The NSW Drug Court is more cost-effective at reducing the rate of re-offending among drug-related offenders than sending them to prison, according to a study by the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Director of BOCSAR, Dr Don Weatherburn said that when BOCSAR and the Centre for Health Economics Research and Evaluation (CHERE) first looked at the cost effectiveness of the Drug Court in 2002, it found it to be slightly more cost-effective than prison. But according to Dr Weatherburn now, the latest study showed that significant changes to the Court that were designed to improve its cost-effectiveness, had been effective.
Research finds major savings
“Amongst other things, sanctions for non-compliance with program conditions have been made more flexible, participants are now given formal warnings if they fail to progress, police have a greater role in screening for eligibility and the threshold for program termination has been reduced,” Dr Weatherburn said. “The results of the present re-evaluation by BOCSAR and CHERE show that, controlling for other factors, participants in the NSW Drug Court are significantly less likely to be reconvicted than offenders given conventional sanctions which were mostly imprisonment.” He said offenders accepted onto the Drug Court on an intention-to-treat basis were 17 per cent less likely to be reconvicted for any offence, 30 per cent less likely to be reconvicted for a violent offence and 38 per cent less likely to be reconvicted for a drug offence than those imprisoned, at any point during the follow-up period. He said those who were as-treated were 37 per cent less likely to be reconvicted of any offence, 65 per cent less likely to be reconvicted of an offence against the person, 35 per cent less likely to be reconvicted of a property offence and 58 per cent less likely to be reconvicted of a drug offence. “The economic analysis conducted by CHERE showed that the total cost of the Drug Court program is $16.376 million per annum,” Dr Weatherburn said. “The largest drivers of this final cost are the cost of final imprisonment for those who do not complete the program successfully and the cost of staffing and running the Court.” He said CHERE found that the estimated cost of dealing with the same offenders via the conventional system would have been almost $2 million more. BOCSAR also released research that showed most categories of crime had fallen in Kings Cross since the Medically Supervised Injection Centre (MSIC) was established in 2001. The study showed that over the period January 1999 to December 2007, Kings Cross Police experienced significant declines in robbery without a weapon, robbery with a weapon not a firearm, break and enter (dwelling), break and enter (non-dwelling), receiving/handling stolen goods, motor vehicle theft, stealing from a motor vehicle, stealing from a dwelling, stealing from the person, other theft and arrests possession and/or use of narcotics.
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