Final report on the North Queensland Drug Court

Jason Payne
ISBN 0 642 53886 7 ; ISSN 1445-7261
Australian Institute of Criminology, 2005
(Technical and background paper series, no. 17)

Introduction

• Drug court database
• Interviews with key informants
• Structure of the report

Although the use of illegal drugs has been on the political and community agenda for the last three decades, in the 1990s there was growing concern over the extent to which criminal offending, particular property crime, was due to drug dependency. The drug of most concern was heroin. In recent years, however, there has been a shift in focus to amphetamine type stimulants, which seem to predominate outside of Sydney (Schulte, Mouzos & Makkai 2005). One policy response to the emergence of drug-related crime was the establishment of a trial drug court program in South East Queensland in June 2000.

The Queensland Drug Rehabilitation (Court Diversion) Act 2000 outlines the objectives of the drug court. These are to reduce:

• the level of drug dependency in the community;
• the level of criminal activity associated with drug dependency;
• the health risks to the community associated with drug dependency; and
• the pressure on resources in the court and prison system.

At the end of 2002 an evaluation by the Australian Institute of Criminology found that those who had completed the drug court program:

• had significantly lower levels of recidivism than those who had been terminated from the program;
• the average time to re-offending was longer than for offenders not placed on the program or those having failed to complete it; and
• the level/frequency of post-graduation offending was reduced (Makkai & Veraar 2003).

In addition, both graduates and those who were terminated from the program were significantly less likely than non-participants to have been convicted of a drug possession offence. These results are not dissimilar to those seen in the evaluation of drug courts across Australia. For example:

• the New South Wales adult drug court evaluation found that graduates performed more favourably than non-participants in terms of frequency and time to re-offending (Lind et al. 2002). Moreover, the general health and well-being of drug court participants was shown to have improved (Freeman 2002);
• the New South Wales juvenile drug court and the Victorian adult drug court evaluations found that graduates re-offended less frequently (Social Policy Research Centre 2004; King & Hales 2004); and
• the Perth drug court (adult and juvenile) evaluation was unable to demonstrate any tangible reductions in re-offending, although this was mainly attributed to significant differences in the average length of time that participants spent on the drug court program (maximum six months) (Crime Research Centre 2003).

There is a general paucity of research on the extent of drug use in regional cities such as Cairns and Townsville. The available research suggests that the use and abuse of illicit drugs is likely to have equally impacted on these regional centres as it has on major cities. Drug arrest statistics, for example, show that between 1995/96 and 2000/01, the number of reported drug offences increased by 20 per cent. The total number of reported drug offences in 2000/01 was 1669 in Cairns and 1335 in Townsville (Jarred 2002).

In November 2002, the Drug Rehabilitation (North Queensland Court Diversion Initiative) Amendment Bill 2002 amended the Act and paved the way for the establishment of a pilot program drug court in North Queensland. The program was to be divided between two locations - Cairns and Townsville. Each was to have a separate drug court team while being centrally managed by a single drug court co-ordinator from the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General. Both courts started on 13 November 2002.

This interim report is a process and outcomes evaluation that relies on quantitative data from the North Queensland Drug Court database and qualitative data from consultations and interviews with various stakeholders and drug court participants. It is the final evaluation report by the Australian Institute of Criminology into the efficacy of the North Queensland program in achieving the objectives of the Queensland Drug Rehabilitation (Court Diversion) Act 2000. It focuses on describing how the North Queensland pilot program operated during the initial 26-month implementation period. To achieve this, four data sources were utilised:

• quantitative data extracted from the North Queensland Drug Court database as at 31 December 2004;
• official criminal history records extracted from the centralised QPS database;
• consultations with key North Queensland stakeholders and service providers between December 2003 and February 2005; and
• qualitative interviews with drug court participants in March 2004 and February 2005.

Drug court database

The Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney General extracted all available data as at 31 December 2004 from the North Queensland Drug Court database. In total, the AIC received 21 text-format (.txt) data files. A match and merge process was then undertaken by the AIC to convert the files into a single file for use in the statistical analysis software package Stata 8.2 (StataCorp 2003). Unlike the initial stages of the South East Queensland Drug Court evaluation, there were no significant data deficiencies. Missing data were minimal. Where they did occur, the information was in most cases attainable through further consultation with members of the drug court team.

Interviews with key informants

Statistical data analysis alone does not provide enough detail about the policies and procedures likely to have an impact on the implementation of the North Queensland Drug Court pilot program. The AIC visited the two North Queensland courts on three occasions throughout the evaluation to conduct qualitative interviews with the drug court team members, drug court participants and other key stakeholders.

A total of 61 face-to-face interviews were conducted with current or past participants of the North Queensland Drug Court program. The sample consisted mostly of current participants, however four were undergoing preliminary assessment, six had graduated and 11 had been terminated (see Table A). For current participants, most interviews were conducted at the office of the Department of Corrective Services (DCS ). Terminated participants (those currently serving time in prison) were identified by the drug court co-ordinator and interviews were conducted at either the Stuart Creek (Townsville) or Lotus Glen (Cairns) correctional facilities.

All participants were assured that the information they provided would not be used in a way that would identify them. The responses are therefore used as examples of problems or concerns faced by participants and are indicated by gender and phase status only.

Structure of the report

The focus of this report is to describe the operation and outcomes of the North Queensland Drug Court since its inception in November 2002. It is divided into three main sections:

1. an examination of the drug court referral process;
2. an examination of the core components of the drug court program, as undertaken by offenders who are successfully granted an Intensive Drug Rehabilitation Order (IDRO); and
3. an examination of the drug court's re-offending and health outcomes.

The statistical analyses used in this report are supplemented, where appropriate, with the opinions of both key stakeholders and participants.