Participation in the drug court programme reduces both criminal behaviour and drug addiction, the first evaluation of the pilot programme has found. It is estimated that drug-users commit 42 per cent of all crime.
The drug court was set up on January 9th, 2001, on a pilot basis, with the objective of diverting those who committed crimes to feed their drug habits away from crime. It was aimed at providing court-supervised treatment programmes for less serious drug-related offences, and was modelled on similar courts in other jurisdictions.
Consultants Farrell Grant Sparks were engaged by the Courts Service to carry out an evaluation of the first full year of the operation of the pilot court, January 2001 to January 2002.
They reported a number of problems with making a complete evaluation, especially as there was no suitable control group with which to compare the group of people who went through this court. There were also problems associated with the relatively small number of people who participated in the programme, which meant that the resources were underutilised, and with the short time-frame for the pilot.
They recommended the expansion of the catchment area for the pilot project to include the whole Dublin 7 area, along with the development of a drug court planning programme for other areas over the next 12 to 18 months.
According to the report, the Irish drug court is truly multi-disciplinary, involving an education co-ordinator and a community welfare officer, as well as people dealing with the justice and addiction dimensions of the problem.
Of the 61 offenders that were referred to the court, 37 were found to be both eligible and suitable for entering its programme. They were primarily male, in their late 20s, unemployed and with a low level of education. The main drug of addiction was heroin.
While most continued their offending behaviour after joining the programme, this lessened the longer they stayed in it. As the programme progressed, the proportion whose urine tested negative for drugs increased from 42 per cent in the first three months to 82 per cent for the last three months.
The most important issue raised by the review was that difficulties had been found in providing participants with access to full treatment services within the required time-frame of one month.
The participants themselves were very positive about the pilot court.
"They were hugely supportive of the approach and the chance it offered them, and could offer others, to address both drug misuse and offending behaviour," according to the consultants.