Race, Neighborhood, and Drug Court Graduation

Abstract

This research examines the possibility that racial disparities in drug court graduation are attributable to individual-level employment or education or to neighborhood-level disadvantage. Individual-level data on 455 drug court clients and neighborhood-level census and police incident data are joined geographically. Drug court graduation is modeled using multilevel logistic regression. In a model with no neighborhood-level indicators, client race, employment, and education all predicted drug court graduation. When neighborhood-level variables are introduced, client-level race drops from significance but employment and education remain significant predictors of graduation. Client race, then, appears to be an indirect indicator of neighborhood disadvantage, while client employment and education remain important individual-level predictors of drug court graduation. These results support further analysis of neighborhood-based barriers to drug court graduation and the development of drug court programming that can address neighborhood-based challenges.

Keywords:

• race
• neighborhood
• drug court

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Karen Parker, Chrissy Saum, Eric Tranby, and Christy Visher; Chuck Huenke and Richard Harris at the Delaware Statistical Analysis Center; and Richard Gebelein and Carl Goldstein.

Notes

^1. Direct measures of criminal history, including arrest and incarceration measures, were available but were excluded due to high levels of missing data.

^2. At the discretion of the SAC this list does not include incidents involving rape, sexual assault, statutory rape, or child sexual abuse; thus any offense tagged by the SAC as involving one of these offenses is not included in the analysis.

^3. Crime Rate = (count of geocoded incidents within tract)/(tract population (census data)) × 1000.

^4. Results of these follow-up analyses are not provided here but are available on request.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Howard

Daniel Howard is a lecturer in Criminal Justice at Penn State Harrisburg’s School of Public Affairs. His research interests include community corrections, drug policy, and social inequality.