The authors comment that -
Seizing drugs and arresting those who import, manufacture, grow and/or distribute these drugs is often viewed as the most important purpose of drug law enforcement. This view is certainly strong in popular media depictions of organised drug criminals. Unfortunately, the reality is perhaps far less entertaining or straightforward, although just as, if not more, important. While there is no doubt that a key role of drug law enforcement is to remove drugs and high-risk offenders from the community, the most critical factor is what this actually achieves in the longer term. That is, a community that is less burdened by the impact of drugs, such as crime, illness, injury and death.The paper
Increasingly, there is both internal and external pressure on drug law enforcement to demonstrate not just how much work they do (the seizures and arrests), but how well they do it (the community impacts)—something that has so far proven very difficult. This paper outlines the nature of these challenges and summarises findings from a national project that shows a practical and effective way forward in measuring the impacts of drug law enforcement.
summarises key findings, both conceptual and practical, from the second stage of a major national project that sought to test the feasibility of a model performance measurement framework for Australian DLE agencies and to provide advice on its national implementation (Willis, Homel & Anderson 2010). As such, it does not provide an overview of the effectiveness of DLE in Australia. The first project stage involved development and preliminary testing of the initial performance measurement framework. Trends & Issues no. 332 (Homel & Willis 2006) includes a summary of the project’s rationale and development and so this is not repeated in this paper in detail. Both project stages were undertaken by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) on behalf of the National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund.
The rationale behind the use of the framework as a DLE performance measurement tool is that the framework’s measures address a combination of supply and demand market issues. The framework’s premise is that DLE impacts on both of these. In theory, illicit drug supply is reduced through action such as controls on drug production and distribution, seizures and the arrest (and ultimately incarceration) of those involved in the importation, production and distribution of illicit drugs (for a detailed summary of supply-side controls see Willis, Homel & Gray 2006). In essence, the aim of supply-side DLE is to disrupt the supply or availability of illicit drugs, thereby increasing the costs and risks associated with drug importation and distribution. The aim of demand-side DLE is to reduce the level of demand for illicit drugs within the general community. Demand-side DLE is primarily directed at the drug user. The rationale behind demand-side DLE is that, even if DLE agencies are unable to increase the financial cost of illicit drug use or restrict its availability, they can increase the non-monetary costs associated with its use. So, as the level of inconvenience, time, risk or cost of trying to find a drug seller increases, more drug purchasers are tempted to leave the illicit drug market (for example by entering treatment) while those who remain tend to use illicit drugs less frequently (Weatherburn et al. 2000). This then has clear flow-on effects in terms of reducing public harms.
