Garrett David: General Debate 
Garrett David: General Debate 
[Volume:665;Page:12760] 
DAVID GARRETT (ACT) 
: 
 Over 90 percent of crime worldwide is committed by people who are fuelled up on alcohol or other drugs as are 80 percent of the child abuse and neglect cases. We ignore these figures at our peril. I wish to talk today about a small yet very very significant step that New Zealand is about to take in the fight against drug-fuelled crime. Next month will see the establishment of a special circumstances court in Auckland which is based on the drug court model used in parts of the United States and other countries. It is a model that has proven to be hugely successful in lowering the offending rate. The idea is simple enough: non-violent offenders in exchange for a guilty plea are sent to a drug rehabilitation programme instead of to prison. If they successfully complete the treatment programme their conviction may be dismissed. This is a separate initiative from drug treatment programmes in jail. 
I have been quite surprised to learn in researching this area that compulsory treatment programmes whether run outside or inside prisons are very effective. Like many people I thought that we can lead a horse to water but we cannot make it drink. I had thought it was even more so in regard to drug programmes and that those who do not go voluntarily do not get better but apparently that is not so. There are drug courts in more than 20 countries including Britain France and Canada. In the United States there are more than 2500 of them. As I have said one would think that addicts who voluntarily undergo treatment either outside or inside prison would have a higher success rate than those who are forced to attend but in fact the opposite is the case. The statistics all come out in favour of drug courts. The United States National Institute on Drug Abuse has reported studies that show that one year after treatment people sentenced to court-mandated treatment reported much higher levels of abstinence and had far lower arrest rates than people who voluntarily entered rehabilitation after conviction. After 5 years abstinence levels were similar for both groups but the arrest rate was still much lower for those who had been forced to undergo treatment. 
Drug courts have proven to be six times more effective in keeping people in treatment programmes long enough for them to get better. Here is the real killer: conservative estimates from meta-analyses—I am not entirely sure what they are but apparently they are very impressive—have all concluded that drug courts significantly reduce crime: as much as 35 percent when compared with the alternatives. Those are astonishing results. 
Up until the present time New Zealand has had no adult drug courts and only two for juveniles. Meanwhile our prison population continues to climb and climb. I make no apology for supporting Government policies that have cracked down on gangs and drug dealers and for being the architect behind the “three strikes” law which will put more violent criminals behind bars for longer—no apologies at all. Public safety requires that repeat violent offenders are prevented from causing harm and prison is the right place for them. It is the right place for repeat offenders violent thugs high-end drug offenders and our worst while-collar criminals. However it is entirely the wrong place for non-violent low-level offenders whose primary problems are mental health and addiction issues. 
The Auckland-based special circumstances court is a joint project run by the police judiciary mental health agencies Housing New Zealand Corporation and Ministry of Social Development. As the involvement of those participants would suggest the style will be less in the mould of an adversarial court and more focused on finding the causes for and solutions to a person’s offending. Currently the court’s budget is only enough to enable it to run for one day per month processing 10 offenders in that time. It will make a world of difference for those 10 but that only scratches the surface of our problem. New Zealand needs to have more drug courts and more court-mandated treatment for non-violent offenders and we will be lobbying the Government to ensure that there are more of them. Thank you.