• Katie Willis, Jessica Anderson, Peter Homel
• Australian Institute of Criminology

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Image: Symic / flickr

07 February 2011Seizing 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.

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.

Image: Symic / flickr