STATE DPP CALLS FOR HEROIN ON PRESCRIPTION

The NSW Director of Public Prosecutions says doctors should be
allowed to prescribe free heroin.

In a new book - Getting Justice Done - Mr Nicholas Cowdery, QC,
writes that heroin profits must be reduced to break the link between
the drug and crime.

He suggests doctors be allowed to prescribe heroin to registered
addicts who finance their drug habits through crimes such as dealing
and theft.

"This is not heroin on demand, available from the corner store," says
Mr Cowdery who proposes that Australia's tightly supervised opium
production in Tasmania - used for medical purposes - be expanded to
become a source for the supply of prescription heroin.

He writes: "While there might be a slight, short-term increase in
consumption, we might be able to achieve at least the modest measures
of success we have had in relation to tobacco and alcohol.

"This would be a policy of openness and confrontation: getting the
problem out in the open and confronting it together."

His book, to be published on Friday, gives an insider's view of the
NSW criminal justice system which will not please the Carr Government.

Mr Cowdery says most government agencies are "running on empty". And
the State criminal justice system "is at the point of breakdown".

Money has been progressively squeezed out of the Government's
criminal justice agencies and diverted elsewhere, he says.

"There is also an irrational commitment by the NSW Government to
being debt-free, which keeps overall public spending at too low a
level to provide necessary services to the standard we expect."

He argues that agencies including police, courts, the Health
Department and Corrective Services do not share a dedication to
achieving justice.

"Rather, it seems that they are simply thrown against each other at
the various stages of a person's progress through the gateways from
charge to imprisonment and have to find ways to connect while keeping
the financial and other costs of doing so at the lowest level
achievable," Mr Cowdery writes.

As an example he talks about the use of DNA identification which is
recognised as a superior crime-fighting tool. The NSW Health
Department has only three "operational" DNA scientists involved in
testing samples for criminal prosecutions. Victoria has 17.

His book argues that if governments put more cash into resolving
youth problems and crime-prevention strategies, money would be saved
by fewer people turning to crime.

"Every holiday period, police stack the highways with hidden speed
detectors and write thousands of tickets. The priority is clearly
revenue-raising.

"If it were crime reduction, the effort would be put into making
these measures as visible as possible," he says.