Quantifying and expanding alternatives to arrest for use and possession offences for illicit drugs

Personal possession of drugs has long been criminalised across the globe. Spurred by evidence of the ineffectiveness and harms of criminalisation United Nations bodies including the Chief Executives Board of the United Nations representing 31 United Nations agencies has issued calls for all countries to adopt and expand alternatives to arrest including decriminalisation. Yet, history has shown alternatives to arrest can be implemented in vastly different ways. As such: drug policy scholars need to attend not only to if countries adopt alternatives but to assessing their reach: What proportion of people are they reaching? Whom are they reaching? And what are the barriers and facilitators to their full and effective implementation?  

This paper will analyse this issue in Australia; one of the earliest adopters of police diversion for people detected for use/possession of cannabis or other illicit drugs. By combining legal doctrinal analysis and statistical analysis of three unpublished sets of Australian Bureau of Statistics data covering all police detections, court actions and imprisonments for drug use and possession over an 8-year period (2015-16 to 2022-23), this paper will assess the reach of Australian drug diversion programs today. It will further outline trends, state and demographic differences in terms of who is (and is not) being diverted in Australia today. 

Data analysis is ongoing. But in 2014-15 we calculated that on average Australia diverted 55% of people detected with a personal use/possession offence away from the courts albeit that there was large post-code variation across Australia’s eight states (32%- 98%). Conscious that there have been expansions in some states and contractions in others we conjecture that diversion reach will have expanded since 2014-15, but that age, ethnicity and the state in which someone lives will continue to shape whether or not someone who uses drugs is offered an alternative to arrest in Australia today, raising questions about the equity and fairness of the programs.    

Implications for policy, practice and research will be discussed including the necessity of and optimal avenues to expand alternatives to arrest and importance of assessments of reach in other parts of the globe.