Drug treatment court leads to success

The criminal justice system has long been very good at punishing people for the consequences of addiction. It has been considerably less successful at addressing addiction itself.

That is why the success of Manitoba’s drug treatment courts deserves far more attention.

The Westman drug treatment court, which began in 2019, is built around a simple but important premise: If substance abuse is driving criminal behaviour, the best way to protect the public may not always be to put someone in jail for two years or less.

Sometimes, the more effective response is an intensive, closely supervised effort to help that person break the cycle.