Criminal Justice Interventions against Drug Use and Harms

In Edelyn Verona & Bryanna Fox (eds.). 2023. Routledge Handbook of Evidence-Based Criminal Justice Practices. New York: Routledge. Ch. 36, pp. 343–344.

Swift, Certain, and Fair
Programs that compel sobriety through the threat of moderate sanctions reduce drug consumption and offer promise as a means to reduce misconduct, but existing evidence of these programs’ impact on crime leaves questions about generalizability unanswered. Community-based programs that coerce sobriety through the threat of legal penalties, sometimes referred to as swift, certain, and fair (SCF; Kleiman, 2009), typically begin either after arrest or after the determination of a sentence to probation or parole for offenses that are linked to drug use. SCF supervision approaches are varied in their structure, but the core elements of such programs are clearly defined rules, frequent interaction between clients and their program officer, frequent drug or alcohol testing, and well-defined mild punitive repercussions for rule violations. Typically, sanctions include a judicial hearing and/or confinement for a period of 12–72 hours, with no other associated criminal penalty. Sustained non-compliance can result in revocation of probation or parole, but such failures have been found to be rare in extant evidence.
The most frequently implemented designs among SCF-type programs derive from the alcohol- focused 24/7 sobriety program or the illicit drug-focused Hawaii’s opportunity probation with enforcement (HOPE) program. Quasi-experimental studies of 24/7 sobriety programs in Montana and the Dakotas have found large reductions in the probability of re-arrest at the individual level and reductions in intoxicated driving and domestic violence arrests as well as mortality at the community level (Kilmer et al., 2013; Kilmer & Midgette, 2020; Midgette et al., 2020; Midgette & Kilmer, 2021; Nicosia et al., 2016). Though the absolute rates of compliance are high in all three states, the difference in violations leads to more incarceration in those with more violations, thus greater cost to participants and the jurisdictions (Midgette et al., 2021).
An experimental evaluation conducted among probation clients assigned to HOPE in Honolulu, HI, and a quasi-experimental study of the Swift-and-Certain program in Washington state found reductions in drug use, arrest, probation revocation, and incarceration (Hamilton et al., 2016; Hawken & Kleiman, 2009), but the results from a four-site field experiment replicating HOPE yield little evidence of a reduction in re-arrest (Lattimore et al., 2016). The studies provide consistent evidence of a reduction in drug use (Hawken, 2018; Lattimore et al., 2018).
Despite mixed evidence on the impact of illicit drug-focused approaches on recidivism and a lack of evidence on alcohol-focused programs outside of Hawaii and the upper midwestern United States, SCF programs have consistently demonstrated effectiveness in reducing substance use, but the effect of SCF programs on re-arrest risk may depend greatly on implementation fidelity (Humphreys & Kilmer, 2020; Midgette et al., 2021).