ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER JUNKIES' PARADE

Another day begins in the imposing edifice of Dandenong Magistrates Court
complex, with up to 100 briefs assembled, in alphabetical order, on the
desk of Senior Constable Richard Bowers, a police prosecutor.

It is the paperwork generated by today's crop of law breakers in the
gigantic swathe of Melbourne stretching from Warrigal Road down the Princes
Highway to Narre Warren.

Drug problems exist throughout the community, but this area, which includes
the notorious drug-dealing zone of Springvale, probably has more than its
share.

On Senior Constable Bowers' estimation, some 60 per cent of the pile are
cases that have drug abuse as their foundation.

If you take into account that alcohol offences come into the category of
drug-related offences, add another 10 per cent for .05 driving cases and
the like.

You can't always tell the drug connection from the bare details - usually
it is the prior convictions, listed at the back, that reveal addictions
being fed with the proceeds of crime. Or it comes out when the defendant's
barrister makes a plea for leniency.

Out in the vestibule, you can't tell likely defendants from witnesses. It
is one of the scruffier jurisdictions.

The exception, this Wednesday, is a serious, well-groomed man wearing a
suit under a grey overcoat.

The court has eight magistrates, among them old hands such as Hal
Hallenstein, the former State Coroner who presided over lengthy police
shootings inquests, and new ones such as Caitlin English, who has landed
the "mention list" in Court One this Wednesday.

The complex also has an infrastructure designed particularly to pick up
people with drug problems.

In a cubby hole office, Nick Garofalo, the CREDIT scheme drug clinician,
awaits the court referral of another person eligible for his scheme.

Introduced in Melbourne Magistrates Court, the scheme has been extended to
Dandenong since January, and provides for drug charges against people to be
adjourned if they will enter a supervised treatment and support program.

Not all eight magistrates working at Dandenong are keen on it. Neither are
all the police. They feel that by the time people have been charged, it is
just a bit late for them to start seeking treatment and using it to put off
the inevitable.

But so far 40 people have been put on it, and Mr Garofalo says all bar one
have done well.

On this day, he finds another one - a 39-year-old addict who has faced
court 32 times in the previous 12 years, and for whom every available
punishment has been applied without success. He has been fined, jailed, put
on community-based orders, but is still facing charges of committing crimes
to raise the money for drugs.

This time, he could not face leaving his family and friends to go to jail
again, and took the treatment and support option that Mr Garofalo offers.
If he doesn't stick with it, he will return to jail.

Also around the court is Ms Luisa Hannan, a support worker attached to the
Oz Child: Children Australia program RALAT, who provides a similar service
directed solely at people under the age of 25.

And the Human Services Department has Ms Honey Davey, from its juvenile
justice unit, on hand to assess whether 17-20 year olds, mostly on drug
charges for which they face custodial sentences, might benefit from youth
training centres rather than going to prison.