Table of Contents

Introduction
About the editors and authors
1. Drug Courts in the United States: Punishment for `Patients’? By Joanne Csete
2. Drug Courts in Australia By Caitlin Hughes and Marian Shanahan
3. The Irish Experience: Policy Transfer from US Drug Courts By John Collins
4. Drug Policy, Therapeutic Jurisprudence and Criminal Justice in Brazil By Luiz Guilherme Mendes de Paiva
5. Explaining the Failure of Drug Courts in the UK By John Collins
6. Diversion in the Criminal Justice System: Examining Interventions for Drug-Involved Individuals By Winifred Agnew-Pauley

About the Author

Dr John Collins is Executive Director of the International Drug Policy Unit (IDPU) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a Fellow of the LSE US Centre and a Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalization. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development (LSE Press). He is currently a Co-Investigator on a Global Challenges Research Fund project examining illicit drug economies in the borderlands of Myanmar, Afghanistan and Colombia, and Project Investigator on a major Open Society Foundations Institutional Support grant focusing on drugs and sustainable development. He earned a PhD from the Department of International History at the London School of Economics looking at Anglo-American relations and international drug control over the period 1939–1964.

Winifred Agnew-Pauley has a background in criminology and has worked as a researcher across a range of criminal justice projects in Australia and in the UK. She currently works as a Researcher at Anglia Ruskin University within the Policing Institute for the Eastern Region (PIER). Previously, she has worked for the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research in Sydney, Department of Security and Crime Science at University College London, and the International Drug Policy Unit (IDPU) at the LSE. Her research interests focus on how drugs are dealt with in the criminal justice system and street-level policing, specifically illicit drug policy, drug law enforcement, stop and search practices and social bias in the criminal justice system.

Alexander Soderholm is the Policy Coordinator of the International Drug Policy Unit at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and the Managing Editor of the Journal of Illicit Economies and Development (LSE Press). He holds an MSc in International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies and is currently a PhD Candidate at the LSE Department of Social Policy, studying drug policy and drug markets in the Islamic Republic of Iran. He has worked in a number of international contexts on issues related to drugs and development, including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Tehran. His research focuses on the intersection between drug markets and development outcomes, specifically on questions related to harm reduction and health, livelihoods, and security.

Reviews

'Drug policies based on public health approaches are globally recognized as effective and cost-efficient for drug use management. Evidence-based and people-centered health interventions concerned with the rights to health and to benefit from scientific progress need to take precedence in dealing with people who use drugs. This book is an important resource in these debates, providing a critical reading of the evidence on drug courts, whilst fostering new analyses and evidence on service provision for people who use drugs.' Rt Hon Helen Clark, Former Prime Minister of New Zealand (1999-2008). ;'Any criminal justice intervention must be evaluated in terms of its potential societal impacts and its human rights risks. Drug courts are often sold as an intervention promising striking and positive results, particularly in Latin America. Meanwhile, we know the evidence is more nuanced and equivocal, with significant potential downside risk in terms of human rights concerns and potential for abuses in contexts lacking sufficient oversight. This book is an important companion for any policy discussions on the implementation of drug courts globally.' Professor Diego García-Sayán is the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers