The National Offender Management Service (NOMS) has in place a comprehensive drug treatment framework, based on the National Treatment Agency’s revised Models of Care, to address the different needs of drug-misusers in prison. The interventions available are designed to meet the needs of low, moderate and severe drug misusers—irrespective of age, gender or ethnicity.
The following table shows the number of interventions delivered in the last five full financial years in prisons by intervention type. Individual prisoners may have accessed more than one of these interventions in the time period.
A range of interventions are available in prisons to support those with an alcohol problem:
clinical services—alcohol detoxification is available in all local and remand prisons;
where alcohol is part of a wider substance misuse problem, the full range of drug interventions are available;
a number of prisons run alcohol awareness courses;
Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) run groups in over 65 per cent. of prisons;
some offending behaviour programmes address the underlying factors which occur in alcohol related crime;
an accredited 12-step alcohol programme is being run at HMP Bullingdon;
a further four more intensive alcohol programmes based on cognitive behavioural therapy have been piloted at HMP Hull, Forest Bank, Glen Parva and Chelmsford;
for those prisons involved in the roll-out of the Integrated Drug Treatment System a 90-minute alcohol awareness session has been developed; and
the young persons substance misuse service for 16 to 18-year-old prisoners has a particular focus on alcohol.
The Ministry of Justice has established a working group to develop proposals to increase the provision of alcohol treatment available in prisons. The number of prisoners accessing services specifically aimed at their alcohol misuse is not collated centrally.
Intervention type 2003-04 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 Intensive Drug Rehabilitation Programmes2 (starts) 4,700 7,600 10,700 11,200 11,300 CARATs3 (substance misuse triage assessments) 54,100 59,000 66,000 65,700 65,800 Young People’s Substance Misuse Service (initial assessments) — — 8,500 8,300 7,400 Clinical Treatment (detoxification or maintenance prescribing)4 57,900 53,900 53,800 51,500 58,800 Total 116,700 120,500 139,000 136,700 143,300 1 These figures have been drawn from administrative data systems. Although care is taken when processing and analysing the returns, the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. 2 Programmes available in prison are split into four main categories: cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT), the 12-Step approach, Therapeutic Communities (TCs), Short Duration Programme (SDP). 3 Counselling, assessment, referral, advice and throughcare services. 4 Drug and alcohol detoxification data cannot be disaggregated.