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Prisoners: Drugs

Answer

The table provides an estimate of the percentage of all those received into prison in 2005-06 who underwent drug treatment.These figures must be seen in context. Around 55 per cent. of those received into prison report a serious drug problem, with 80 per cent. reporting some misuse in the year prior to prison. Of those, not all will need certain types of treatment, some do not engage in treatment and many are not in prison long enough to benefit. Drug treatment is delivered in accordance with identified need.A comprehensive drug treatment framework is in place: (i) clinical services (maintenance-prescribing and/or detoxification programmes), available in all local and remand prisons; (ii) CARATs (Counselling, Assessment, Referral, Advice and Through-care services), provided in all prisons: and (iii) 116 drug rehabilitation programmes running across the estate (of which 42 are the Short Duration Programme (SDP), designed primarily for those spending only a short period in custody).

Intervention	2005-06	Percentage of prison population undergoing drug treatment based on 2005 reception figures of 132,058
Clinical services entrants to maintenance- prescribing/ detoxification programmes	53,773	40.7
CARATs-initial assessments	¹74,720	56.6
Drug rehabilitation programmes-entrants	10,743	8.1
¹ Of which 8,709 juvenile element.
Notes:
1. Prison reception figures are available for the calendar year of 2005, in comparison the prison drug treatment figures are available for the financial year of 2005-06. The two figures are not a direct match and must therefore be treated with a degree of caution.
2. Individual prisoners may engage in more than one type of treatment.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

159006; 465 c116W

Session

2006-07

Subjects

Drugs Prisoners Prisons

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk