To: Worcester County Sheriffs Office; From: James Singletary

Date: May 1, 2016

Subject: Nichols College WSCO Project for Drug Courts

Introduction

Arrests, drug abuse, and imprisonments have been on the rise in the Worcester County area. This
causes a major problem for many local residents, and communities within areas affected by such
abuses. This can lead to economical issues, and abuse from younger children of the same types
of drugs and influences that surround them every day. My name is James Singletary, and we are
from the Nichols College Drug Courts and Recidivism class, in charge of the WSCO Project.
This project touches base on whether or not the Regional Resource Center and court is effective
in its recidivism rates to date. We have created codes, made variables, presented surveys to
inmates and those who have had altercations with the law, taken multiple trips to interview
inmates, and many more great opportunities. However, in that time, we have learned many
important lessons and multiple times, in-depth looks at repeated offenders past lives, as well as
what helped and did not help them achieve recidivism.

Methods

Our research group have worked very hard on gathering information for this project, in order to
gain any further knowledge of the success of the courts and Regional Resource Centers in
regards to recidivism of clients. To gather all of this information and code it, we had used SPSS,
which is a windows based program that is useful for data entry, analysis, and creating
tables/graphs. As our research had begun, there was a specific set of criteria necessary to be able
to allow the information to be accurate. Some of this criteria included ethical standards at all
time, confidentiality, a clear problem, and articulate questioning in surveys and interviews. As
we gathered more and more information, and conducted many interviews, we had entered our
data into SPSS, created variables for specific numbers or answers, and entered each code by
hand. After we had coded each question by hand and entered our data, we used the SPSS
analyze tool which allows us to search for correlations between specific answers to questions, or
things such as the correlation of age to drug use, or place of birth in regards to drug use.

Results

As our group finalized the interviews, surveys, and subjects given to examine, we found a very
interesting conclusion. We evaluated the correlations between drug of choice and age, and found
that there were no correlations or specific conclusions, because they were at a .05 and .416
correlations, anything below .05 is where it is deemed a true correlation. The only correlations
that we had found were a correlation between employment and drug use. We found that
unemployment correlates to increased drug use. Our number that we had found statistically
was .05 and below, which means that it is significant. The results showed that those who do not
hold a job or are unemployed have a higher rate of drug usage and lowered recidivism rates. In
the rest of our research, we had found that the mean of age when these subjects were submitted
into the Regional Resource Center was 33 years old. However, there were a lot of
missed/skipped questions by the participants of our survey, resulting in almost 14-16 deviated
surveys. We had found that most of our 52 participants were male, and roughly 1/4 of the rest
were females; 34 males, 18 females. What was very interesting was that 50 out of the 52
participants were Caucasian and made up 96.2 of the total survey. Next, we sought to find out
where they currently lived. Five participants live in Charlton, seven in Dudley, four in Oxford,
ten in Southbridge, sixteen in Webster, and ten in other (anywhere besides those five areas. We
found that Webster seemed to be the place with the most regional resource center participants,
which can conclude that Webster is possibly a hot spot for drug use or crime. In addition, we
found that 3 of our participants were married, 35 were not, and 14 did not answer. The most
important piece of information for our group was when we asked if the participants were
employed. 16 answered that they were indeed employed, but 19 had answered no, and another
17 had not answered at all and were unaccounted for. Plus, the same exact number had also not
answered when it came to having insurance; with a mere 34 saying yes and 1 saying no. What is
tricky, however, is we decided to ask if they were disabled. Only 5 said yes they were, and 31
said no. But a total of 16 did not want to answer. This shows that there are a great amount of
participants who may have gotten uncomfortable quickly into the survey and not wanted to give
out such information, due to the fact that some may be claiming disability, however not actually
be disabled. This correlates directly to drug use.

To continue our survey, we asked what their level of education was. 29 participants had a high
school education or GED and 6 went beyond that. 17 participants however, had not answered.
When we asked what their drug of choice was, 10 said alcohol, 4 said cocaine, 13 said opiates, 3
said THC, 1 said prescription drugs, 6 said none, and 15 did not answer at all. There were no
other correlations besides the one said previously when asked about employment and drug use.
This shows that there is a correlation that unemployment, especially in high crime areas, is much
higher.

Recommendations

Although there are many areas of recommendations, and things to work on as a regional resource
center and court system for higher recidivism rates for participants, there are a few that are
highly recommended. It is recommended that there is a set list of requirements for drug courts
and program entry rather than the judges discretion due to bias and ethics. In addition, there can
not be any more self-reporting clients because it hinders the accuracy of the information of our
surveys, as many people did not answer at all for many questions. As a Nichols College
Research Student, I also recommend that recidivism is preached throughout the justice system,
and everyone is given an equal and fair chance to change their behavior before they are just sent
to jail right away, because imprisonment unfortunately does not always fix things for these
offenders. When these people do get out of prison, there opportunities lessen greatly, and they
do not have a job, nor food, nor families to be able to take care of them and watch over them. In
interviews that we had conducted, inmates had told us that they wanted to go back to prison or
do something to get them back because they could not support themselves on the outside, and in
the inside they were much safer. Inmates should not need/want to repeat a crime because they
can not take care of themselves. These inmates had genuinely smartened up, but ultimately got
stuck in making the choice of whether or not they could take care of themselves, or if they
should go back to prison in which they lived for so many years. Also, those who work in the
justice system have to have a belief in the inmates, because many of the inmates that we had
interviewed had been touched by the kindness of some of the correctional officers, but they had
also known the ones to watch out for. Prison is not a fun place, however, it should be a place to
go where people can get better and fix their problems in a confined space.