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Drug Offender Sentencing Alternative (DOSA) (Residential)

Adult Criminal Justice
  Literature review updated November 2022.

Washington State's Drug Offender Sentencing Alternative (DOSA) specifies that for certain individuals receiving felony convictions, a superior court judge has the option to sentence individuals to inpatient treatment in the community without any prerequisite confinement.

Individuals are eligible for residential DOSA if they present a need for inpatient residential treatment, have not been sentenced to DOSA in the last ten years, and have a sentence duration where the midpoint of the standard range is 26 months or less. Further, individuals are ineligible if they have a current or prior conviction for a violent offense or sex offense in the last ten years, a prior conviction for robbery in the second degree, convictions for felony DUI/DWI, any sentencing enhancements, a deportation order, or current convictions that include a violation of the Uniform Controlled Substances Act.

Residential DOSA sentences are served strictly in the community and include a minimum of 90 days of inpatient substance use treatment at a Washington State Department of Corrections-funded facility. If an individual does not complete their treatment, they are required to serve the remainder of their sentence in confinement (either jail or prison).

The current analysis presents the findings for residential DOSA from WSIPP’s 2022 evaluation of DOSA. Results for prison DOSA are excluded from this analysis and analyzed separately.
 
ALL
META-ANALYSIS
CITATIONS

Meta-analysis is a statistical method to combine the results from separate studies on a program, policy, or topic to estimate its effect on an outcome. WSIPP systematically evaluates all credible evaluations we can locate on each topic. The outcomes measured are the program impacts measured in the research literature (for example, impacts on crime or educational attainment). Treatment N represents the total number of individuals or units in the treatment group across the included studies.

An effect size (ES) is a standard metric that summarizes the degree to which a program or policy affects a measured outcome. If the effect size is positive, the outcome increases. If the effect size is negative, the outcome decreases. See Estimating Program Effects Using Effect Sizes for additional information on how we estimate effect sizes.

The effect size may be adjusted from the unadjusted effect size estimated in the meta-analysis. Historically, WSIPP adjusted effect sizes to some programs based on the methodological characteristics of the study. For programs reviewed in 2024 or later, we do not make additional adjustments, and we use the unadjusted effect size whenever we run a benefit-cost analysis.

Research shows the magnitude of effects may change over time. For those effect sizes, we estimate outcome-based adjustments, which we apply between the first time ES is estimated and the second time ES is estimated. More details about these adjustments can be found in our Technical Documentation.

Meta-Analysis of Program Effects
Outcomes measured No. of effect sizes Treatment N Effect sizes (ES) and standard errors (SE) Unadjusted effect size (random effects model)
ES SE Age ES p-value
Crime
Involvement in the criminal justice system (e.g., arrests, charges, convictions, incarceration) measured through administrative records (e.g. court records, arrests) or self-report.
 34 1 5103 0.032 0.019 35 0.032 0.096

Citations Used in the Meta-Analysis

Knoth-Peterson, L., Kelley, K.M., & Mack, C. (2022). Washington State’s Drug Offender Sentencing Alternative: 2022 outcome evaluation (Document Number 22-11-1903). Olympia: Washington State Institute for Public Policy.