| Abstrakt: |
Correctional planners and administrators have defined halfway houses as valuable program modalities. They are seen as providing a transitional placement for the newly released parolee, a suitable residence for parolees with poor resources, an opportunity to give more and better treatment, control and assistance, and an alternative to return to prison.The Parkway Community Center is a halfway house for narcotic addicts committed to the California Civil Addict Program. As planned, addicts released from the institutional phase of this program to the house have poorer resources than those not released to the house. While an evaluation of the operations of the house has not been done, a study of the effectiveness of the house in terms of the performance of those addicts admitted to it is possible and was done. The study might be described as a "natural experiment".During a period of overpopulation at the house, some 44 addicts referred to the house for placement were rejected due to a lack of bed space. By deliberate design these rejections were made on a nonjudgmental basis, i.e., it was decided that the characteristics and "needs" of the referrals were not to be considered in the selection of those cases which would be rejected for placement. These 44 subjects were compared to 44 addicts who were released from the institutional phase of the program and placed in the house at the time that the rejectees would have been placed had they been accepted; the two groups were found to be similar in terms of their characteristics. Both groups were then followed up for a period of one year following their release from the institutional phase of the Civil Addict Program and their outpatient status was compared. It was found that the placements and the rejectees did not differ in terms of "satisfactory" outpatient status, detected drug use, and new criminal convictions. Several comparisons were made with other subjects placed in the house and with other releases to the same geographical areas; these comparisons lent support to the conclusion that placement in the halfway house had no measurable effect upon the subjects performance on outpatient status. Some possible explanations for this apparent lack of effectiveness were presented. |
