Race, Neighborhood, and Drug Court Graduation

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.