Cannabis policy: estimating the
costs to the criminal justice
system
Dr. Marian Shanahan
Crime prevention & policy:
New tools for contemporary challenges
Sydney, November 23-24th, 2011
Outline
 Background
 Methods
 Police
 Courts
 Corrective services
 DPP/Legal aid
 Results
 Summary
Background
 CBA of two cannabis policies (status quo and
legalised-regulated)
 Required valid estimates of the resources used by law
enforcement enforcing existing cannabis laws
 Review of literature (grey and peer) suggested that
there was neither data readily available nor is there
an agreement on methods
Methods of costing
1. Macro costing (average cost)
 Top-down -Total expenditure/total activities
 e.g. Total expenditure on policing / total number of arrests
 Assumes all arrests consume equal resources
 Possible to adjust or weight for expected resource
consumption
 Miron ( 2005) - average cost * (cannabis offences minus
50% of posses/use offences)
 Moore (2005); Collins and Lapsley (2008) – weighted
offences by average number of hours in police cell by
offence type
Millions
Top down methods: Policing expenditures on
enforcing cannabis offenses : millions AUD 2007
$100
$90
$80
$70
$60
$50
$40
$30
$20
$10
$0
Top down excluding
50% of possession
Time in police cells as
weight
Rate of incarceration a
as a weight
Methods of costing
2. Micro costing
 Bottom-up
 Record and value all resources consumed (labour,
materials, etc.)
 Very intensive
 Can be more precise
Background
 Previous Australian studies costing crime

NSW - Cannabis cautioning (Baker and Goh)
o

Assesses resources for cautioning, interested in all cannabis
related activities
WA, SA - Civil penalties (WA Crime Research
Centre, Brooks)
 UK – May and colleagues estimated time for
cannabis offences using custody
Background
 In the literature considerable variation, 3 methods for
California
California
$1,800 M USD
$204 M USD
$280-370 M USD
Year
2008
2009
2009
Author
Miron
Gerringer
Caulkins
Aims
To estimate the costs to the criminal justice system of
enforcing cannabis laws in NSW under the current
policy where cannabis is illegal but there are:
 Police and court diversion programs
 cannabis cautioning, warnings
 MERIT, cannabis cautioning for juveniles, justice conferencing for
juveniles
 Court sentencing alternatives
Determining police resources
 Estimate time spent on activities related to cannabis
offences by
 Determine range of police responses
Deconstruct responses into component parts
Develop a survey to collect data on average time spent on
each component
Combine survey data with data on the number and types of
offences and method of response
 Estimate time per method of response
Value time
 Estimate costs related to crop detection and growoperations
Cannabis offences (NSW, 2006, BOCSAR)
Type of
offence
Possess/ use
Dealing,
trafficking
Cultivating
Age
10–17
18+
Subtotal
1017
18+
Subtotal
10–17
18+
Subtotal
Frequency % overall
1,432
10.2%
11,023
78.3%
12,528
89.0%
28
0.2%
516
3.7%
552
3.9%
32
0.2%
961
6.8%
1,002
7.1%
Methods by which police may proceed
Variable
Charged
CAN
Future court attendance
Cannabis caution
Youth conference
Youth Caution
Warnings
Not proceeded against
Description
More serious offences/offenders; bail court
attendance
Charged but no bail court attendance required
Used for less serious offences; may or may not be
transferred to the police station
Cannabis Cautioning Scheme gives police the
discretion to formally caution rather than charge
adults detected for minor cannabis offences
A youth conference is a face-to-face meeting with
offenders, victims and support persons
Applies to young offenders as per Young Offenders
Act. Youth are brought to LAC. This caution is a
formal process
Juvenile/adult
Includes those not proceeded against ; deceased, no
formal action and 'other'.
