Reducing Drug Policy Harms Through Police-Led Reform: What Works, Where and Why?

The 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act - the overarching piece of legislation that currently outlaws the possession, supply, cultivation, importation and exportation of controlled substances - enshrined prohibition as the primary strategy for addressing the UK drug problem. Calls for drug policy reform are as old as drug policy itself (e.g. Berridge, 2013) and frequently promote responses where people who use drugs are supported and treated if required, rather than punished (Royal Society of Public Health, 2016). For others, reducing harm can occur through non-enforcement of the law. Various police forces around England and Wales are now adopting alternative approaches to policing drug use away from strict law enforcement either through de facto decriminalisation or through diverting drug offenders away from the criminal justice system.

This project looks at the origins of the impetus for police-led law reform and provides an overview of cases (n= 3 to 5) where new approaches have been adopted to address the drug problem. In doing so, It will also consider some of the barriers and facilitators to more widespread police-led, diversionary policies elsewhere. It will highlight the contextual similarities and differences between reforms and seek to assess the impact of these schemes on police resources, re-offending and measures of drug policy-related harm and the sector.

Research Aims & Questions:

The overarching aim of this study is to uncover how and where police-led drug law reform has been implemented, by whom and in what circumstances and with what outcomes?

1. What is meant by drug-related harm and how is this manifested in specific locales?
2. What is the theory of change behind reform schemes?
3. How are reforms understood by those designing, developing and implementing such schemes?
4. What is the emerging evidence from the reforms?
5. In what way can the evidence base for diversion from local forces be used by Release and partner organizations to promote future evidence-informed future interventions?

Methodological Approach

Research questions 1 and 2 will involve a review of the academic literature on drug harms and diversionary schemes implemented elsewhere (e.g. Australia, Portugal) as well as scoping grey materials and media reports to map out and document recent examples of police led drug policy reforms. The literature review should allow for an analysis of the theory of change behind diversionary schemes and the intended outcomes of such developments. These findings will be cross-referenced with anonymous, elite interviews from each area with PCCs, police, NGOs, Local Authorities, public health officials looking at how the theory behind the schemes corresponds to the views of key stakeholders involved in their implementation. This will address research question 3. The interviews will also provide partial answers to question 4, which will be supplemented with a return to the grey literature and policy documents. Question 5 will entail close collaboration between the student and Release on the kinds of outputs to be produced and how these can be disseminated most effectively to target audiences. The research will be subject to ethical clearance from the University of Birmingham.