Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies (CJ-DATS)

Revised January 2013

Overview

CJ-DATS (the national Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies) was created in 2002 with the goal of improving both the public health and public safety outcomes for substance abusing offenders leaving prison or jail and returning to the community by integrating substance abuse treatment into the criminal justice system. At that time an estimated 600,000 inmates were released each year, with approximately two-thirds having substance abuse problems that, if left unaddressed, could increase the risk of relapse and recidivism to crime. The rationale underlying CJ-DATS was:

a significant proportion of individuals within the criminal justice system have serious substance abuse problems;
research had demonstrated that a continuum of substance abuse treatment was effective in reducing drug use and drug-related criminal behavior;
drug treatment services could be improved through coordination with criminal justice assessment, monitoring, and supervision activities; and
research could help inform the development of models for integrating evidence based substance abuse treatment with the criminal justice system.

CJ-DATS Phase I

CJ-DATS Phase I Research Centers

From 2002 through 2008, CJ-DATS researchers from 9 research centers, a coordinating center, and NIDA worked together with federal, state, and local criminal justice partners to develop and test integrated approaches to the treatment of offenders with drug use disorders.

CJ-DATS Phase II

Research Centers are located in California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut

CJ-DATS Phase II Research Centers and CJ Partner Sites

The second phase of CJ-DATS, engaging a new cohort of research centers and agency partners, was launched in 2008 with a focus on conducting implementation research in these criminal settings. Specifically, NIDA charged the cooperative with testing implementation strategies that could result in sustained uptake and delivery of services in three domains: (1) delivery of medication-assisted treatment for offenders transitioning to the community; (2) delivery of an HIV continuum of care (i.e., screening and counseling, risk reduction interventions, and continuity of antiretroviral treatment from prison or jail into the community); and (3) implementation of screening and assessment processes to identify offenders with drug abuse and related health problems and to inform their treatment planning and re-entry process.

In each domain, grantees were to focus on organizational and system-level implementation strategies, and to engage both community corrections and community-based treatment providers in a process that would leverage key facilitators, address barriers, and jointly address the public safety concerns of criminal justice agencies with the public health goals of the Institute and the community-based treatment partners. NIDA’s ultimate goal for CJ-DATS is to identify implementation strategies that maximize the likelihood of sustained delivery of evidence-based practices to improve offender drug abuse and HIV outcomes, and to decrease their risk of incarceration.

CJ-DATS Phase III

Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System (TRIALS)

The third phase of CJ-DATS will focus on adolescents and has been renamed Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System (TRIALS). The TRIALS collaborative will develop and test implementation strategies and associated measures to improve the continuum of substance abuse prevention and treatment services delivered to youth under juvenile justice supervision. Awardees will develop and execute collaborative multisite studies across a variety of community-based supervision settings including juvenile probation, truancy and teen courts, and adolescent drug courts. Research undertaken by the cooperative is expected to contribute both to implementation science and to the effective delivery of evidence-based substance abuse interventions within real-world practice settings. These goals will be accomplished through the development and testing of measures and methods to support the successful implementation of substance abuse and HIV prevention and treatment services in juvenile justice settings.

Awards for the TRIALS collaborative are expected to be announced in Summer 2013. The collaborative will launch in mid- to late-Summer 2013.

Resources

The establishment of CJ-DATS is an outstanding example of cooperation among Federal agencies with the research community…We need to understand how to provide better drug treatment services for criminal justice offenders to alter their drug use and criminal behavior.” –Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of NIDA