Implementing harm reduction policing: the many modes and motivations of police drug diversion schemes

Background: Increasing use of police drug diversion (PDD) schemes is a feature of both national policy and local practice in England and Wales. This can be seen as a form of harm reduction policing which seeks to reduce harms related to both illicit drug use and drug law enforcement.

Aim: This talk explains the multiple operational modes and motivations of police and other staff involved in delivering PDD schemes in order to better understand how they work.

Methods: Based on a realist review of the literature on PDD and collaborative manualisation of PDD schemes in Thames Valley, West Midlands and Durham, we carried out semi-structured interviews with police officers and other PDD staff in these three areas.

Findings: We present a comparative table that shows the main similarities and differences between these schemes, showing the multiple forms that PDD can take. We explore the reasoning that police officers use in choosing how to use these schemes and other alternative disposals, in a complex mix of control, guidance and discretion. We discuss how the varying - and sometimes conflicting - motivations for using diversion can affect who and how many people get diverted, and who does not.

Conclusion: We observe a process of cascading constraint and subsidiary discretion. Attempts to direct the use of police powers from the top down (from Parliament, to Home Office, to PCCs and Chief Constables, to police managers, to officers) are met, at each level, with the use of discretion. This involves a mixture of motivations, including levels of knowledge about available disposals, and people’s own attitudes towards illicit drugs and the people who use them. This makes it difficult to answer the question of whether PDD ‘works’ in reducing crime and other harms. We first need a clearer understanding of what PDD, in practice, is.

The talk will be hybrid. Teams link to access can be found here: https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_YmY0NmMyMTItNDQ0Zi00MzkxLTkzZTMtODEwZDVlY2YwZmFl%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22cc95de1b-97f5-4f93-b4ba-fe68b852cf91%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2208082c25-9892-465b-b68f-c7568ef7f166%22%7d