US drug and crime researcher to deliver keynote at NDARC Symposium

June 2015

Angela Hawken, Associate Professor of Economics and Policy Analysis at the School of Public Policy, Pepperdine University, CA, United States will deliver the keynote at the 2015 NDARC Annual Research Symposium. The Symposium will be held on Tuesday, 15  September 2015 at the John Niland Scientia Building, University of New South Wales, Sydney.

She will speak about opportunities for intervention for methamphetamine within the criminal justice system drawing on her research into a probation based intervention “Hawaii’s Opportunity Probation with Enforcement”, (HOPE) which has since been implemented in 11 US States. The program involves random drug testing of probationers who have been repeatedly violating the terms of their probation as a result of their drug use, with ice being the main drug of concern.

Hawken is the director of BetaGov, a centre for practitioner-led trials that provides tools to conduct experimental tests of operations and policies; the goal is to dramatically increase the pace of learning which innovations are promising – and which are not – in criminal-justice and other policy areas. She has conducted research and advised policymakers in South Africa, Afghanistan, Syria, the country of Georgia, and the United Nations. She is a co-author of Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know and Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know (both Oxford University Press).

For more information about the 2015 NDARC Annual Research Symposium, visit the NDARC website.