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Prisons: Drugs and Alcoholic Drinks

Answer

I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Department of Health.

No recent estimate has been made by the Department on the number of prisoners addicted to heroin or alcohol as a nationwide total or by prison. However, further analysis of data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) survey of psychiatric morbidity among prisoners in England and Wales carried out for the Department in 1997 showed that, in the year before prison, 29% of male remand prisoners and 21% of male sentenced prisoners reported heroin use. The ONS data showed 41% of female remand prisoners and 26% of female sentenced prisoners reported heroin use.

ONS data also showed that in the 12 months before coming into prison, 30% of male sentenced prisoners and 30% of male remand prisoners reported alcohol dependency. For female prisoners, 20% of sentenced prisoners and 19% of female remand prisoners reported alcohol dependency. Alcohol dependency was measured by ONS as a score of 16 or more on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test.

Data is not collected by the Department about the number of people serving custodial sentences who died from a heroin overdose while in prison.

Data is available on the number of clinical interventions for opioid dependence since 2001 in prisons and is shown in the following table. It is only possible to

disaggregate maintenance prescriptions from detoxifications since 2007-08 and caution should be shown when using this data because it refers to the total number of clinical interventions, not the number of prisoners receiving these treatments. Individual prisoners may receive more than one clinical intervention in any given year.

Number of clinical interventions for opioid (heroin) dependence among prisoners in England between 2001-02 and 2011-12: Maintenance-based prescription and abstinence-based detoxification programmes, male and female all ages
	Total number of in-year maintenance prescriptions	Total number of individual in-year detoxification treatments provided	Aggregate number of In-year clinical drug interventions
2011-12	33,198	31,718	64,916
2010-11	30,650	30,459	61,109
2009-10	23,744	36,323	60,067
2008-09	19,632	45,135	64.767
2007-08	12,518	46,291	58,809
2006-07	—	—	51,520
2005-06	—	—	53,773
2004-05	—	—	53,903
2003-04	—	—	57,891
2002-03	—	—	50,701
2001-02	—	—	41,765
Source: National Offender Management Service

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

130787; 554 cc666-7W

Session

2012-13

Subjects

Drugs Prisoners Prisons Misuse Rehabilitation

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

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