Program Impact

D.1. Community Safety
DTAP's screening procedures ensure public safety by excluding those defendants who pose a risk to public safety. In order to limit risk, candidates with histories of serious violence and those who are clinically unsuitable for treatment are systematically rejected during the screening process. After pleading guilty to a felony, participants enter closely monitored treatment while deferring a pending sentence of incarceration. When a participant absconds from treatment, DTAP’s Enforcement Team and the court are immediately notified. The Team quickly apprehends and returns absconders to court for sentencing, thereby reducing risk to the community. As of October 14, 2011, 90 percent of all DTAP participants who had absconded had been returned within a median of 32 days.

In a recent study, the in-treatment and at-large arrest rate for a sample of DTAP participants was compared to the pretrial and incarceration arrest rate for another sample of individuals who, although paper-eligible for DTAP, did not participate in the program. The rate of pretrial and incarceration arrests reflects the risk to public safety associated with traditional criminal justice processing. Of the 272 DTAP participants, 12 (4%) were rearrested while undergoing treatment. Of these 12, four were charged with misdemeanors and eight were charged with nonviolent felonies. In contrast, 28 (13%) of the 215 non-participants were rearrested. Of these, 23 were charged with nonviolent felonies, three were charged with violent felonies, and two were charged with misdemeanors. These findings indicate that the diversion of drug offenders into community-based residential facilities does not pose additional risk to the community while the offenders are undergoing treatment.

D.2. Crime Reduction
D.2.1. Decreased Recidivism: One major objective of DTAP is to reduce crime rates by breaking the link between drug abuse and criminal behavior. The DTAP 2001 Annual Report included the findings of a five-year recidivism study. These findings are again summarized below, because they so emphatically demonstrate the importance of DTAP to an effective, long-term strategy for reducing drug-related crime. The sample analyzed in the study included 184 drug offenders who completed DTAP and a comparison group of 215 drug offenders who, although meeting DTAP’s initial eligibility criteria, did not participate in the program and instead served prison terms.

In the five-year recidivism study, a much lower recidivism rate for DTAP completers was reported than for the offenders in the comparison group. Of the 184 DTAP completers, 30 percent were rearrested within five years of the date that they had completed DTAP. In contrast, 56 percent of the 215 drug offenders comprising the comparison group were rearrested within five years of the date of their prison release. This difference is statistically significant, meaning that the difference did not arise because of sample error.

Additionally, DTAP completers were rearrested 0.70 times on average during those five years, while individuals in the comparison group were rearrested 1.30 times. This difference is also statistically significant. However, with regard to the seriousness (misdemeanor versus felony) of the crimes for which members of each group were rearrested, no significant difference was found.

Notably, almost all of the members of both groups (92.9% of the DTAP completers versus 93.0% of the comparison group) had been arrested at some point during the five-year period preceding the arrest which prompted their consideration for DTAP (“the DTAP arrest”). A comparison for each group between the arrest rate during the five-year period before the DTAP arrest and the arrest rate during the five-year period after DTAP completion or incarceration supports the conclusion that successful DTAP participation is almost twice as effective in reducing crime as incarceration.

D.2.2. New Crimes Prevented: Another way of assessing the impact of DTAP on public safety is to estimate the number of new crimes avoided by placing chronic drug users in long-term residential treatment. An earlier study conducted in New York City concluded that each year a typical drug-abusing offender committed 90.45 non-market-driven offenses such as burglary, shoplifting, larceny, forgery, and other crimes.[16] (Market-driven offenses are those related to drug sale, gambling, and prostitution. The supply of labor in these illicit markets is practically unlimited; therefore gains in avoided re-offending can easily be nullified through the recruitment of replacements in the community.) Based on this figure, we estimate that over the past 22 years, at least 101,136 new crimes have been prevented by achieving a three-year post-treatment recidivism rate of 32% for the entire DTAP population, including dropouts, as opposed to the rate of 47% reported for comparable controls. [17]

D.3. Employment
DTAP seeks to reduce recidivism among program participants by strengthening their ties to the world of legitimate employment and by helping them to adopt a more responsible and productive lifestyle. Work is not simply a way to make a living. It imposes discipline and regularity on one's daily behavior and enhances one's self-esteem.

D.3.1. Employment Enhancement Interventions: Many DTAP participants come from Brooklyn's impoverished neighborhoods. They have poor educational credentials and long histories of unemployment and underemployment. DTAP participants get in-treatment educational and vocational training to redress the lack of basic education and of marketable job skills. Additionally, DTAP’s Enhanced Employment Initiative is designed to assist DTAP clients in dealing with specific issues and problems such as unemployment, poor vocational and employment-related skills, parenthood, and child support. These employment specialists not only work with each DTAP participant to develop a plan addressing each individual’s employment needs and personal aspirations, but the specialists also work with the employers who are considering hiring or who have hired DTAP graduates to address the concerns of these businesses and troubleshoot any problems that may arise. This collaboration between the job developers and the local business community seeks to cultivate and enhance an environment of trust and understanding that ultimately benefits not just the DTAP graduates but also the businesses which employ them.

