In 2002, with support from several federal partners, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) launched the national Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies (CJ-DATS), a multisite research program aimed at improving the treatment of offenders with drug use disorders and integrating criminal justice and public health responses to drug involved offenders. Under CJ-DATS, researchers from 10 academic research centers and NIDA worked together with federal, state, and local criminal justice partners to develop and test integrated approaches to the treatment of offenders with drug use disorders. Data from these studies provide the ability to address important cross-cutting issues in criminal justice and drug abuse treatment when dealing with the drug involved offender.
In 2008, the Criminal Justice Drug Abuse Treatment Studies 2 (CJ-DATS 2) was launched, engaging a new cohort of research centers and agency partners. The focus of CJ-DATS 2 was on conducting implementation research in criminal justice settings. Specifically, NIDA charged the cooperative with testing implementation strategies that could result in sustained uptake and delivery of services in three domains: (1) delivery of medication-assisted treatment for offenders transitioning to the community; (2) delivery of an HIV continuum of care from prison or jail into the community; and (3) implementation of screening and assessment processes to identify offenders with drug abuse and related health problems and to inform their treatment planning and re-entry process. In each domain, grantees engaged both community corrections and community-based treatment providers. NIDA's ultimate goal for CJ-DATS 2 is to identify implementation strategies that maximize the likelihood of sustained delivery of evidence-based practices to improve offender drug abuse and HIV outcomes, and to decrease their risk of incarceration.