A new government initiative has been set out to tackle drug use in prisons. The amount of £120 million will be distributed to prisons to help fund treatment and reduce the use of drugs. With drug use in prisons on the rise, how will these new measures tackle drug use and treat prisoners’ addictions?
The UK government has announced several new measures as part of its wide-reaching efforts to stamp out the effects of drug use across the country. The core of these are ‘drug recovery wings’ and ‘incentivised substance-free living units’ (ISFL units).
This follows on the heels of the Home Office’s new paper, ‘Swift, Certain, Tough: New Consequences for Drug Possession’. This sweeping set of legal reforms increases punishments for recreational drug users while increasing local councils’ funding to combat drug abuse and drug-related crimes.
Drugs and Prison
Figures released by the government claim that illegal drug use costs British taxpayers almost £22 billion every year. This number includes costs to the NHS, the police, and prisons. The same figures said half of the people in prison had a drug problem. As of March 2021, over 43,000 people in prisons or secure settings were receiving some form of drug or alcohol abuse treatment. Of those people, around half were suffering from opiate abuse.
It is fair to assume that there are more people using or abusing illegal substances than are enrolled in treatment programs. Data from 2021 shows that 16% of the UK’s overall prison population received their sentence for drug offences. With so many people being sent to prison as a result of drugs, the ease of access to drugs while in prison renders recovery far more difficult.
How Do Drugs Get into Prison?
As we can see, it is not as hard to access drugs while in prison as many people might have thought. In fact, one-fifth of prisoners who reported having used heroin said they tried it for the first time while in prison. So how are all these illicit drugs getting into prisons in the first place?
The vast majority of illicit substances are brought into the prison from the outside. While alcohol can be made on site, drugs are brought in secretly by:
- visitors smuggling it in
- people sending it via the post concealed in packages
- corrupt guards bringing it in and selling it
- prisoners bringing it in concealed about their person when they are first brought in
Another way drugs are smuggled into prisons is through the use of drones. Part of this funding will go towards anti-drone technology and other security measures to stem the flow of drugs into prisons.
What Are Incentivised Substance-Free Living Units?
ISFL units are areas of a prison where people get help with their addiction treatment and recovery. In these specialised units, prisoners will be subject to regular drug testing. They are also incentivised through certain rewards to maintain good progress. These measures will help prisoners who are already undergoing treatment for substance abuse.
Following a successful period in an ISFL unit, people with opiate addictions can move to special drug recovery wings for six months. A team of fifty new specialists will help these prisoners remain abstinent from all drugs and ultimately transition back into the general prison population.
These drug recovery wings are based on a previous pilot scheme. Ten drug recovery wings were rolled out between 2011 and 2012. These took place in eight men’s prisons and two women’s prisons. Each prison had the freedom to develop its own approach. Most of these wings focused on abstinence; however, at least two only looked to reduce harm.
The fifty new ‘health and justice partnership coordinators’, will work with prisons, probation services, and treatment providers. They will help make sure offenders’ treatment plans continue unimpeded once they leave prison.
Currently, there are twenty-five ISFL units in UK prisons. The government hopes to roll out seventy-five more by 2025, as well as eighteen drug recovery wings.
Other Initiatives to Receive Funding
The £120 million fund will go towards more than just funding ISFL units and drug recovery wings. Special substance abuse problem-solving courts are to be piloted in Liverpool and Teesside. They will aim to give offenders the chance to resolve issues in the community instead of going straight to prison.
Several digital solutions will also receive money, including the new anti-drone technology. One such initiative is the establishment of a new digital forensics laboratory. The focus will be on identifying individuals and organised criminals responsible for crime within prisons.
Prisons will also receive more laptops and digital equipment. These will facilitate virtual meetings with treatment providers prior to a prisoner’s release. This will help improve their chances of staying clean and out of jail.
As part of efforts to join up abstinence and treatment programs for people on release, up to fifty more probation staff will be hired. They will be responsible for overseeing drug testing for offenders serving a community sentence.
The Ten-Year Drug Plan
The overall success of the drug recovery wing pilot scheme led to them being included in the government’s ten-year drug plan. But what is the government’s long-term approach to drugs? This plan will see over £3 billion spent on tackling drug abuse and drug-related offences over the next three years.
This ten-year plan aims to cut the cost to society of drug and alcohol-related crimes – not only the financial cost but the social harms as well. Government data shows that nearly half of all burglaries and robberies in England are committed by people addicted to heroin and cocaine.
Drug and substance abuse causes a great deal of harm, to both users and their community, but these harms are preventable. As Paul Spanjar of the Providence Projects addiction treatment centre puts it:
“Addiction changes us in ways we never could imagine it would. A good percentage of the prison population doing time for drug offences were not criminals prior to their drug-related issues.