D.3.1.1. In-Treatment Educational and Vocational Training: Treatment providers help to implement educational and job skills training programs to sustain positive changes in participants' behavior and attitudes through life skills enhancement. General Educational Development (GED) preparation courses and on-site high school programs are the most common educational opportunities. Five of this fiscal year’s graduates obtained GED diplomas while in treatment. The most popular vocational programs are those which provide training in home healthcare, commercial driving, copying and printing, counseling, auto mechanics, and data entry. Participants also receive job readiness counseling on resume writing and job interviewing skills.

D.3.1.2. Employment Specialists of the Enhanced Employment Initiative (EEI): In 2002, the staff of the Enhanced Employment Initiative began serving DTAP clients. The employment specialists act as vocational rehabilitation counselors, as well as job developers and on-site job coaches. They work with treatment facilities to identify the work histories and skills of DTAP clients and match them to the needs of the business community. DTAP’s employment specialists conduct vocational assessments of all DTAP clients, making referrals to GED programs, if necessary, and conduct informative employment workshops on a variety of subjects related to finding, securing, and maintaining a job. They assist graduates with obtaining either a Certificate of Relief from Civil Disabilities or a Certificate of Good Conduct. In addition, EEI staff members, working with the Office of Child Support Enforcement Unit, assist each DTAP non-custodial parent in establishing paternity and resolving child support issues that can interfere with the client’s employability and earnings. Another key aspect of the specialists’ mission is to act as liaisons with businesses to make specific job referrals and negotiate with employers to gain jobs for DTAP graduates and increase their opportunities for competitive employment. DTAP graduates are encouraged to maintain contact with the employment specialists, particularly when they plan to return to the labor market after a lay-off or want to look for a better job.

D.3.1.3. The DTAP Alumni Association: The Alumni Association was founded in 1999, by a group of DTAP graduates to provide a formal framework of support for their colleagues. Through networking via the peer community, this association aids graduates with post-treatment assistance in an effort to promote continued productivity. Alumni are referred to Kings County District Attorney’s Office’s resources in the event of unemployment or for career advancement. Membership is based upon the simple desire to maintain a productive, crime-free, drug-free lifestyle and to encourage other members of the association to do the same. Members of the Alumni Association and graduates are some of the best spokespeople for publicizing the concept that quality substance abuse treatment is available within the criminal justice system and that it works!

D.3.2. DTAP Fosters Employment: Forty-five (80%) of the 56 graduates who were interviewed at time of program completion in the twenty-second fiscal year were employable. At the time of their DTAP arrest, only 16 (35%) of these 45 employable graduates had been working.[18] In contrast, nearly 2.7 times that number -- 43 (96%) -- of these employable graduates are now working in various fields such as food service, commercial driving, building maintenance, construction, office management, medical assistant, substance abuse counseling, sales, and retail management. Their salaries range from minimum wages to more than $57,200 per year.

D.4. Cost-Savings
The benefits of DTAP are shared not only by the participants and their loved ones, but also by society at large. Many of these benefits are monetary and include lower criminal justice costs and reduced recidivism costs.

The figure below compares the costs of treating 1,377 DTAP graduates to the costs of incarcerating the same number of drug felons. It shows that diverting addicted offenders into residential treatment is much more cost-effective than sending them to prison. The criminal justice savings from graduating 1,377 DTAP participants are $110,879,069.[19] Had DTAP not been available, more than 110.9 million taxpayer dollars would have been spent to finance the pre-trial detention and incarceration of 1,377 drug-addicted felons and to cover costs associated the re-arrest and punishment of recidivists. Whereas each DTAP graduate requires an investment of $76,495 in terms of treatment and recidivism costs, the traditional processing of a comparable predicate felon incurs incarceration and recidivism expenses that add up to $157,017. In other words, each DTAP graduate produces a per-capita cost-savings of $80,522.

DTAP Criminal Justice Cost-Savings Based on 1,349 Graduates

Current offense savings: treatment/incarceration	$88,223,481
Recidivism savings: re-arrest	$1,104,234
Recidivism savings: pre-trial detention	$1,168,587
Recidivism savings: re-incarceration	$19,882,767
TOTAL criminal justice cost-savings	$110,879,069

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[15] Dynia, Paul and Hung-En Sung, 2000, “The Safety and Effectiveness of Diverting Felony Drug Offenders into Residential Treatment as Measured by Recidivism.” Criminal Justice Policy Review, 11(4), 299-311.

[16] See Greenberg, David F., and Nancy J. Larkin, 1998, The Incapacitation of Criminal Opiate Users, Crime & Delinquency, 44(2), 205-228.

[17] Dynia, Paul and Hung-En Sung, 2000, The Safety and Effectiveness of Diverting Felony Drug Offenders into Residential Treatment as Measured by Recidivism. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 11(4), 299-311. The differences in 1-year, 2-year, and 3-year recidivism between DTAP and the matched comparisons are 14% vs. 24%, 27% vs. 39%, and 32% vs. 47%.

[18] Eleven of the 56 graduates were not employable because of disability.

[19] Figures are in 2012 dollars. All numbers are rounded to the nearest integer.