Brief motivation enhancing intervention to prevent criminal recidivism in substance-abusing offenders under supervision: a randomized trial

ABSTRACT

The goal of this study was to assess the effect of a brief motivation enhancing intervention (MEI) on criminal recidivism. This was a multi-site, cluster-randomized clinical trial in six addiction probation offices. We randomized 73 probation officers (37 to intervention, 36 to control) and followed 220 substance-abusing repeat offenders that were allocated to them (111 intervention, 109 control). We report three measures of recidivism rate (self-report, police records, and combination of either of the two) and time to re-offending (police records) during a 12-month follow-up period. The proportion of re-offending and time to re-offending was not significantly different between offenders that received supervision plus intervention and those that received supervision-as-usual (SAU, no intervention). Our findings provide no evidence that supervision plus a brief MEI is more effective than SAU.

KEYWORDS:

• Recidivism
• re-offending
• motivation enhancing intervention
• probation
• substance abuse

Acknowledgement

We thank the staff and clients at the participating addiction probation offices for their cooperation in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the ZonMw [grant number 31160207].