22/07/2022
Police Oracle
The Ministry of Justice has announced £120 million investment in drug treatment for people in prison and on probation.
When the government published its 10-year drug strategy “From Harm to Hope” last December, many commentators pointed out an usual lack of detail for such a major document with many sections characterised by aspirations and commitments rather than detailed plans.
However, this week, we have seen that the Government is serious about driving the strategy forwards. Earlier this week, we summarised the Home Office’s “Swift, Certain, Tough” white paper which set out a plan to reduce the demand for illegal substances by introducing much harsher penalties for people using so-called recreational drugs.
Today, the Ministry of Justice has announced £120 million investment in drug treatment for people in prison and on probation.
A large proportion of the funding will be spent on up to 18 abstinence-led ‘drug recovery wings’ and 100 ‘incentivised substance-free living units’ (ISFLs) which will be rolled out across the prison estate over the next three years. The new system will see people using heroin and other opiates (there is no mention of crack users in the official press release) receive support to get off illicit drugs at an ISFL, then move to the new drug recovery wings for six months of further intensive treatment, if needed. Here addicts will be supported to get clean from all drugs, including substitutes like methadone, through abstinence – overseen by up to 50 new specialists who will work with prisons.
The plan is that these abstinent prisoners will then transition back through the incentivised units and into the general prison population, with continued support to stay drug-free.
Drug recovery wings are nothing new and have been tried on and off over recent years. Researchers have found that the wings can be very effective but the main challenge is to ensure that they are robustly funded and staffed by skilled and committed staff. Where drug recovery wings are under-funded and/or staffed they are at high risk of becoming drug-dealing and drug-using wings rather than recovery wings. The other key finding of the most recent national evaluation of drug recovery wings, undertaken by the University of York and published in 2017 is that recovery wings are largely futile unless suitable accommodation and support are available to prisoners after release.
Researchers found that many prisoners experienced a ‘cliff edge’, receiving little or no professional support in the weeks preceding or following release, and were housed in inappropriate hostels or funded B&Bs where drugs and prostitution were rife.
This is a message that the Government has clearly heard because it is promising to continue to support drug using prisoners on release. The new funding will also support 50 ‘health and justice partnership co-ordinators’, who will work between prisons, probation and treatment providers, to ensure offenders’ treatment plans transfer smoothly from prison to the community.
The MoJ announcement confirms another initiative trailed in the drug strategy which is the provision of more video-link capacity so that people who have completed drug treatment in prison can have virtual meetings with the community treatment agency which will offer them ongoing support on their release. The chance to meet their new worker prior to release is likely to significantly improve current low levels of continuity of care – currently only four out of ten people who engage in drug treatment in prison have signed up to treatment in the community within the first three weeks of their release.
There will also be support for people on probation with “up to 50” more probation staff to oversee drug testing for people serving a community sentence to keep them clean. This is in addition to the three new Problem-Solving Drug Courts announced earlier this week (which we described in detail here).