Police Tests Plan in Drugs Fight

Australia -- People who have been charged with offences would be asked to give urine samples and answer questions about illicit drug use as part of a program being considered by the Victoria Police.

The pilot program, which is about to begin in three states, will attempt to quantify the links between drug use and crime.

Victorian police have not yet decided whether they will join New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia police in the three-year trial, being run in conjunction with the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC). The program, called Drug Use Monitoring in Australia (DUMA), will be funded under the Prime Minister's National Illicit Drug Strategy and will try to pinpoint what proportion of crime is drug-related.

It involves people being interviewed about their drug use and supplying a urine sample within 48 hours of being charged with an offence - not necessarily drug offences. The interviews would be conducted by researchers, with findings remaining confidential.

The data would be collated on a quarterly basis by the AIC to determine the effect of drug use on crime.

Mr James Tonkin, a spokesman for Victoria Police chief commissioner, Mr Neil Comrie, said the program would add to the body of knowledge as police looked for the best way to deal with the drug issue. ``We are engaged in further discussions with the AIC and in the meantime the force will monitor the interstate pilots very carefully to evaluate the project's viability,'' he said.

Mr Tonkin said the program's success would be assessed before Victoria proceeded.

He said considerable resources would have to be contributed by police in several areas.

``We have asked the AIC for further details about the methodology so that we can look at implications such as ethical, security and resource difficulties,'' he said.

The manager of Victoria Police's drug and alcohol policy coordination, chief inspector Paul Ditchburn, said the program would be a useful predictive tool in the fight against drug-related crime, which was difficult to quantify.

Mr Ditchburn said the program, if adopted, would complement Victoria's existing strategies such as the drug diversion programs.

``It would add to our information on drug trends, but this data would be unique because of the objective basis of the urine analysis. Overseas experience shows that most people are happy to do it,'' he said.

The project manager for DUMA at the institute, Dr Toni Makkai, said the program had been very successful in the United States, where it had been established for 10 years, and in England, where the Government had just ordered an expansion of the program after a successful pilot. Pilot studies are also under way in other countries including South Africa, the Netherlands, Canada and Mexico.

Dr Makkai said participation rates for offenders in overseas programs was as high as 80per cent.

She said researchers in Australia did not have basic information such as what drugs people were taking when they committed an offence and what sort of crimes they were committing.

``We have absolutely no other indicators about the link between drugs and crime. It is all either anecdotal or based on self-reported data from small samples in one city. It is certainly not representative,'' she said.

The president of Liberty Victoria, Ms Felicity Hampel, QC, said the group would greet the plan with ``cautious optimism'' as long as its protocols were strictly enforced.

Copyright 1999 David Syme & Co Ltd

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