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The Relative Influence of Legal Pressure on Outcomes in a Rehabilitation Aftercare Drug Court

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Abstract

The concept of legal pressure has been used in research to study the effect threats of increased punishment have on the rehabilitation trajectory of individuals with substance use disorders under community supervision. This study investigates how unequal legal pressures affect the chances of success for participants in a drug court-supervised rehabilitation aftercare program. Using bivariate and logistic regression analyses, we compare the successful program completion rates of individuals charged with felony- and misdemeanor-level offenses. Consistent with the legal pressure thesis, we find that clients under misdemeanor-level charges become more likely to fail probation than those under the threat of felony-level punishment upon transition to community aftercare. Moreover, the higher rate of failure in the lower legal pressure group is strongly associated with their failure to abstain from drug use during the outpatient phase of community supervision. A shift in legal pressure is thus identified as a potential dynamic risk factor in substance abuse aftercare. The implications for community supervision of offenders recovering from addictions are discussed.

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Notes

  1. During aftercare, the substance categories most frequently found in positive drug tests for this population were amphetamines, benzodiazepines and opiates. Cocaine and alcohol were also common positive results.

  2. This wording comes from the HCCSCD Standard Operating Procedure document titled “Reentry Aftercare Program” (n.d.), p. 2.

  3. Parhar et al. (2008) describe a clear distinction between coerced and mandated (i.e., involuntary) treatment: under coerced conditions sanctions apply for non-compliance, while in the mandated treatment situation the offender is given no option. Mandated treatment is found to have a negative effect on compliance.

  4. Other, non-Hispanic racial categories in the county break down as: White, 6.6%, Black 0.8%, American Indian and Alaska Native 0.5%, Asian alone 1.1%, and multiracial 0.4%.

  5. Bivariate correlations were inspected to ensure that multi-collinearity was not be a problem in these analyses; the full list of bivariate correlations is available upon request. Variance inflation factors were also examined for each model as an additional test of multi-collinearity, and no VIF estimate was found to be higher than 5.1, with an average VIF in the full model (4) of 2.56.

  6. The difference in outcomes among positive drug testers only was analyzed separately by chi-square test.

  7. This difference in program stay length is significant at the p < .10 level.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank the Hidalgo County Community Supervision and Corrections Department and its staff, whose help and guidance made this project possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, 1201 West University Dr., Edinburg, TX, 78539, USA

    Bienvenido Ruiz & Ramon S. Guerra

  2. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Brownsville, TX, USA

    Billy J. Ulibarrí & Arlett S. Lomelí

  3. Department of Sociology, South Texas College, McAllen, TX, USA

    Rolando R. Longoria

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  1. Bienvenido Ruiz
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Ruiz, B., Ulibarrí, B.J., Lomelí, A.S. et al. The Relative Influence of Legal Pressure on Outcomes in a Rehabilitation Aftercare Drug Court. Am J Crim Just 44, 727–745 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-018-9465-3

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