DRUG COURTS WORK, BUT WON'T WORK MIRACLES

As we speak, the Bracks Government is putting through State Parliament -
with opposition support - its plan to reduce drug-related crime and do more
to improve the health of drug users by establishing a "drug court". What's
that? And how well is it likely to work?

The drug court is an idea from America, where its use is widespread. But
all Australian states are in the process of introducing it. New South Wales
began a pilot project in 1999.

Fortuitously, an evaluation of the project was published last week. It was
conducted by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and is the
first study of the cost-effectiveness of a crime-prevention policy ever
undertaken in Australia.

A drug court is a specialist court to which other local and county courts
in its area refer appropriate cases. It takes repeat offenders pleading
guilty to a drug-taking or drug-related offence (mainly stealing to get
money for drugs) and suspends their sentence while it puts those judged
suitable - and who are willing - through a treatment program lasting about
a year. Those who complete the program successfully have their sentence
revoked, whereas those whose participation is terminated because of lack of
cooperation generally go off to jail to serve out their sentence.

But this is like no court you've seen (except, maybe, Judge Judy's). Far
from delivering their verdicts from the bench before the offenders are
hustled out the door, the judges head a team composed of the police
prosecutor, the legal-aid lawyer, the probation and parole officer and
someone from the health department. The team maintains regular contact with
program participants, reviewing their progress and dispensing praise and
encouragement, or rebukes and warnings.

For the first three months of the NSW program, participants are required to
provide at least two urine tests a week, have one home visit and one other
visit with their probation officer each week, and come before the drug
court for a "report-back" appearance once a week.

The punishment for, say, failing a urine test might be clocking up three
days in jail - to be served once the total reaches a certain level. The
reward for getting back on the wagon might be having the previous
punishment wiped.

The general reward for progress is less intensive supervision, but this is
supplemented by gifts of (I'm not making this up) skin-care products or
football tickets.

It all sounds so well-intentioned and sensible that I'm sorry to have to
tell you the results of the NSW evaluation are less than miraculous. They
hinge on comparing the performance of a group of participants in the
program with a randomly selected control group of offenders who were
eligible to participate, but for whom there wasn't room. The control group
proceeded straight to jail, as per normal.

It turns out that, for almost all kinds of theft and drug offence, it took
longer for the treated group to re-offend, on average, than it took the
jailed group - though not by much.

In the case of shoplifting, however, about 20 per cent of the jailed group
had been apprehended committing an offence after eight months spent out of
custody, whereas for the treated group it was only 9 per cent. And for
possession of heroin or other opiates, about 10 per cent of the jailed
group had been apprehended after 10 months out of custody, compared with
only 3 per cent for the treated group.

The next question is: How much more did it cost the taxpayer to achieve
this modest reduction in crime?

The cost for an individual placed on the drug court program was $144 a day,
compared with $152 a day for individuals punished in the usual way. That
difference is too small to make much of. The best you can say is that the
drug court was no more costly than the conventional approach.

In terms of cost-effectiveness, however, the court approach was
cost-effective in reducing the frequency of offending. For each shoplifting
offence averted by conventional means, it cost $4900 more than it did using
the drug court. And for each possession-of-heroin offence averted, the
conventional approach cost no less than $19,000 more.

A few other points in the drug court's favour. Remember that it deals only
with the hard cases - the recidivists - and ignores the first offenders.
Why? Because, thankfully, a high proportion of them learn their lesson and
never re-offend.

Note, too, that the study ignored many less direct and harder-to-measure
benefits and cost savings, such as the reduced demand on the health system
and the justice system over the longer term, the reduced insurance claims
and the better health and wellbeing enjoyed by successful participants in
the program.

As well, the study revealed that a lot of the program costs were generated
by the high proportion of participants - 43 per cent - whose involvement
was terminated because of their failure to cooperate. Selecting
participants more carefully - and giving failing participants fewer second
chances - should make the program significantly more cost-effective.

So, though the drug court is no magic answer, it's worth a try in Victoria.
It does a modest amount of good for no extra cost - which is more than you
can say for a lot of the things pollies do.