Performance Targets for Drug Courts

• In Event: Responses to Substance Use and Abuse: Specialty Courts and Treatment

Abstract

The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) has assisted more than 20 states to develop performance measures for their Drug Courts. While these measures provide crucial information to about program performance, more tools are needed to manage program performance. A recent meta-analysis of the impact of performance management on performance in public organizations (Gerrish, 2016) found that performance management systems tend to have a small but positive average impact on performance in public organizations. However, when combined with performance management best practices in high-quality studies, a much larger impact was found and performance targets (benchmarks) were found to be particularly effective. NCSC has helped four states (WI, KY, IA, and MD) to develop performance management systems, that incorporate both performance measures and associated performance targets. These target have been developed based on a review of rigorous research, analysis of data from drug courts, and, finally expert opinion. This paper provides a more in-depth discussion of the methodology employed by NCSC to develop performance targets and provides the performance measures and their targets developed for each state.

Authors

• Fred Louis Cheesman II, National Center for State Courts

• Nicole Waters, National Center for State Courts

• Kathryn Genthon, National Center for State Courts

• Matthew Kleiman, National Center for State Courts