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TASC began during the 1970s as a criminal
justice effort in response to the rising tide of substance-involved
offenders revolving through the criminal justice system, developing
mechanisms to utilize the treatment system to meet criminal justice goals.
Discussion of how to link treatment and the judicial process and interrupt
the relationship between drugs and property crimes were held by the Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), the White House-established
Special Action Office for Drug Prevention (SAODAP), and the National
Institute on Mental Health’s division of Narcotic Addiction and Drug Abuse
(DNADA) predecessor to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The
result was a federal initiative, modeled after early experiments with
diversion programs and two demonstration projects in New York City and
Washington, D.C. The project was funded under the Drug Abuse office and
Treatment Act of 1972 and christened TASC: "Treatment Alternatives to
Street Crime." In the mid 80s a resurgence of interest in TASC came
through the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), which had taken the place
of LEAA.
TASC incorporates the philosophies of both the criminal justice and
treatment systems into its operating principles, and does so by
capitalizing on the leverage of the criminal justice system to achieve
maximum benefits from treatment. The TASC model is based on critical
elements fundamental to integrating the criminal justice and substance
abuse treatment systems, holding offenders and both systems accountable
through the implementation of client-specific case management. A goal of
integrated services is to safely manage high-risk, high-need offenders in
the community by balancing intervention opportunities with controlled
supervision.
The TASC model of service includes assessment, treatment, or referral to
treatment, case management, and monitoring and reporting services. TASC
and TASC-like programs provide an integrated system of care in meeting the
needs of the justice system, the treatment system, and, most of all, the
client. TASC programs work with courts (including drug courts), and
corrections to ensure treatment is available for community-based
supervision, and institutional aftercare.
The TASC model approaches, refined over thirty years of experience, are
now routinely used in pretrial diversion, drug courts, day and evening
reporting programs, community corrections, juvenile case management,
mental health courts, child welfare and family treatment programs, reentry
and jail transitional programs throughout the nation.
Advantages of the TASC approach include less reliance on governmental
solutions to problems, and better resource utilization through
communities. TASC increases community capacity by targeting services and
fitting them to clients’ needs and risks. This improves system responses
and communications through regular use of treatment, case management and
interventions.
Most of these approaches have been freely disseminated through training,
technical assistance and replication funded by the U.S. Department of
Justice Office of Justice Programs, Department of Health and Human
Services, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
Administration. The National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institute
of Health and the Office of National Drug Control Policy continue to
recognize the value of TASC’s contributions to the substance abuse field. |
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