Treatment under-resourced for demand
There is an enormous gap between those receiving treatment and those needing it or who would benefit from treatment were it available. The size of that gap is difficult to determine but it probably understates demand by a factor of 10.
P Bean and T Nemitz, ‘Drug treatment: what works? An overview’, in ed. Bean and Nemitz, Drug treatment: what works? (Routledge), 2004.
Community sentencing as an alternative to imprisonment for drug users therefore risks failing to produce better outcomes in terms of their treatment and rehabilitation, not because the policy is wrong but because it is not being implemented effectively.