Sheila Bird (UK Medical Research Council/University of Strathclyde, Scotland) focuses on the lack of true scientific evidence that has been used as a basis for implementing UK criminal justice policy on drug-dependent offenders. She outlines the ideal scientific approach for the criminal justice system: "Formal experiments, including the randomisation of sufficient numbers of offenders, are needed to inform judicial approval or "licensing" of new criminal-justice disposals before they are implemented nationally.

'Like doctors, judges should have access to studies comparing salient outcomes in large numbers of eligible drug-dependent offenders who have been randomised between drug treatment and testing order and alternative sentence. Judges have been criticised for unacceptable sentence variation, yet they are denied a rigorous evidence base to inform judicial decisions. Basing the management of offenders on inferior study designs that are non-randomised and underpowered denies them and us evidence about the efficacy and cost-effectiveness of new criminal-justice interventions. For example, punitive random mandatory drugs testing of prisoners has not been demonstrated to reduce inmates' use of heroin but had cost over UK100 million when the UK's home affairs select committee called for its review in 2000."

Professor Bird adds: "Failure to randomise from the outset, or after pilot studies, means that, more than 100 million and 21 000 drug treatment and testing orders later, UK criminal justice still does not know whether such orders are safe, effective, and cost effective. We know their cost, but not their value. In 2004-05, less costly and intensive orders will be introdu
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Contact: Joe Santangelo
j.santangelo@elsevier.com
1-212-633-3810
Lancet
14-Oct-2004