ArticleAddiction (Abingdon, England)2026
Ethical tensions in legally mandated substance use treatment: A scoping review of participant perspectives.
Article in Addiction (Abingdon, England), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Ethical tensions in legally mandated substance use treatment: A scoping review of participant perspectives.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
aimsMandating people charged with drug-related criminal offenses to participate in substance use disorder (SUD) treatment as an alternative to jail time is a policy with widespread political and public support in the United States; however, mandated treatment programs present a tension between competing ethical values (e.g. autonomy versus protection from harm). To help ground the ethical discussion, this paper examined qualitative literature on mandated treatment programs that explores these ethical tensions from the perspective of program participants.
methodsWe undertook a review of studies reporting views of individual participants on their experiences in a mandated treatment program. Scope of search was limited to the United States, and only literature pertaining to substance use treatment mandated by the criminal legal system was considered. In total, 39 studies were included in the review.
resultsParticipants' perspectives reported in the literature attest to the existence of the following five tension points: (1) choice about whether to participate in a program, (2) choice about what services are provided during mandated treatment, (3) perceived conflicts of interest among treatment providers, (4) involvement of judges or other criminal legal officials in treatment decisions, and (5) targeting of people who are not in need of treatment. People subjected to mandates often experience these same tensions, but their overall appraisal of their experience often depends on unique contextual factors that vary substantially based on the implementation of programs in real world conditions. Many participants felt that programs such as drug court provide a necessary nudge without overly restricting their autonomy, but others revealed more ambivalent or negative attitudes.
conclusionsThe widely varying experiences of people in the United States participating in mandated substance use disorder treatment programs underscore the difficulty of rendering sweeping conclusions about the benefits and harms of mandated treatment and highlight the need to calibrate programs and policies to meet the specific needs and interests of different groups facing mandates.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.