Methadone to be replaced by 'abstinence-based' rehabilitation to treat drug addicted prisoners

Dominic Raab - who was appointed Justice Secretary in September 2021 - has stated that heroin addicted prisoners may have to quit cold turkey rather than being weaned off the drug using substitutes including methadone which experts say is less deadly than heroin.

The move comes after the Justice Data Lab found female inmates following abstinence programs were 40% less likely to re offend when compared to those following other treatment paths. Mr Raab believes the approach of using drug substitutes has left prisoners taking methadone to avoid them causing harm to themselves, guards and other prisoners rather than taking the substitutes to get clean. Drug addiction in prisons has been on the rise with one in seven prisoners being addicts - rising from 6% in 2014 to 35% in 2020.

Mr Raab said "You have to ask yourself if they are staying on it indefinitely, how much of that is driving towards recovery" he added "we want to get a better balance including early assessment and treatments with a much stronger focus on eventual recovery and therefore ending the addiction dependency rather than replacing it"

Julie Muir, executive director of recovery at the Forward Trust, a charity that helps addicts said abstinence - based programs are followed inside and outside of prisons. She said "Addiction is a serious mental illness and not a choice. It has a devastating impact on people's lives. As a society, we need to do more to ensure everyone has the opportunity of recovery, no matter who they are"

Niamh Eastwood, executive director of Release, a centre for drug expertise, said that abstinence had a role but warned against down playing the value of methadone which had been shown by multiple studies to be an effective medical treatment. "Methadone demonstratively saves thousands of lives. This kind of rhetoric does nothing to help reduce the numbers of deaths and could contribute to a higher rate of deaths as community services takes it as a signal from Government that Methadone should not be supported"

Dominic Raab concluded that their plan was to improve the security of our prisons to cut off the flow of drugs, knives, and mobile phones to allow effective rehabilitation to take place.