JAIL ALTERNATIVE WORKING FOR DRUG ADDICTS

SCOTLAND'S initial experience of drugs treatment and testing orders,
which are seen as a tough new alternative to jail for addicts, has
been "positive," a criminal justice expert claimed yesterday.

Mr Paul Morron, Glasgow's head of criminal justice social work
services, who supervised the country's first order earlier this year,
said 29% of all DTTOs in England had collapsed in the first four weeks.

"That has not been the early Scottish experience after eight weeks,"
said Mr Morron, who was speaking at the Scottish Police College at
Tulliallan, where two reports on the merits of setting up special drug
courts in Scotland were presented to an international conference.

"It's early days, but I think the indicators are quite
positive."

He said these were very "intensive" orders and he believed there could
be a significant failure rate north of the Border because of the
nature of the people the authorities were dealing with.

However Mr Morron, who has worked in criminal justice social work in
Scotland for 30 years, said a significant breach rate would indicate
supervision was tight.

The arrival of DTTOs will not preclude the creation of American-style
drug courts, the promotion of which in a Scottish context was the
purpose of yesterday's conference, said Deputy Justice Minister Angus
McKay.

Speaking to The Herald from New York, where he was seeing drug courts
first hand, Mr McKay said DTTOs were aimed at a higher end of the drug
abuse scale and did not preclude drug courts dealing with early offenders.

"I am glad the Tulliallan conference on drug courts is taking place,"
he said.

"As I stated in Parliament we are still looking at every option for
dealing with drug misuse. I do not want to get hung up in structure.
We will sift out what works and see if it can be made to work for us
in Scotland. The ultimate objective is to get people into treatment in
order to shrink demand for drugs, so the door is very much open for
drug courts."

In February, a 34-year-old Glasgow man became the first recruit into
the DTTO scheme aimed at keeping out of prison addicts who steal to
fund their habit. Eight others have followed. The alternative to
imprisonment for convicted drug offenders is only available in Glasgow
as part of a two-year pilot scheme. A similar scheme, expected to run
for 18 months, will be piloted in Fife this summer.

Under the Glasgow initiative, courts have powers to offer addicts who
have a significant history of crimes of dishonesty help to quit their
habit.

Last month a High Court judge criticised the uneven distribution of
DTTOs across Scotland.

Mr Morron backed the use of drug courts, widely used in the USA, where
rehabilitation instead of imprisonment is looked on as a means of
punishment for non-violent offenders.

Speaking at yesterday's one-day conference, organised by the
Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and Phoenix House, which has
provided drug treatment services since 1970, Mr Morron also called for
the introduction of drug testing as a condition of probation for those
with a pattern of drug offending. This, he said, would greatly enhance
the credibility and confidence in probation.