The Cost-effectiveness of Civil Remedies: the Case of Drug Control Interventions

Civil remedies allow an individual to coerce a third party into taking action against offenders who are imposing hardship on the individual initiating the remedy. Thus, there is a disjunction between the individual who initiates and benefits from a civil remedy and the entity that bears most of the cost of implementing the remedy. At their best, civil remedies can make negligent organizations responsive to the needs of the citizenry. At their worst, civil remedies allow individuals to hijack the resources of well-run and well-meaning organizations and force those resources to be used for private but not necessarily public benefit. This paper discusses the cost-effectiveness of civil remedies for drug control interventions. Given the paucity of evaluation data, it is not possible to provide a point estimate as to their average cost-effectiveness. However, a conceptual framework for understanding cost-effectiveness and rough rules of thumb for assessing the effectiveness of individual interventions are provided.