Drugs Courts: Issues and Prospects

Adam Graycar Director The Australian Institute of Criminology has projects under way which attempt to fill a significant gap in our knowledge about the relationship between illicit drug use and criminal behaviour. Most Australian data relate to drug offences, but many other offences have a drug-related genesis. The existing judicial process does not appear to offer long-term solutions to drug-related crime. This paper outlines issues and arguments related to the establishment of treatmentoriented drug courts. Such courts have been established in the US and very recently in the UK. However, no two drug courts operate in the same way. Outlining the issues involved, this paper, concludes drug courts: • have had successes, but will not produce a success every time and careful judgments need to be made about acceptable failure rates; • are focused on treatment, rehabilitation and reduced recidivism; • are more intrusive for offenders than a conviction or short sentence; • are more expensive than traditional courts but when taking the whole package (court+imprisonment+cost of reoffending) could be much cheaper; • face implementation challenges integrating criminal justice and treatment agencies, cooperative arrangements between judge, prosecutor and defence, and achieving objectives broader than those of the criminal justice system. To summarise, we must always be aware that transplanting policy from one country to another does not necessarily produce the same results. Any pilot projects in Australia will need to be adapted to local conditions and must be rigorously and objectively evaluated.