Enhancing Juvenile Drug Court Outcomes With Evidence-Based Practices

Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC)

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 2

Conditions: Adolescent Substance Use

Treatments: Other: Usual Services (US); Behavioral: Contingency Management-Family Engagement (CM-FAM)

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT01266109

R01DA019892 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

019892

Details and patient eligibility

About

Juvenile drug courts were developed in response to a perceived need to intervene more effectively with youth with substance abuse problems. Close collaboration between the court and substance abuse treatment provider is a defining component of the drug court model and is critical to helping youth achieve positive outcomes. Despite the proliferation of juvenile drug courts in recent years, however, evaluation of their capacity to reduce offender substance use and criminal activity has lagged. Moreover, the Institute of Medicine (IOM, 1998) and leading experts (McLellan, Carise, & Kleber, 2003) have presented a bleak picture of the nation's capacity to meet the treatment needs of substance abusing individuals. Although community-based programs provide the backbone of substance abuse treatment in the nation, their capabilities have not kept up with major scientific advances in the development and validation of evidence-based substance abuse interventions.

Building on our research findings and experience regarding juvenile drug court outcomes as well as the transport of evidence-based practices to community treatment settings, the purpose of this study is to develop and test a relatively flexible and low cost strategy for enhancing the outcomes of juvenile drug courts by integrating components of evidence-based treatments into existing substance abuse services.

Specifically, this project aims to:

Aim 1: Adapt existing intervention and training protocols from evidence-based practices (i.e., Contingency Management for adolescent substance abuse; family engagement strategies from evidence-based treatments of juvenile offenders) for integration into juvenile drug court sites.

Aim 2: Conduct a study to examine youth (e.g., substance use and criminal behavior) and system level (e.g., intervention adherence, feasibility, retention and completion rates, consumer satisfaction, cost estimates) effects of implementing the intervention protocols in juvenile drug courts.

Aim 3: Revise the intervention and training protocols in preparation for a Stage II study if findings are supportive.

Enrollment: 172 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 12 to 17 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Juvenile Drug Court-involved youth
• Fluency in English

Exclusion criteria

• None

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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172 participants in 2 patient groups

CM-FAM

Experimental group

Treatment:

Behavioral: Contingency Management-Family Engagement (CM-FAM)

US

Active Comparator group

Treatment:

Other: Usual Services (US)