Deconstructing into components
Components
Initial search and questioning of the offender
Common to all
offences
Specific to Cannabis
Caution
Specific to Future
Court Attendance
Notice
Determine identity /carry out CNI
Compile file and complete necessary paper work,
Secure / weigh cannabis at police station
Destroy cannabis
Weigh / secure cannabis (on street)
Write up and obtain signature on caution
Convey offender to station (only if you do this
routinely)
Weigh / secure cannabis (on street)
Write up and obtain signature on court attendance
notice
Convey offender to station (only if you do this
routinely)
Issue court notice
Response
Components
Convey to police station
Booking / repeat search
Specific to A No Bail Questioning of offender / lay charges
Court Attendance
Photograph, fingerprints
required
Time contacting/ waiting for support person/ legal
rep
Return possessions to individual
Release offender from police custody
Specific to Bail court Place individual in cells
attendance required –
Statement of facts
plus
Gathering additional evidence (interviewing,
Preparation for court
testing etc)
Survey
 Developed with input from current and past
NSW Police
 Conducted at 3 Local Area Commands – one
inner urban, one outer metropolitan, and one
rural
 Anonymous
 N=99 usable surveys
Time per encounter by type of encounter
(adults)
Caution
Future court
attendance
Not held for bail
Bail
Minutes per officer
Average
95% CI
106.4
95.1– 117.9
Avg. # of
officers
2.05
408.0 367.1 – 448.9
2.17
539.1
547.4
2.19
2.19
485.0 –593.3
492.7– 602.0
Additional steps
• Time per offence multiplied by number of offences
• Converted to full time equivalents (FTE)
• Average cost per FTE sourced from Report on
Government services
Policing: estimate of expenditures on enforcing
cannabis laws once offenders detected
Age 18+
Charged
CAN
Summons
Future court appearance
Cannabis caution
Warnings
Not proceeded
Total 18+
Total juveniles
Overall total
FTE
28.1
10.1
8
16.8
5.8
0.3
5.9
75
6.7
81.7
Expenditure
3,067,084
1,105,602
876,008
1,838,771
631,130
28,771
642,752
$8,190,117
$767,164
$8,957,282
Other police costs
 Cannabis crop eradication (CEP), detection and
removal of hydro operation
 Discussions with key informants
 Frequency of CEP operations, number and type of police officers
and other resources (helicopter, travel expenses etc.)
 Detection of hydro or other indoor growing operations
 Detective hours
 Average detections per year (over 3 years)
 Police resources of holding in police cells for bail
Millions
Estimated policing expenditures on enforcing
cannabis laws (& percentage of budget)
$100
$90
$80
$70
$60
$50
$40
$30
$20
$10
$0
1.5%
4.2%
Time in police
Top down
excluding 50% of cells as weight
possession
3.2%
< 1%
Police costs this
Rate of
study
incarceration a as
a weight
Courts
Unit record court data (2006/07)
•
•
•
•
All cannabis offences (possess/ supply/cultivate)
Type of court (Children’s, Magistrates, District)
Principal offence if not cannabis
Outcome
Court costs
• By court type
• Report on Government Services (Productivity
Commission)
Cannabis offences in NSW Courts
Variable
Children
Court
N (%)
268 (4.2%)
District Court
Local Court
226 (3.5%) 5,952 (92%)
Possess/use
88.4%
13.3%
80.6%
Deal/supply
9.0%
42.9%
6.7%
Cultivate/ import
2.2%
43.3%
12.0%
Average court
costs
$954
$6031
$542
$255,672
$1,363,006
$3,225,984
Total court costs
Penalties
Distribution of sentences
70%
• Unit record court
data on outcome
and penalty
• Actual penalties for
cannabis offences
• Not all receive a
conviction; few are
incarcerated
• Large number
receive fines
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Juveniles
Adults
Total cost of penalties by court type and offence
$18
$16
Millions
$14
$12
$10
Cultivate /import
Deal/supply
Possess/use
$8
$6
$4
$2
$0
Children's
District
Local
Summary of costs
Age <18
Police
Age 18+
Total
% of total
$813,893
9,870,036
$10,683,929
22%
N/A
$3,516,640
$3,516,640
7%
DPP
$171,535
$1,831,277
$2,002,812
4%
Legal Aid
$105,972
$1,131,337
$1,237,309
3%
Courts
$255,672
$4,588,990
$4,844,662
10%
Penalties
$245,023
$26,736,748
$26,981,771
55%
$1,592,094 $47,675,028 $49,267,123
100%
MERIT
Total
Sensitivity analysis (Police, DPP, Penalties) in
millions AUD 2007
$45
$40
$35
$30
$25
High
Low
Main estimate
$20
$15
$10
$5
$0
Police (CI from
Survey)
DPP / Legal Aid
Penalities (50%
+/- days
incarcerated)
Limitations
• Not marginal costs
• Not true bottom-up costing
• Does not include investigation of gang-related
activities
• Survey of police were was a pragmatic sample of
NSW Police Force members and as such may not
be truly representative
• Length of incarceration was based on all drug
offence averages
Summary
• This study built on work by others (May et al., 2002;
Baker and Goh, 2004; May et al., 2007).
• Lack of data added to the challenge
• But available data was used to attempt to obtain
valid and useful estimates
• Demonstrates the importance of assessing actual
resource use when assessing policy
Thank- you
[email protected]
Acknowledgments
Funding
 Colonial Foundation Trust
 Australian Research Council
PhD supervisors
 A/Professor Alison Ritter, Professor Glenn Salkeld, Dr. Karen Gerard
 NSW Police
 Key experts
 All those who have come before me in the cannabis policy debate