For Immediate Release: November 2005

Optimal Solutions Group LLC, in collaboration with Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency for the District of Columbia (CSOSA), presented the latest results of the “Drug Testing in the District of Columbia: A New Approach” at the 2005 Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) Conference in Washington DC. The project will assist CSOSA optimize its current drug testing regime for offenders under its supervision by linking drug testing frequencies with offender risk profiles. The results of this project will provide valuable information on how to improve the efficiency of drug testing while maintaining the efficacy of drug testing. The risk-based approach is also applicable in many other policy areas where policy makers are challenged by overwhelming demand for government services and limited resources.

The presentation reported findings of the first phase of this project, which focused on developing a drug testing algorithm that assessed the risks of testing positive for different types of drugs, using various offender characteristics. The presentation also discussed planned work in the second phase of the project - a randomized field trial to assess the effects of increasing or reducing drug testing frequencies on drug use patterns. During this planned field trial, offenders will be randomly assigned to one of three groups with varying drug testing frequencies. Drug testing outcomes of the three groups will be compared.

Optimal Solutions Group, LLC, is a minority-owned economic and policy analysis consulting firm in the Baltimore-Annapolis-Washington, DC area. We are committed to supplying insightful program evaluation, cost-benefit and effectiveness analyses, custom econometric modeling, and market analyses for decisionmakers in both the public and private sectors.

Optimal has served the needs of numerous governmental and commercial clients, including federal and state agencies, community-based organizations, business associations, and law firms.

For more information, contact Mark Turner, 443.451.7060 or mturner@optimalsolutionsgroup.com.