National Amphetamine-Type Stimulant Strategy Background Paper: Monograph Series No. 69
6.10 Summary
It has been estimated that Australia expends between $1.3 and $2 billion annually on drug law enforcement activity (Homel & Willis, 2007). This chapter has provided an overview of policy and strategies which go far beyond interdicting and disrupting supply or noting the number of drug seizure and arrest as measures of successful interventions. The model of law enforcement tackling illicit drugs reflected in this chapter is multi-layered increasingly incorporating proactive and partnership interventions. Relationships between international agencies, the Commonwealth, States and Territories and between policing, the criminal justice system, human services, corrections and health are increasingly cooperative and collaborative. These interventions include international provisions and domestic legislative responses acknowledging the drug trade as a borderless activity in preventing supply, responses to crime through diversion and juvenile justice services, collaboration with the community through awareness campaigns and engaging the cooperation of the pharmaceutical and transport industries.
The developing role of drug law enforcement requires a concomitant development in evaluating these interventions and measuring outcomes. A framework for measuring the effectiveness of the work performance of drug law enforcement agencies has recently been developed (Homel & Willis, 2007). The framework recognises that such measures must move away from those traditionally used to consider the broader impacts of law enforcement work and identifies outcomes related to the principles of the National Drug Strategy, (many of which are referred to in this and other chapters), designed to reduce drug crime and drug-related crime (measured by drug price, purity and availability, as well as measures concerned with drug trafficking practices). Other measures are those designed to reduce organised crime (measured by elements concerned with trafficking); those designed to improve public health (measured by trends in illicit drug-related deaths and morbidity and the health services underpinning these), and those designed to improve public amenity (measured by trends in community safety and wellbeing and incorporating measures of the initiative in the management of offenders) (Homel & Willis, 2007).
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