22 studies. Six of these studies examined samples including violent offenders. There were positive recidivism outcomes for both violent and nonviolent offenders overall. In four of the samples where violent offenders were permitted to participate, violent offenders experienced similar reductions in recidivism to nonviolent offenders. Implications for future drug court policy and practice including the potential for expanded eligibility criteria are discussed.