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RECONVICTION FOLLOWING DRUG TREATMENT AND TESTING ORDERS
CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Drug Treatment and Testing Orders were introduced in the UK through provisions in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. They aim to provide courts with a community-based option to deal more effectively with drug users who commit crimes to fund their habits. Offenders who consent to an order being made are required by the court to undergo treatment for their drug misuse. DTTOs, which can be imposed alongside a probation order or as a 'stand-alone' option, differed from existing provisions in a number of important respects:
- the role of the supervising officer (probation officer or social worker) is limited
- mandatory drug testing is an integral part of the order
- the courts have the power to review orders on a regular (but not more than monthly) basis.
1.2 DTTOs were first introduced in the UK in three pilot schemes in Croydon, Liverpool and Gloucestershire and their early operation was evaluated for the Home Office by the Criminal Policy Research Unit at South Bank University (Turnbull et al., 2000). The first Scottish pilot scheme was established in Glasgow in October 1999 when DTTOs became available to the Glasgow Sheriff, Stipendiary Magistrate and (subsequently) High Courts. A second pilot scheme was introduced in July 2000 in Fife when DTTOs were made available to Cupar, Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy Sheriff Courts. DTTOs have subsequently been rolled out to other Scottish courts and are now available across the country.
1.3 An initial evaluation of the Scottish pilots focused upon their first 12 months of operation and focused on the process and initial outcomes achieved by the schemes (Eley et al, 2002). It suggested that the schemes had been successful in reducing drug use and associated offending in the short term. For example, self-reported expenditure on drugs fell from an average of 490 per week immediately prior to an order to 57 per week after six months 1. However this research was conducted within a relatively short timescale, which did not enable the longer-term impact of DTTOs on recidivism to be assessed.
1.4 The initial study of the English pilot DTTO schemes found that breach rates during an order varied widely across the sites but were generally high (Turnbull et al, 2000). A subsequent analysis of recidivism rates found that two-year reconviction rates were high, with 80 per cent reconvicted and the reconviction rate varying significantly across scheme. The reconviction rate among those who completed their orders was 53 per cent compared with 91 per cent among those whose orders were revoked, suggesting that retention of offenders on orders is critical and that greater attention needs to be paid to how this can be achieved (Hough et al., 2003). Completers had significantly lower conviction rates in the two years after being given a DTTO than in any of the five years before.
1.5 The present study was commissioned to assess whether DTTOs in the Scottish pilots were successful in reducing recidivism. It therefore focused upon those offenders made subject to DTTOs in Glasgow and Fife in the first two years' operation of these schemes. An assessment of the effectiveness should ideally involve a comparison of reconviction among similar offenders given alternative sentences (i.e. the sentences they would have received if the DTTO was not available). However, identifying a comparison sample retrospectively for this purpose is extremely difficult, not least because it would need to consist of drug-misusing offenders and this cannot readily be determined on the basis of offence history alone. Instead, therefore, the reconviction analysis concentrates upon the rate, frequency and nature of convictions among those given DTTOs prior to and following their Orders.
METHODS
1.6 The majority of offenders given DTTOs in the period covered by the initial evaluation of the pilot schemes consented to information about their convictions being accessed to examine the impact of DTTOs upon recidivism. However to maximise the sample for the present analysis it was decided to focus on the full two-year period of the pilot and not all of those given DTTOs during this time were part of the original evaluation sample. A technique therefore had to be devised to enable details of convictions to be accessed anonymously. This was achieved as follows. First, the team leaders in Glasgow and Fife provided the research manager in the Scottish Executive with details of individuals made subject to DTTOs in the first two years. Where the Scottish Criminal Records Office (SCRO) Unique Reference Number (URN) was not available, the research manager obtained these from SCRO by providing names and dates of birth. The research manager then forwarded the completed list of URNs to the Scottish Executive Justice Statistics Unit (JSU) who provided the researcher with a list of anonymised records (previous convictions and convictions from the date of the index DTTO).
1.7 Data from the records were coded and analysed using SPSS. It was also possible to undertake an additional analysis excluding 'pseudo-reconvictions' (convictions recorded after the DTTO but actually committed before the sentence). However, the numbering system employed by Fife and Strathclyde police made it possible to identify the month and year in which the individual was charged with a particular offence and therefore to work out whether the charge pre- or post-dated the index sentence. This approach is not, of course, perfect since the charge date will not necessarily equate with the date of the offence. However, discounting relevant convictions in this way is likely to result in fewer 'pseudo-reconvictions' being included in the follow-up data.
1.8 It should also be noted that 'pseudo-reconvictions' were not re-allocated as previous convictions for the purpose of analysis. This means that the number of previous convictions in the two years prior to the DTTO being imposed would have been higher than in the data presented here (though some convictions in that period would also relate to offences that pre-dated it). It has been assumed that, if anything, the approach to the comparison of convictions before and after a DTTO was relatively conservative and that the resulting findings can, on that basis, be considered more robust.
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