Ordering addicts into treatment instead of jail in a separate court system for drug-related crime could slash prisoner numbers and save the ACT millions of dollars, Directions ACT CEO Fiona Trevelyan says.
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Drug courts already exist in NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia.
The Victorian court produced a 29 per cent reduction in recidivism two years later and saved $50 million in prison costs, a review released last month showed.
Treatment orders were "considerably cheaper" than an equivalent prison term and those who did reoffend did so less frequently and committed less serious crimes.
In the Alexander Maconochie Centre 75 per cent of inmates said their prison sentence was related to drugs and 79 per cent said they were under the influence when they committed the offence, a report by the Burnet Institute showed in 2011.
As the jail continues to operate near capacity, Ms Trevelyan wants the government to fund the court in its upcoming budget beginning with a pilot.
Under the proposal a drug or alcohol dependent person facing imprisonment after pleading guilty to a crime would be assessed by ACT Health before they were referred to the court.
They would then be allocated a case manager and within the drug and alcohol treatment court the magistrate, defence, prosecution and treatment would "work together as a team", Ms Trevelyan said.
"Instead of an adversarial relationship… it's about acknowledging the person has a significant issue with alcohol or other drugs, that issue has impacted on their offending, they have a significant history of offending, and they're likely to reoffend and are looking at incarceration for a reasonable length of time," she said.
Serious crimes such as arson, sexual offences, and violence would be excluded from the drug court as the addict would access treatment within prioritised beds in mainstream services.
Burglary, theft, or less serious assaults committed while under the influence were common offences that could be eligible, Ms Trevelyan said.
"People who are dependent on substances will often commit crime in order to basically support their habit," she said.
"If someone committed a very violent offence the expectation from the public is they'd want society protected from that person and incarceration would probably be the answer."
But legal figures have cast doubt over the proposal.
ACT Bar Association president Shane Gill said resources for a standalone drug court would be better spent on stretched drug rehabilitation providers.
"The burning question is not whether we've got a drug court or not, but whether we're going to provide rehabilitative resources or whether we just cut people loose to their own devices and their own destructions," he said.
He described the current situation, in which drug users are being forced to wait months for help, as "ludicrous".
ACT Law Society president Martin Hockridge said he doubted whether a separate drug court would work in a small jurisdiction like the ACT.
He said the significant government investment would be better spent elsewhere in the sector.
But Ms Trevelyan believes the costly proposal would pay off and could be funded across ACT government departments.
"If you have someone who has been through treatment who is rehabilitated… there's not going to be recidivism, they won't be going back through the court system… they're not going to be incarcerated again, they're able to find employment, maintain accommodation, and their health improves," she said.
"All of those costs which are often difficult to measurement provide that return on investment."
Ms Trevelyan said some ACT magistrates already ran an "informal drug court" through their practice, but better resourcing would allow treatment to be tailored to the individual with flexible funding allowing other common issues to be addressed including domestic violence, homelessness and employment.
