Procedural justice in policing has attracted increased attention in many parts of the world, including Australia, due to the finding that the way in which police treat citizens and the fairness of the decisions made can have direct impacts on the cooperation and compliance of citizens. However, analyses of procedural justice as it pertains to illicit drugs remain scant. This is a significant omission given that drug offences are one of the leading offences recorded in most parts of the world. This study used a purpose-built module in the 2019 Global Drug Survey (the world’s largest anonymous, annual web survey of psychoactive substance use) to provide the first comprehensive assessment of the extent to which Australian street-level drug law enforcement approaches are perceived as procedurally just; to benchmark procedural justice levels against 29 other nations; and to identify predictors of and methods to enhance procedural justice, cooperation with police and law abidingness.
People who use drugs (PWUD) in Australia concurred that police commonly follow some aspects of procedural justice, such as respecting people’s rights and making decisions based upon the law and facts. But Australian PWUD were critical of other procedural justice areas, such as the extent to which police abuse their authority and pick and choose how they enforce the law. Cross-national analysis showed that, of the 30 countries sampled, Australia ranked 15th in a composite procedural justice index: higher than the United States but significantly lower than New Zealand and Canada. Australia, moreover, scored particularly poorly on the indicator of the extent to which police pick and choose how they enforce the law (20th out of 30 countries). This suggests there is an opportunity and need to improve the procedural justice of Australian street-level drug law enforcement. Importantly, this research shows that building procedural justice can increase the willingness of PWUD to cooperate with police and improve their law abidingness (not engaging in drug supply behaviour). The existing literature suggests that building procedural justice is also likely to generate health and social benefits, such as increasing help-seeking, consistent with a harm minimisation drug policy. Avenues to advance procedural justice are outlined.
Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms and abbreviations
- Abstract
- Executive summary
- Introduction
- Methodology
- Results
- Discussion
- References
- Appendix A: Residual correlation matrix for procedural justice items
- Appendix B: Survey questions
- Appendix C: Demographics for cross-national Global Drug Survey sample
- Appendix D: Supplementary analysis of procedural justice items 1–8 from Australian GDS sample
- Appendix E: Data tables on procedural justice by country
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