The cooperation between the criminal justice system and the drug treatment services

Résumé du document

The French police arrested about 15 000 drug users in 2008. The penal sanction for drug use is given in article L3421-1 in the Code of Public Health. Drugs have been consumed by many French citizens for a long time. However, since the twentieth century, this consumption has been increasing. Drug users have been treated similar to criminals. With the onset of AIDS and viral hepatitis, the risk of infection is high in the case of drug user. This fear has only strengthened the need to alert the public in order to help them urgently. Drug users who were treated as criminals fell ill and required help. Despite the prohibition by this law, the use of illegal drugs was on the rise. There have been several methods adopted that were created to slow down the progression of its usage. Treatments introduced by the Act of 1970 to allow drug users to access treatment following an arrest, was one step in this direction. The Act of 1970 is regularly amended by multiple circulars since 1970. However, if the legislature believed this mode of treatment as an alternative to the repression of drug use, it has to underline the functions and its effects in a clear manner. Every drug user arrested by the police may be applied criminal sanctions under the code of public health. The fact that this offense is the code of public health is significant. The drug user is defined as a "patient" or a "subject at risk who need protection". To an offense based on the judiciary system, a sanitary proposition is advanced to break the logic of repression. If the user agrees, the public prosecutor's office suspends judiciary procedure and sends users to the health authorities such as Local Offices for Health and Social Actions. In this document, we examine how to combine repression and care, how the procedures of treatment for users could be introduced in a repression system and how they are introduced in the organization of the criminal justice system.

Extraits

[...] The first one is DDASS which don't conduct any monitoring. In this case, the health structures are to pass on information directly to the prosecution. The other three groups concern DDASS that perform this monitoring function. Section 2 DDASS: an intermediary between the prosecution and health structures The circular of 1995 reiterates the interface function of DDASS. The interface is the central position of DDASS in treating a patient in that they represent the intermediaries between the prosecution and the structures support. [...]

[...] Bibliography - MILDT (Interministerial Mission for the fight against drugs and drugs addiction). - OCRTIS (The Central Office for the Repression of Illicit Traffic in Narcotics), Statistics. - OFDT (French Observatory of Drugs and Drug Addiction), Therapeutic injunction: Paris p - OFDT, Several Publications: Paris - SIMMAT-DURAND ROUAULT Therapeutic injunction and others care's obligation, p.28. [...]

[...] The DDASS fall under two major mode of transmission of the users to the structures support: some suggest a total independence from the users supposed to reclaim the nursing process, others in order to bettor monitor this transition, inform, at the same time, the structure support about the sending of users. The information provided by the structures support to DDASS on the progress of therapy is determined by the nature of their relationship and vary depending on the type of structure support. The frequency, content and quality of information determines the quality on monitoring of users by DDASS and how they can use this information. Relations with conventional structures, type CSST (Specialized center), are ambiguous, because they are marked by a desire for independence and by their administrative dependence. [...]

[...] It is interesting to note that in this case, it isn't an a priori decision, but determined by the juxtaposition of another evaluation of the user. Consequently, more this evaluation grid is overridden at the prosecution, more the exclusion will be important. For inapt users for the treatment, they are just returned after that meeting-diagnosed. Some DDHSA may impose a second meeting to decide the of therapeutic injunction”. The monitoring function All circular emphasize that his function corresponds to several objectives. The first is to allow DDASS to know the treatment schedule. [...]

[...] The therapeutic injunction is and will no effect on the problem of drug use, because its rate of effectiveness is too low. In this case, its continued status is both waste and obstacle. The treatment is a waste of resources (10 million in 1994 and the double in 1995). Above all, if therapeutic injunction's state is kept like now, it's an obstacle because it presents a health's answer to the problem of drug use that effectively prohibits the testing of new answers. [...]