State of Tennessee

The Drug Court Discretionary Grant Program is designed to assist states, state courts, local courts, units of local government, and Indian tribal governments in developing and establishing drug courts for substance-abusing adult and juvenile offenders. Drug court programs funded by the Drug Court Discretionary Grant Program are required by law to target nonviolent offenders. The Program supports the following activities: adult drug court implementation, single jurisdiction drug court enhancement, statewide drug court enhancement, and planning efforts.

The Tennessee Office of Criminal Justice Programs(OCJP)and The Tennessee Drug Court will use the statewide drug court enhancement grant to provide support and assistance to Tennessee's drug courts in reducing recidivism, program improvement, and providing cost-effective services. This will be accomplished in four ways: 1)provide a complete analysis of seven Tennessee performance standards that the drug courts currently cannot collect, but will be used to evaluate and improve their programs, 2) select at least three drug court programs to participate in an outcome evaluation and cost savings analysis using comparison groups, 3) develop a template for drug court programs to calculate criminal justice cost savings, and 4) develop and implement a training and technical assistance plan for all drug court programs. The Office of Criminal Justice Programs proposes to solicit an evaluator to conduct a statewide evaluation to meet these goals and objectives that will include the following components: Arrest and Jail Time Data, Collection and Analysis, Evaluate Outcomes, Criminal Justice System Cost Savings Template
and Training and Technical Assistance. Regional training will be onducted and ongoing technical assistance will be available by contacting OCJP.

CA/NCF