Substance Abuse

Defendants who suffer from addictions present enormous challenges to the court system.  Many defendants with addictions cycle repeatedly through the criminal justice system, clogging court calendars and jail cells.  Pretrial programs address these challenges in a variety of ways.  Many programs attempt to identify defendants with indications of substance abuse, in order to assess risk of nonappearance or re-arrest. Pretrial programs also develop policies and practices to share assessment information at key points in the justice process.  Other programs have developed specialized supervision strategies to reduce the risk posed by this population. 

This section contains the chapters of each set of standards related to this topic, examples submitted by programs, related publications and results from the Survey of Pretrial Programs series.