1
Substance Use Treatment
The program that I selected to evaluate is Florida’s department of corrections substance
use treatment. This program offers substance abuse and use programs to offenders to facilitate a
successful reintegration from prison back into society (Corrections, n.d.). Different methods are
used such as community-based treatment through the use of meetings and mentor programs, as
well as outpatient programs that provide counseling and resources. Evaluating whether this
program is impactful and significant is important as well as if the program is worth the cost that
is associated with treating offenders reintegrating.
Program Evaluation
For this substance use treatment program, the best evaluation method to use would be
cost effective analysis. Cost effective analysis is a type of evaluation research that compares
program costs to actual program outcomes (Bachman & Schutt, 2018). While impact evaluation
also could be a good evaluation method, substance use treatments require a significant amount of
cost and are better evaluated looking at the actual outcomes versus if it worked or not because
that is not exactly a straightforward answer. Since costs-effective analysis is focused on the
actual outcomes and not the cost associated with achieving those outcomes, the substance use
treatment program is better shown in the results of reintegrating offenders with substance issues
back into society. Evaluating this specific program could be done multiple ways but the first
thing is establishing what the goal is and for this specific program is if it results in a successful
reintegration back into the community. The input in this case could be randomly chosen
offenders that have completed the substance use treatment. With this particular program, there
are multiple methods used such as outpatient programs or community based, so focusing on one
could give a better picture of effectiveness. The goal is to see if they are successful in
2
reintegration, so being able to measure that could include monitoring criminal activity and
occupation after completion. The hypothesis for this experiment would be if the substance use
program is completed then there will be a higher success rate of reintegration. This evaluation
could be measured by comparing the cost of the program for each individual and comparing it to
their earnings and arrests costs.
Explanations
Quasi experiments could be used over true experiments because it can categorize the
offenders that completed the program by drug offense type or specific substance used and can
get a better understanding of a specific group to see if the success rates vary. Qualitative methods
are going to be just as valuable as quantitative in this evaluation because seeing how someone is
doing socially, physically, and mentally will also reflect their success on reintegration just as the
cost to benefits to receiving the treatment. The big picture with these programs is to get
successful results in offenders and this one is the same, with an evaluation possibly showing a
successful reintegration and better life after the program. Those results could be used to urge
further funding and implementation of more programs to aid offenders in the criminal justice
system.
3
References
Corrections, F. D. of. (n.d.). Florida Department of Corrections. Www.fdc.myflorida.com.
https://www.fdc.myflorida.com/programs/bureau-of-substance-use-treatment
Bachman, R., & Schutt, R. K. (2018). Fundamentals of research in criminology and criminal
justice. Sage.