ORDER IN THE DRUG COURT

AFTER more than a year, it should be pretty clear how the State's first
drug court is working. That is, whether its diversionary programs - which
allow addicts who have committed crimes for which they face jail to avoid
imprisonment by undertaking treatment to overcome their addiction - is more
cost effective than conventional sentencing choices in reducing
drug-related crime. There is some indication that the experiment is indeed
worthwhile. Unfortunately, the hopeful signs are compromised by an
inexcusable slackness in the court-supervised treatment program to help
offenders overcome their addiction.

In a review of the drug court's first year of operation, the Bureau of
Crime Statistics and Research says the experiment is progressing largely
according to plan. The director of the bureau, Dr Don Weatherburn, says:
"The retention rate of participants in the program is good and the
re-arrest rate is low by comparison with the re-arrest rate normally found
among heroin-dependent property offenders." But, disturbingly, Dr
Weatherburn has pointed to a "break-down in urine testing procedures". This
has meant it is impossible to state reliably what proportion of those in
the drug court program remain drug-free.

This flaw in the program also raises other doubts. For example, although
the retention rate of participants in the program is good, is that partly
because the program is soft on participants, not insisting they take the
program's drug-testing requirements seriously? And, where urine-testing
procedures are not rigorously followed, what is to prevent someone in the
program from pretending to be clean, when he or she is not? By deceit they
can take not only the benefit of the program's opportunity to avoid being
jailed for the crime which brought them into the program in the first
place. They can also avoid the punishment of jail that is imposed on others
found - through proper urine tests - to have breached the commitment to
anti-dependence treatment which is the whole point of the program.

It is not clear who precisely is to blame. But it is likely that a cultural
difference - between the culture of law enforcement and that of care and
treatment of patients - is at the heart of this problem. Naturally some
medical staff will be inclined to regard those in the treatment program as
patients, even though they are in the program only because they are
offenders who have made a bargain to which they should, for their own good,
and as a matter of justice, he firmly held.

This is not a matter of callousness, but commonsense. Some would call it
"tough love". Those in the drug court program must meet certain
requirements. They must plead guilty to a criminal offence and they must
have been highly likely to be sentenced to full-time imprisonment. They
must be dependent on drugs and be over 18. For such people, it is perfectly
consistent with their best interests to ensure that they stick to the rules
of the rehabilitation program to which they commit themselves. Letting them
cheat urine tests does them no good at all. Fortunately, only some of the
clinics involved in the program are a problem. It should be a simple matter
for the court to put this part of the program in order, as it must. It is
important this be set right before the program gets much older so that its
broader evaluation - through a continuing comparison of the re-arrest rate
of drug court participants and the re-arrest rate of a control group
sentenced in the conventional way - is not compromised.