Today, many people under parole or probation in the United States are required to abstain from using non-prescribed drugs and alcohol. Supervision agencies have come to rely on random drug testing to enforce this mandate. 

Although drug testing does appear to be associated with some immediate reduction in drug use for people with a history of substance misuse, there is currently little evidence to support the link between short-term decreases in drug use and long-term recovery, recidivism, or public safety. And for people under supervision with no history of substance use disorder, drug testing is a costly and onerous intervention that may only serve to divert supervision officers’ time and attention away from providing the kinds of re-entry support and services that could more meaningfully impact public safety and community re-integration.

With support from Arnold Ventures and in collaboration with the American Probation and Parole Association, ICH recently conducted a mixed-methods study to explore the current and evolving landscape of drug testing policy and practice in community supervision across the country, and to better understand how agency staff and leadership perceive the benefits and drawbacks of drug testing when it comes to fulfilling their mission to improve public safety. 

We collected survey responses from leaders at 123 community correction agencies, and met with agency leaders and frontline officers from select agencies for in-depth interviews. While we prepare a full description of our findings for dissemination, we wanted to share some key themes that have emerged from our work so far:

• There is considerable inter- and intra-agency variation in terms of which people under supervision undergo drug testing, how often they’re tested, and the consequences of a positive drug test. Officers are empowered to use their professional expertise to make complex decisions about drug testing. But over-reliance on officer discretion also creates conditions where individual biases may unfairly influence extremely consequential decisions about how and how often to test for drugs, and what to do when there is a positive drug test.
• Nearly all of the agencies surveyed (95.1%) use observed urinalysis (UA) for drug testing. Although officers and supervisees alike “get used to it,” agency staff and leaders described the practice of observing UAs as “invasive,” “disrespectful,” and “dehumanizing.” Drug testing is also expensive, and especially for the agencies that contract testing out to external vendors. On average, surveyed agencies spent about a tenth of their budget on drug testing. Most cover the cost of drug testing for their clients. However in a minority of agencies, people under supervision are billed for their own drug testing, and many cannot afford the fees. 
• Despite the costs and drawbacks to testing, most supervision professionals see drug testing as so integral to their mission to enhance public safety that they are unwilling to consider completely ending the practice. Still, agency leaders are hungry for research to support evidence-based decision making around drug testing, and most agencies surveyed (64.2%) have already implemented at least one of Arnold Venture’s recommended drug testing policy changes within the last several years. The most commonly reported policy changes were reductions to the frequency of drug testing (N=38) and avoidance of duplicate testing (N=35), followed by alterations to collection procedures (N=20), elimination of testing as a standard condition (N=18), and ending testing for cannabis (N=17). Although alterations to drug testing collection procedures appear to have been driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and were impermanent, the vast majority of agencies that implemented the other changes intended to make those changes permanent. 

ICH is now launching an evaluability study to assess the extent to which drug testing policies and practices can be rigorously evaluated for their impact on recidivism and life circumstances like employment, physical and mental health, and successful community involvement.  We intend to articulate the theory of change underlying drug testing before assessing opportunities to test whether those expectations are met. Throughout the assessment, we will consider the extent to which drug testing interacts with other systemic factors in the criminal legal system that might compound the negative consequences of drug testing. At ICH, we prioritize meaningful inclusion of people with lived experience  in all of our project work, and for this project we plan to include people who have lived experience of community supervision in the design, implementation, and interpretation of the evaluability findings. Please get in touch with any member of the project team if you’d like to discuss working together on this or another related project!