Building procedural justice in Australian street-level drug law enforcement

This study used a purpose-built module in the 2019 Global Drug Survey to provide the first comprehensive assessment of the extent to which Australian street-level drug law enforcement approaches are perceived as procedurally just by people who use illicit drugs, to benchmark procedural justice levels against 29 other nations and to identify predictors of and methods to enhance procedural justice.

People who use drugs in Australia concurred that police commonly follow some aspects of procedural justice, such as respecting people’s rights, but were critical of other procedural justice areas, such as the extent to which police choose how they enforce the law. Cross-national analyses showed Australia ranked 15th out of 30 countries in a composite procedural justice index: higher than the United States, but significantly lower than New Zealand and Canada. Avenues to improve the procedural justice of Australian street level drug law enforcement are outlined.