Phil Bowen
I was honoured to be on a panel to talk about drug courts with Max Chambers from Policy Exchange and West Huddlestone, Earl Hightower and Matthew Perry from the National Association of Drug Court Professionals at the Ministry of Justice yesterday. Anyone who has the privilege of sharing a platform with Matthew or with a recovering addict can't helped to be moved by the story of loss and redemption that they have been through.
Unless you are Peter Hitchens, who on Newsnight last night contended that what Matthew really needed was to be so afraid of what the criminal justice system would do to him if he took drugs that he would never have started in the first place. It is reasonable and right for sceptics to ask straightforward, easy questions as Mr Hitchens did: Where is your evidence that the thing you champion works? What is your objective proof? These are good scientific questions. What West and Earl were able to lay out at the meeting I was at was that there is plenty of evidence in the US that drug court is a cheaper and more effective way for the criminal justice system to deal with people addicted to drugs who would otherwise go to prison.
But asking good science questions should not apply to the drug court champions alone: what about the champions of deterrence like Peter Hitchens and their theory of change? Suppose we were simply to raise the tariff on prison sentences for those with drug addictions, and those who buy and sell drugs- would that reduce crime more cost effectively? That experiment has actually been conducted. It has been tested for 30 years in the USA : the USA holds 754 citizens in prison per 100,000 compared to England and Wales's 148. State spending on prison has risen more sharply than any other budget item. And the outcomes are pretty poor: it remains a high crime country, re-offending is high on release and drug use has remained prevalent. So, if you ask scientific questions, like a scientist, you also have to be prepared for data to confound your hypothesis. Deterrence through enforcement and mass incarceration is an experiment that has been well funded and doesn't work. As Keynes said, "When the facts change, I change my mind."
However, there are important and complex differences in our criminal justice which also raise good questions, which were very much on the minds of the civil servants in the room I was in: could the approach work here? In some ways, this is a false premise. Because, while we may not call it drug court, the idea of accessing drug treatment following contact with the criminal justice system is a well established principle. 28% of all people in drug treatment have become so involved on referral from the criminal justice system. Moreover, drug mandated court treatment with regular reviews of progress before the court has been around for a while too. The Drug Treatment and Testing Order (DTTO) was piloted in the late nineties and now is available to every court in the land through the Drug Rehabilitation Requirement (the DRR). In broad terms, individuals with Class A drug use problems can get speedy access to treatment following arrest and can go into a drug court type arrnagement under the DRR. There is evidence they reduce reoffending, when offenders complete their treatment. So the question is more do we have the drug courts we need, rather than do we want drug courts at all?
That's where our work on the West London Drug Court model may help. West London enhances the 'core offer' available under the DRR (I call it 'full-fat' drug court compared to the standard DRR 'diet' version) by doing some important additional things: making sure that the defendants see the same judges at their court reviews and that the judges know what effective engagement looks like. These things are potentially important because the evidence from the States suggests that these things, plus a more structured sanctioning and reward scheme around compliance, can enhance the outcomes already delivered.
One common problem diagnosed about our justice system isn't that there is an absence of help necessarily but that coordinating it and fitting people into a supportive arrangement is often where we fall down. The drug court idea responds to that by having a multi-agency approach, making sure the treatment agencies, probation and the court players come together regularly as a team.
But let's also be honest; at the moment, the evidence of whether this enhanced model delivers enhanced outcomes remains open. Studies to date have been unable to look clearly at whether this enhancement works. This is due to two things. Firstly, the small volumes that go through the full fat drug courts make it harder to produce meaningful statistical evaluations. Secondly, the effect size of full fat drug court will be more limited in the UK. Why? Becuase, in the UK, we are comparing full fat to diet rather than full fat compared to the mass incarceration alternative in the States.
But, as good scientists, we should remember absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. What we have argued for in our work on Better Courts is to test these approaches more, within existing resources, and gather more evidence. Questions are easy to ask, answers harder to come by. But that's what experiments are for.