11/04/2026
Something like this needs more attention. People are struggling with all sorts of stresses and traumas. The "system" is failing. We need change and we need it asap. Mandatory rehabilitation should be on the table. Jails aren't equipped to help these people. It's like locking a kid in there room for extended time and expecting them to come out improved. It's not working. 🥹🥴😌
Post 7/8 — Police and Law Enforcement
The First Decision Is the Most Important Decision. And Right Now It Is Being Made Without the Right Framework.
Western Australia funds, staffs, deploys, and trains its own police force. Every decision about how WA Police responds to addiction-related contact is a state decision and addiction-related contact is not a small part of what WA Police deals with every day. It is the majority of it.
Police are not social workers. That is not their role and it should not be. But police are the first contact point for most people at Stage E — the crisis point of addiction.
They are the ones who arrive at the overdose, the domestic incident, the public disturbance, the theft, the break and enter. They are the ones who make the first decision about what happens next.
That decision, divert or charge, refer or process, hold or release determines whether a window gets used or gets lost and right now it is being made without the one piece of information that would make it a genuinely effective decision.
Which E is this person?
A police officer who understands the A to E3 classification is not being asked to become a counsellor or a case manager. They are being given a framework that takes thirty seconds to apply and changes the quality of the decision they were already going to make.
The E1 at the point of police contact is a person whose window is open. The crisis that produced the contact has disrupted the patterns that were maintaining the addiction.
The defences are down, something is different about this interaction compared to every previous one. A police officer trained to recognise that difference makes a different decision. Not a soft decision a smart one.
The E1 diverted to the right programme at the point of police contact does not become a prison bed six months later. They do not become a repeat call-out. They do not become another statistic in a reoffending rate that is not moving.
The E2 at the point of police contact is a person who wants the consequences to stop. The police interaction is a consequence.
The E2 will manage it producing the presentation that generates the most favourable response. A police officer who understands the E2 classification is not fooled by the management. They apply the appropriate response, maintain the pressure that the legal situation provides, and do not reduce that pressure as a reward for a cooperative presentation.
The legal pressure on the E2 is not a punishment waiting to be lifted. It is the structure within which genuine change eventually becomes possible.
The E3 at the point of police contact needs a containment decision not a diversion programme they cannot engage with or a referral to a service that will be overwhelmed by a person who has no current capacity to use it.
A clear, honest decision about what is safe and what is appropriate for where this person actually is right now.
Three different people three different decisions. All of them made better by one question asked before the decision is made.
The downstream impact of getting the police contact decision right is significant. Every E1 who is correctly identified and correctly diverted at first police contact is a person who does not cycle through the court system, the prison system, the hospital system, and back again.
Every E2 who is held accountable at first police contact rather than having the pressure removed has a better chance of eventually reaching genuine readiness.
Every E3 who receives an honest containment decision rather than a diversion referral they cannot use frees up the diversion resources for the people who can.
Police cannot fix addiction, that is not their job. But police are positioned, at the point of first contact, to make a decision that either opens the door to a different outcome or closes it.
The A to E3 methodology gives them the framework to make that decision correctly.
Which E is this person?
One question, thirty seconds asked at every addiction related police contact. The downstream savings in court time, prison beds, hospital presentations, repeat call-outs are not theoretical. They are the predictable result of getting the first decision right.
What’s your thoughts…?
Peter Lyndon-James 🇦🇺
