Serious Offences

Murders, violent assaults, drug facilitated sexual assaults (DFSA's), rape, robberies/burglaries etc.

The consumption, illicit or prescribed, of drugs is common in today's society and there is no doubt that this consumption could have affected the behaviour of an individual at a given instance; i.e. a person may have committed an offence that they would not ordinarily have done had they not been affected by drugs at that time.

The consumption of a drug (knowingly or inadvertently), its distribution around the body and its effects on a particular individual is a very complex subject and requires expert interpretation. Therefore, because of this complexity, experts may not agree what the analytical findings (i.e. the presence of a drug, or drugs, in a person's system) actually mean in any given instance.