Impact of the Ghent Drug Treatment Court on recidivism
Problematic substance users have a high risk of encounters with the criminal justice system (CJS) due to
their substance use or substance-related offences. Since a merely repressive approach does not appear to be successful, the CJS increasingly diverts these offenders to drug treatment services. To this purpose,
Drug Treatment Courts (DTCs) were introduced at court level in different countries since the late 80s. In Belgium a DTC was implemented in 2008 in the judicial district of Ghent. In this contribution, the impact of the Ghent DTC on the prevalence and frequency of recidivism is studied. Recidivism is defined as any new judicial decision following a criminal offence committed after the DTC trajectory, which did not result in an acquittal, a technical dismissal or any other technical judgment.