According to the US General Accounting Office in 2002, the Department of Justice failed to collect adequate data on drug courts. "One of the Drug Court Clearinghouse's functions has been to identify DCPO-funded drug court programs. However, the Drug Court Clearinghouse has only been tasked since 1998 with following up with a segment of DCPO [Drug Courts Program Office] grantees to determine their implementation date. Thus, the information provided to DCPO on the universe of DCPO-funded drug court programs is at best an estimate and not a precise count of DCPO drug court program grantees. Noting that its current grant information system was not intended to readily identify and track the number of DCPO-funded drug court programs, DCPO officials said that they plan to develop a new management information system that will enable DOJ to do so. Without an accurate universe of DCPO-funded drug court programs, DCPO is unable to readily determine the actual number of programs or participants it has funded or, as discussed below, the drug court programs that should have responded to its semiannual data collection survey."
US General Accounting Office, "Drug Courts: Better DOJ Data Collection and Evaluation Efforts Needed To Measure Impact of Drug Court Programs," (GAO-02-434: Government Printing Office, April 2002), p. 9.
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/…
