Action urged on prison drug use

Tuesday, 9 August 2005 12:00 AM

The SNP are calling on the Scottish Executive to do more to treat prison inmates on drugs after new figures suggest one in three inmates are users at the time of their release.

Shadow justice minister Kenny MacAskill said Scottish prisons are in danger of becoming a "dumping ground" for those who have been driven to crime by their addiction to drugs.

And he warned that only by putting more inmates into rehabilitation can the "cycle of offending and addiction" be broken.

However, a spokesman for the Scottish Executive told politics.co.uk that the Management of Offenders Bill introduced in June would help to tackle the problem of re-offenders and improve the way offenders were looked after both before and when they were released.

Quoting figures revealing about 30 per cent of prisoners were using drugs when they were released, Mr MacAskill said they "clearly show prisons are not best equipped to treat the problem of drug addiction".

"Prisons exist to punish those who commit serious crimes and protect the general public from dangerous offenders. If someone with a drugs problem commits a serious crime, then they must obviously be jailed," he said.

"However, if it is petty offending caused by a drug problem then the solution is drug rehabilitation, not prison. We need to address the root of the problem in these cases, which is the drug addiction itself and not the petty crime."

Mr MacAskill said if drugs were the cause of the crime, "it benefits no-one to release prisoners who are still addicted to drugs".

He added: "The executive must acknowledge that a one-size-fits-all approach to sentencing is failing not only the offenders who are addicted to drugs, but Scotland as a whole.

"More must be done to tackle the scourge of drugs and ensure our prisons are not merely a dumping ground for those who have been driven to petty crime by their addiction."

A spokesman for the executive insisted that the prison service was already working hard to cut the number of drug users in prison, and was having considerable success.

"What doesn't seem to be reflected in [Mr McAskill's] comments is that the vast majority of people [entering prison] have some kind of drug problem," he told politics.co.uk.

The Management of Offenders Bill would require the Scottish prison service and local authorities to establish integrated services try to cut re-offending rates, which currently see six out of ten inmates reconvicted within two years of release.

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