Report slams prison drug policy

20 Mar 08
The government has come under fire from the influential UK Drug Policy Commission for 'seriously weak' or non-existent evidence to back up its strategy on reducing drug-related crime.

21 March 2008

The government has come under fire from the influential UK Drug Policy Commission for 'seriously weak' or non-existent evidence to back up its strategy on reducing drug-related crime.

In a new report, Reducing drug use, reducing reoffending, published on March 17, the commission said drug treatment services for prisoners cost more than £330m to run but some lacked any evaluation of their effectiveness.

With a third of the prison population addicted to crack cocaine or heroin, the commission called for far greater investment in proper after care to follow treatment. The report also found that community punishments were likely to be more appropriate for most problem drug-using offenders.

Crucially, prison drug services frequently fall short of minimum standards. It found that for the 40,000 prisoners who undergo detoxification programmes in jail, a lack of aftercare meant many went straight back to using hard drugs when they left prison.

There was also a lack of evidence for the effectiveness of drug-free wings or even cognitive behavioural therapy in prisons, it said.

'Given the considerable ongoing investment in criminal justice system drug interventions, it is striking that we still know so little about the effectiveness of many of them, especially those in prisons and, crucially, whether they represent value for money,' it added.

The chair of the British Medical Association's forensic medicine committee, George Fernie, said: 'Technically, it is not that difficult to get somebody off drugs. It is the follow-through that we have to have, with stable housing, employment and family support.'

Justice minister David Hanson welcomed the report, saying it recognised the challenges, difficulties and recent improvements in drug treatment. He said 53 prisons would benefit from health funding for enhanced clinical drug services by April.

The £175m Drugs Intervention Programme treated 40,000 offenders in the community in 2007.

The government's new drugs strategy, launched in February, made 'proactively targeting and managing drug-misusing offenders' a key element.

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