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Whatsapp Ice use is rampant across the sunny islands of Hawaii.

As policy makers scramble to address Australia's 'ice epidemic', could the solution be found on the sunny shores of Hawaii? The Law Report ventures to 'the meth capital of America' to learn about a program enjoying stunning success in reducing drug use.

Hawaii: a state of sun, sand and ice. Oceans of it.

They never threw away the key with me. [Judge Alm] kept working with me until I was ready to do good.

Estimates place the number of crystal methamphetamine addicts in the Aloha State at more than 120,000. For a state with fewer than 1.5 million people, that represents almost 10 per cent of the population.

Christina Mendoza used to be part of that statistic.

'I started doing meth and other drugs when I was 15,' she says.

'I can't really say why I started doing drugs, but my lifestyle and the people around me were not positive influences.'

Mendoza broke into houses and cars to fuel her addiction. Speaking to The Law Report from Honolulu, she proudly reports that she has been clean and sober for two years. How did she manage it?

The aptly-titled HOPE (short for Hawaii's Opportunity Probation with Enforcement) has a lot to do with it.

Hawaiian Judge Steve Alm was tired of working within a system bogged-down by drug-related crimes when he devised the program. Drug users were being sent to prison for years at a cost to the state of $50,000 per annum, only for them to come out and reoffend almost immediately.

Alm was also frustrated that probationary officers were not able to enforce quick, short-term punishments for reoffending drug users.

'We have good probationary officers, but they didn't have a tool to respond quickly to probation violations,' he says.

'If they wanted to bring somebody back to court it was to ask me to sentence them to five or 10 years in prison. I thought, "How was I raised as a kid? How were we trying to raise my son?"

'Your parents tell you they care about you, but if you misbehave they are going to do something about it right away. You tie together a bad behaviour with a consequence and learn from it.'

The HOPE model Alm designed allows for jail time to be swiftly imposed for offenders who return positive drug tests while on probation, but it does so in a way that rewards honesty and a desire to change.

Offenders on probation are assigned a colour and required to call in to a hotline each morning. If their colour is listed, they have to submit for a drug test that day.

If they fail the test and admit to having drugs in their system, they are sentenced to three days jail. If they test positive but deny they have taken drugs, a lab will confirm the test result and the probationer is sentenced to 15 days jail.

Should the offender not show up to the test at all, law enforcement officers will track them down and they will be imprisoned for 30 days.

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Whatsapp Crystal methamphetamine is an even bigger problem in Hawaii than Australia.

'We tell them what the rules are and act immediately. Swift, certain and consistent, but not necessarily severe,' says Alm.

Former ice addict Christina Mendoza is a staunch advocate of the program. 'On regular probation, I got away with a lot,' she says.

'My first incident [under HOPE] being dirty for drugs I did three days. The next one I did maybe seven days.

'They never threw away the key with me. [Judge Alm] kept working with me until I was ready to do good.'

Alm says the program, which has now been adapted and applied in some form across 28 US states, works on the principle that drug treatment is more effective on the outside than in prison.

Given Australia faces what in many quarters has been described as an 'ice epidemic', could the program work here?

Lorana Bartels, associate professor at the University of Canberra's School of Law and Justice, suggests there is merit in such a model.

'I think it is very promising,' says Bartels. 'When they compared 330 offenders who were on HOPE with 163 similar offenders who were on usual probation, HOPE offenders were 55 per cent less likely to be arrested for a new crime, 72 per cent less likely to test positive for illegal drugs [and] spent 45 per cent fewer days in prison.

'These are really quite startling results. Often in crime prevention, if we are talking a three to five per cent reduction in offending or problematic behaviour—that's generally sold as a win. This stuff is out of the ballpark, quite frankly.'

Significant differences in the criminal justice systems of the US and Australia, particularly in sentencing frameworks, means the HOPE model would need to be refined to fit a local context.

Rob Hulls, the director of Innovative Justice at RMIT University and the former Victorian attorney general, says there is a strong argument for the 'swift and certain' nature of HOPE to be used in cases of family violence.

'There is no reason why swift and certain sanctioning, like flash incarceration, can't be used in relation to perpetrators of family violence,' says Hulls.

'If there are breaches, particularly some form of minor breaches, the court should have the ability to put the perpetrator in jail for a short, sharp period of time to let them know in no uncertain terms that this isn't just a piece of paper; this is an order that has been issued by the court on behalf of the community, and a breach of it is a very serious matter.'

Hawaii shows way in 'swift and certain justice' Listen to the full episode of The Law Report as the program speaks with those involved in Hawaii's HOPE model for drug offenders on probation and asks if it could it work in Australia.

Informative, jargon-free stories about law reform, legal education, test cases, miscarriages of justice and legal culture. The Law Report makes the law accessible.