ICYMI: Court program for drug addicts helping mostly white males, report finds – Politics – CBC News

Suggests ongoing issues with program design and service delivery that have not identified the reasons for low uptake by the target population:

A federal court program to divert drug addicts away from prison and into treatment is still not reaching the people it was supposed to help: aboriginals, women and youth.

A new evaluation says the program is largely helping white males over the age of 30, the same skewed population a previous assessment warned about six years ago.

Drug treatment courts “continue to experience difficulties … attracting women, aboriginal people, other visible minorities and youth into the program, and retaining them once they have entered it,” says a recently released report.

Drug Treatment Courts in Canada require addicts to stay drug-free for a year or more and to take counselling, while helping them to find housing and a job. (CBC)

“Caucasians, men, and individuals over 30 still represent the majority of … participants.”

The finding is part of an otherwise positive report on the Drug Treatment Court Funding Program, under which Justice Canada spends $3.6 million annually for a diversionary system to stop the “revolving door” of addiction and crime.

A five-year evaluation posted earlier this month found that the program, then offered in six cities, is generally effective in reducing drug use and criminal recidivism, and is a much cheaper alternative to imprisonment, with net savings of up to 88 per cent.

Repeats 2009 warning

Under the program, defence lawyers and Crown prosecutors nominate drug-addicted offenders for treatment that can last a year or more. The charged person must plead guilty, abide by a host of conditions that include regular urine tests for illicit drugs, and attended counselling.

The programs have an average “graduation” rate of 27 per cent, but even non-graduates were found to have cut their drug use and had fewer drug-related offences afterwards. Graduates must be drug-free, have proper housing, as well as a job or be enrolled in school.

The report repeated the warning of a 2009 evaluation, however, that the prime target groups of aboriginals, women and youth were still not getting into the programs, and that “individuals with little prior criminal history” were being served.

Source: Court program for drug addicts helping mostly white males, report finds – Politics – CBC News