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Drug treatment beats prison for cutting crime and addiction rates

Judy Jones , BMJ

Treating drug users who commit offences cuts crime rates more effectively than putting them in prison, according to an analysis of research in the United States and in England. Yet provision of drug treatment services is patchy, and treatment centres often have long waiting lists of users wanting help in breaking their habits, says the analysis from the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders in London.

A third of all thefts, burglaries, and street robberies in England and Wales are now drug related, states the report, Drug-driven Crime: a Factual and Statistical Analysis. Urine tests carried out on 839 people arrested in five areas of England (Cambridge, London, Manchester, Nottingham, and Sunderland) showed that nearly two thirds tested positive for one illegal drug and more than a quarter did so for two or more such substances. Arrested drug users interviewed in Brighton and Derby in one recent Home Office study were spending an average of £400 ($640) a week on drugs, although some were spending £2000 a week for a mixture of heroin and crack. Very little of this money was raised legally.

The national treatment outcome research study, funded by the Department of Health, monitored 1100 people who entered drug treatment programmes between March and July 1995. They were mainly heroin users, and between them they had committed about 70000 crimes in the three months before treatment. Two years on, incidence of both drug use and criminal behaviour was substantially re-duced, in many cases by more than half.

In the United States similarly impressive results have been seen among drug users who accept treatment, whether in therapeutic communities, community based drug free schemes, or methadone maintenance programmes. Some 400 drug courts operate, requiring offenders to comply with individual treatment plans and to report progress to the judge every 30-60 days. "Conventional punishments do nothing to stop offenders using drugs but simply produce a vicious circle of crime, punishment, and a rapid return to drug use," said Paul Cavadino, director of policy for the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders and author of the report. "For every pound spent on drug misuse treatment, we save more than £3 associated with the cost of crime."

(Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS) James Allen of the Addicts Rehabilitation choir, New York