4500.0 - Crime and Justice News, Apr 2000  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 07/06/2000   
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NATIONAL ILLICIT DRUGS STATISTICS FRAMEWORK

Work continues on the implementation of the Stage 1 recommendations of the National Illicit Drugs Statistics Framework (NIDSF), developed in conjunction with the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence. The NIDSF addresses quality and availability problems associated with current law enforcement drug data by specifying a core set of high quality data on the policing of illicit drugs.

Since the publication of the NIDSF report in June 1999, an independent evaluation strategy for the diversion of illicit drug users by police has been established. One element of this evaluation strategy has been the specification of a National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) that will hold drug offender diversion information to be collected by police and various assessment, education and treatment agencies.

The data items in the NMDS that fall within the responsibility of police agencies are substantially, but not wholly, the same as those set out under the NIDSF Stage 1. A concordance exercise has been completed that details which of the NMDS data items may be satisfied by equivalent, existing NIDSF data items and, for those NMDS items with no direct equivalent, what needs to be incorporated into the NIDSF to satisfy them. It is hoped that integrating the NMDS and NIDSF will provide cost benefits and will expedite their implementation.