Drug testing in community corrections is a surveillance tool with significant impact for both people under supervision and for those who staff supervision agencies. Drug testing is often expensive, invasive, inconvenient, and time-consuming, and can result in sanctions that include violations and technical revocations. Despite these challenges, corrections leaders and professionals also consider drug testing to be a core component of the community correction field’s mission to increase community safety. But like many of the standard practices in the field, the effectiveness of drug testing on drug use and criminal recidivism remains understudied, and much of what is known about drug testing in supervision in based on anecdotal evidence and limited research.

This report begins to fill gaps in drug testing literature by presenting findings from a mixed-methods study of drug testing policy and practice across the United States. We collected survey responses from leaders at 123 community corrections agencies, and conducted in-depth interviews with 15 agency leaders and 8 frontline supervision officers. Our findings shed light on the current landscape of drug testing policy and practice across the country, and document the ways that community corrections professionals think of the benefits and drawbacks to current drug testing practice. We use these data to assess the field’s appetite for change, and to explore next steps toward building evidence on the utility of drug testing.