Submission on the Draft National Drug Strategy

By, Dr Lorraine Beyer

Performance Measure 1: Disruption of illegal drug supply(P33)

First dot point

Number and weight of illegal drug detections and seizures by drug type domestically and at the Australian border.

It is important for transparency and clarity not to report domestic and international drug traffick and supply offencesas one combined group, as has been done in the past. From a research, performance and counteraction perspective it does not make sense to do this because import and domestic supply offending especially where the importation is large, are an entirely different type of offence, the offenders are very different and they have very different impacts on supply. To group them with street sellers obscures the extent to which there has been success and effectiveness in targeting high level offenders and dismantling significant drug syndicates.

Statistical reports must differentiate between import supply offenders and domestic supply offenders. To do otherwise is misleading.

Second dot point.

Number of illegal drug traffic and/or supply arrests by drug type.

The Performance Measure of number of arrests by drug type is naïve and inadequate. Heavy weight heroin import offendersand law enforcement officers have expressed a united view in my research that when drugs seizedare the performance indicator the focus of law enforcement will necessarily be encouraged to remain on the bottom worker rolelevel in illegal drug importations. This is because organisers of illegal drug importations, especially heroin, are careful to distance themselves from the illegal drugs.

In terms of the national agencies, a performance measure should not only focus on the drugs and the weight seized but also on the quality of the arrests and detections.There is no Performance Measures that gives an indication of the number of high level importorganiserswho are arrested/ detected. This is important because it relates directly to the purported aims of the counteraction agencies.

To enable proper performance assessment against key agency aims, agencies need to introduce into their data bases a categorisation system for offender role/ level- similar to that of most other countries. Without this categorisation, all arrests are given equal weight whether they are drug addicted sellers selling on the streets, or business people organising a large import shipment of drugs. If onlyworkers and couriers are beingarrested/ detected– which would be expected if seizure of drugs is the main measure – then this needs to be made clear in the statistics.

A performance indicator of ‘number and scale of financial detections and asset seizures’ would also provide a much more accurate measure of the scale and importance of the arrests and detections being made than would weight of the drugs seized.

Another measure that would give greater clarity of success in import seizures of drugs such as cocaine and heroin is to provide consumption estimates which can be compared to amounts seized.This would give a measure of what is getting through to consumerscompared to what is being seizedand thus the effectiveness of counteraction efforts and focus. (Such measures have been done before based on the estimated number of users in Australia, by average consumption with seizures estimated to be about 10% of what is used.)

Section on Evidence (p31)

None of the identified problems with drug importation 'evidence' and data that I highlighted in my submission – based on extensive research and consultation - seem to have been addressed.

There is such a scanty body of research into drug importation offending that the remarks about "evidence-informed practice is the integration of the existing evidence with professional expertise . . . " (31) shows complete disregard for the fact that the main problem is a lack of existing evidence, caused by a number of flaws that should be addressed as a matter of urgency if there is to be an increase in the efficacy of evidence to support counteraction and policy making.

There is no mention of specific measures to improve and expand evidence in the areas of higher level drug dealing, which is currently rare and severely hampered by:

  • data being scattered across unlinked databases;
  • a large number of missing variables in data bases;
  • lack of collection of the sort of information that could improve understandings of the offence and the offenders, such as type of role of the arrestee and groups’ organisational complexity, and
  • lack of working definitions that contain clear inclusion and exclusion criteria and clear definitions for commonly used terms such as major offender, significant offender and high level offender.

Why hasn’t the Drug Strategy addressed the major stumbling block to development of an evidence base for illegal drug importation (and domestic middle level drug markets)- which is the lack of legislative protection for researchconfidentiality in Australia. No research into illegal behaviours in Australia is immune from the possibility of the research material being subpoenaed, including names and contact details. Research participants are left vulnerable if they participate in research and researchers are at risk of prosecution and jail terms for failure to revealparticipants and particular information obtained in the course of their research.

For studies of less serious criminal offending with lower penalties legislative protection is worked around by ethics committees and researchers - although there are still ethical implications here. Where the offending has heavy penalties such as for illegal drug importing it becomes a severely limiting factor. Ethics Committees and researchers are reluctant to approve or conduct research under conditions where confidentiality can’t be guaranteed.

While no legislative protection for researchers into study of illegal behaviours in Australia continues, the widely promoted and accepted philosophy of evidence-based policy and practise for law enforcement is severely undermined and is essentially a farce.

There are a number of countries where research into criminal behaviour has protection, Canada among them. Without the removal in Australia of the current restrictive legislation, researchers will be placing themselves and their research participants at risk and policy and practise will continue to be based on severely limited data.

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Dr Lorraine Beyer