Virginia’s first drug treatment court docket was established in 1995 in the 23rd Judicial Circuit, which includes the Cities of Roanoke and Salem, and the County of Roanoke. During fiscal year (FY) 2022, there were fifty-six (56) approved drug treatment court dockets operating in Virginia. Approved operational dockets include: forty-seven (47) adult, three (3) juvenile, five (5) family, and one (1) regional driving under the influence (DUI) drug treatment court docket. Data from seven of these dockets are not included in this report due to their recent start date with limited available data.

The goals of Virginia drug treatment court dockets are to:

• Reduce drug addiction and drug dependency among offenders;
• Reduce recidivism;
• Reduce drug-related court workloads;
• Increase personal, familial, and societal accountability among offenders; and
• Promote effective planning and use of resources among the criminal justice system and community agencies.

Drug treatment court dockets continue to grow in the Commonwealth. Much of the recent growth is attributed to the opioid epidemic. Drug treatment courts continue to play an important role in the response to this epidemic, but they are not the only response. New evidence-based justice system approaches are needed to prevent overdose deaths, including medication-assisted treatment and individually designed set of services and supports provided to a participant and his/her family that includes treatment services, personal support services or any other support aftercare services necessary to achieve the desired outcome. These services, often referred to as wrap around services, are developed through a team approach. These dockets are working to connect at-risk individuals with more immediate treatment and supportive services using the evidence-based practices of drug treatment courts to enhance the justice system’s cost-effective way to increase the percentage of substance using offenders who achieve sustained recovery, thereby improving public safety and reducing costs associated with re-arrest and additional incarceration. Drug treatment court dockets integrate treatment services with justice system case processing to promote public safety while protecting participants’ due process rights and helping to slow the “revolving door" of criminal justice involvement while addressing the underlying problems that contribute to criminal behavior and seek to improve court outcomes for victims, litigants, and our communities. Drug treatment court dockets offer substance use and mental health treatment participants as an alternative to traditional case processing. They also often include alternatives to incarceration, case dismissal, reduction in charges, and reduction in supervision. According to the National Institute on Mental Health at the National Institutes of Health substance use disorders are a mental disorder that affects a person’s brain and behavior, leading to a person’s inability to control their use of substances such as legal or illegal drugs, alcohol, or medications. But being a brain disease does not exclude substance use disorder from being a mental health condition, as well. These terms are synonymous, describing the way excessive drug use can affect and change the brain, and affect both thinking and behavior. Almost a quarter million adults in Virginia live with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders.(*2) About 70 - 80% of participants in a Drug Treatment Court Dockets are likely to have law enforcement involvement, which does not result in increased access to appropriate care but rather results in their over-representation within the criminal justice system. Drug treatment court dockets incorporate evidencebased strategies in a public health approach to accommodate offenders with specific problems and needs that are not or could not be adequately addressed in the traditional court setting, resulting in increased public safety by integrating the criminal justice system with treatment systems and community resources.

This report reviews the basic operations and outcomes of Virginia’s drug treatment court dockets during FY 2022. The analyses provided in this report are based on data for participants who were enrolled in a drug treatment court docket program during the period of July 1, 2021, through June 30, 2022, regardless of the outcome of their participation.(*3) The information provided includes measures of program participants including demographics, program entry offenses, length of program participation, graduation and termination, and rearrest/reconviction post program exit.

All data provided in this report are based on the following: 1) data extracted from the Virginia specialty dockets information database developed and maintained by OES; and 2) arrest data obtained from the Virginia State Police (VSP). On December 31, 2019, the Commission on Virginia Alcohol Safety Action Program (VASAP) required the local Alcohol Safety Action Programs (ASAPs) to enter data in their proprietary database system. VASAP updated their Inferno database system with Adystech system. Previously, the data in the Inferno database was routinely migrated into the specialty dockets database. OES has been collaborating with VASAP and the Adystech team to migrate DUI drug court data. At the time of this report, however, that migration has not produced reliable numbers to include in this evaluation.

The family and juvenile drug treatment court docket models served a limited number of participants during FY 2022. As a result, only basic data are included for these models.

Information provided in this report reviews several best practices in the drug treatment court dockets over the years, such as use of the Risk and Needs Triage (RANT®) tool. RANT® is a secure webbased decision support tool designed with criminal justice professionals in mind. The RANT® tool yields an immediate report that classifies potential drug court participants into one of four risk/needs quadrants with the tool indicating what level of supervision and treatment are best suited to the potential participants’ criminogenic risks and clinical needs. This tool is required for all persons being screened as potential drug court participants.
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(*2) SAMHSA National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), available at https://www.samhsa.gov/data/data-we-collect/nsduh-national-survey-drug-use-and-health
(*3) The primary data reported here is Fiscal Year 2022 data. However, for the purposes of longitudinal perspective, years dating back to 2015 may be presented in certain tables or figures. For the section on criminal recidivism, the focus is on persons who left an adult drug court docket in 2019, as is detailed in that section.