Substance misuse treatment vital for crime reduction

Baroness Bonham-Carter argues drug and alcohol treatment programmes are key to reducing reoffending rates and must not 'slip down the agenda'.

Both the Home Office and the Ministry for Justice have for years considered treatment for drug and alcohol dependence to be key to bringing down reoffending rates, with all the associated benefits this has, both for the individuals concerned and for society as a whole. The criminal justice system has invested in various programmes to tackle substance misuse, and this policy has achieved much success, with drug-treatment programmes estimated to help prevent around 680,000 crimes per year.

It is now proposed that responsibility for all drug-recovery budgets should be passed to the new executive agency of the Department of Health, Public Health England, with effect from April 2013. According to ministers, in practice this would mean that local authorities would have responsibility for commissioning drug and alcohol prevention and recovery treatments, funded by a public health grant. The NHS Commissioning Board would be responsible for commissioning substance-misuse treatment for people in prison or other forms of detention.

In many ways this makes sense, as local authorities and the NHS can bring together the range of services aimed at helping someone recover from this kind of addiction.

However, there is concern amongst many of those who work in the field that the move of funding allocation responsibility to Public Health England may result in a decreased emphasis on these vital programmes drug and alcohol treatment programmes are hugely valuable in terms of their impact on reducing crime, but clearly reduction of crime is not necessarily a central consideration in the world of public health.

The Department of Health has included reoffending as one of its public health indicators, and this is very welcome news. But it is only one of 68 indicators which the department will use to monitor its achievement of public health objectives, while existing drug and alcohol treatment budgets will require 25 per cent of the entire public health budget. There is a very real danger that substance-misuse treatment and prevention will slip down the agenda when considered in competition with the challenges of addressing infant mortality or the provision of cancer screening.

And yet, given the unambiguous link between drug and alcohol dependency and crime, it is essential that we protect and continue with the excellent progress which has already been made in reducing reoffending through helping people to tackle their substance misuse. A cross-governmental approach is required, which keeps drug and alcohol prevention and recovery programmes as a central priority. The government claims that it views drug recovery and rehabilitation as a priority, but it is in danger of presiding over unprecedented cuts to this crucial sector.

Baroness Bonham-Carter was raised to the peerage in 2004. She has been deputy convenor of the Liberal Democrat peers since 2010.

Originally posted here:
Substance misuse treatment vital for crime reduction