Drugs treatment in prison has been the responsibility of the NHS since April 2006 rather than the prison service. While this makes prison treatment liable to quality control by the National Treatment Agency, it has also left it vulnerable to NHS budget cuts.

At the end of 2005 the government pledged to provide almost £70 million over two years for an ‘Integrated Drug Treatment System’ in prisons that would bring together medical care and counselling to produce treatment that was comparable with services in the community and that would link up more closely with them.

The integrated treatment would include more methadone prescribing and better care planning to meet individual needs. However, in November 2006 the Department of Health admitted that the budget for 2006/7 had been cut to £12 million, with no decision forthcoming on funding for 2007/8.

At present only 17 prisons are due to benefit from the new programme, less than one in eight of all prisons in England and Wales.

Communitycare.co.uk website: http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2006/11/13/102165/Drug+treatment+scheme+for+prisons+sees+funding+cut+due+to+NHS.html?key=HAYES

Drugscope, ‘NHS deficit hits drug treatment for prisoners’, 13 November 2006. http://www.drugscope.org.uk/news_item.asp?a=3&intID=1385