PREDICTING PRETRIAL MISCONDUCT WITH DRUG TESTS OF ARRESTEES - EVIDENCE FROM 8 SETTINGS

Identifying defendants at high risk of pretrial misconduct is a major problem for the judiciary. Currently, some have argued that testing ar restees for recent drug use is one way to distinguish between those wh o will and those who will not commit pretrial misconduct. The research reported here questions whether the incremental predictive power resu lting from drug testing always improves predictions of pretrial miscon duct. Using survival analysis to study time until rearrest and a probi t model to analyze the occurrence of a failure to appear, we show that urine test results have no consistent power to predict pretrial misco nduct after accounting for defendant's criminal records, community tie s, and other factors commonly known by the court. These results are ba sed on our analysis of eight data sets from different locales, time pe riods, and age groups.