Belackova Vendula, Ritter Alison, Shanahan Marian, Hughes Caitlin E
Drug Policy Modelling Program, National Drug and Alcohol Research Center, University of New South Wales, Australia; Department of Institutional, Environmental and Experimental Economics, University of Economics in Prague, Czech Republic.
Drug Policy Modelling Program, National Drug and Alcohol Research Center, University of New South Wales, Australia.
Int J Drug Policy. 2017 Mar;41:148-157. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2016.12.013. Epub 2017 Feb 10.
Variations in drug laws, as well as variations in enforcement practice, exist across jurisdictions. This study explored the feasibility of categorising drug laws "on the books" in terms of their punitiveness, and the extent of their concordance with "laws in practice" in a cross-national comparison.
"Law on the books", classified with respect to both cannabis and other drug offences in the Czech Republic, NSW (AU) and Florida (USA) were analysed in order to establish an ordinal relationship between the three states. Indicators to assess the "laws in practice" covered both police (arrests) and court (sentencing) activity between 2002 and 2013. Parametric and non-parametric tests of equality of means, tests of stationarity and correlation analysis were used to examine the concordance between the ordinal categorisation of "laws on the books" and "laws in practice", as well as trends over time.
The Czech Republic had the most lenient drug laws; Florida had the most punitive and NSW was in-between. Examining the indicators of "laws in practice", we found that the population adjusted number of individuals sentenced to prison ranked across the three states was concordant with categorisation of "laws on the books", but the average sentence length and percentage of court cases sentenced to prison were not. Also, the de jure decriminalisation of drug possession in the Czech Republic yielded a far greater share of administrative offenses than the de facto decriminalisation of cannabis use / possession in NSW. Finally, the mean value of most "laws in practice" indicators changed significantly over time although the "laws on the books" didn't change.
While some indicators of "laws in practice" were concordant with the ordinal categorisation of drug laws, several indicators of "laws in practice" appeared to operate independently from the drug laws as stated. This has significant implications for drug policy analysis and means that research should not assume they are interchangeable and should consider each separately when designing research.
不同司法管辖区的药品法律以及执法实践存在差异。本研究探讨了根据药品法律的惩罚性对其“书面法律”进行分类的可行性，以及在跨国比较中这些法律与“实际执行的法律”的一致程度。
分析了捷克共和国、新南威尔士州（澳大利亚）和佛罗里达州（美国）关于大麻和其他毒品犯罪的“书面法律”，以确定这三个地区之间的顺序关系。评估“实际执行的法律”的指标涵盖了2002年至2013年期间警方（逮捕）和法院（量刑）的活动。使用均值相等的参数和非参数检验、平稳性检验和相关分析来检验“书面法律”和“实际执行的法律”的顺序分类之间的一致性以及随时间的趋势。
捷克共和国的药品法律最为宽松；佛罗里达州的法律最具惩罚性，新南威尔士州则介于两者之间。在研究“实际执行的法律”指标时，我们发现按人口调整后的被判处监禁的人数在这三个地区的排名与“书面法律”的分类一致，但平均刑期长度和被判处监禁的法庭案件百分比并非如此。此外，捷克共和国对持有毒品的法律上的非刑罪化导致行政违法行为的比例远高于新南威尔士州对大麻使用/持有的事实上的非刑罪化。最后，尽管“书面法律”没有变化，但大多数“实际执行的法律”指标的均值随时间发生了显著变化。
虽然“实际执行的法律”的一些指标与药品法律的顺序分类一致，但“实际执行的法律”的几个指标似乎独立于所述的药品法律运行。这对毒品政策分析具有重要意义，意味着研究不应假定它们是可互换的，并且在设计研究时应分别考虑每个指标。
