About
Australia is at or near the top in terms of worldwide prevalence of illicit drug use (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2019). Moreover, as the second most common principal offence for offenders nationally (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2019), illicit drugs continue to place a very large burden on the Australian criminal justice system. Yet, while drug law enforcement subsumes 64% of Australian Government expenditure on illicit drugs (Ritter et al, 2013), much of this investment is ineffective or has unintended or counterproductive effects (Babor et al, 2018). New research suggests that this may in part reflect the perceived legitimacy (or lack thereof) of current approaches (e.g. Malins, 2019; Shanahan, Hughes, McSweeney, 2017) including the systematic over-policing and over-use of force against specific minority groups (e.g. Eastwood, Shiner & Bear, 2013).
This study will provide the first comprehensive assessment of how procedurally just Australian street-level drug law enforcement approaches are perceived by people who use drugs; benchmark procedural justice levels against other Western nations; and identify predictors of and methods to heighten procedural justice, police cooperation and law abidingness in Australian street-level drug law enforcement. This will assist in developing Australian capacity for more effective and just law enforcement responses to drug-related crime.