Reducing Harm: Police as Partners in Preventing HIV, Promoting Public Health and Protecting the Rights of People who Use Drugs

Many people who inject and use drugs experience negative interactions with the police and, as a result, are over represented in criminal justice systems, prisons and compulsory drug treatment centres. This happens because in many countries, the production, trafficking and use of some drugs is illegal and police are tasked with enforcing the law. Harm reduction programmes at their core recognize that drug use has implications for individual and public health, and these harms must be reduced as a fundamental step towards ensuring the human right to health. Despite these policy and programmatic shifts, people who use and inject drugs frequently report being targeted and searched by police, as well as experiencing harassment, humiliation, extortion, violence and arbitrary detention at the hands of the police.