Integration of the Therapeutic Workplace in Drug Court

Drug Courts were developed as a therapeutic alternative to incarceration of drug-involved offenders by providing 'judicially supervised' drug abuse treatment and probation for nonviolent offenders in lieu of criminal prosecution and incarceration. Outcome studies have shown that drug courts have modest effects on participation in drug abuse treatment, drug use, and employment. The Therapeutic Workplace intervention is an effective employment-based treatment that integrates abstinence reinforcement contingencies in a work setting, intended to treat individuals with histories of drug addiction and chronic unemployment. Under this intervention, drug abuse patients are hired and paid to work. To promote abstinence, patients are required to provide drug-free urine samples to gain and maintain daily access in the workplace. In this way, patients can work and earn salary, but only as long as they remain drug abstinent. Patients using drugs and lacking job skills participate in an initial training phase to initiate abstinence and establish computer data entry skills. Once abstinent and skilled, patients are hired into an income-producing Therapeutic Workplace data entry business. Given that many drug court participants suffer from long histories of drug addiction and unemployment, the Therapeutic Workplace could be ideal for this population. This proposes of this clinical trial is to evaluate the Therapeutic Workplace intervention in a Drug Court.