Examination of Witnesses (Questions 460
- 479)
TUESDAY 1 DECEMBER 2009
MARIA EAGLE
MP AND MR
IAN POREE
Q460 Chairman: That is all I have
done. My mathematics is not perfect but I know it comes to over
50%.
Maria Eagle: Yes, that is right.
This is on the basis of a recent study surveying prisoners when
they come in.
Q461 Chairman: That is a very, very
high figure indeed, is it not?
Maria Eagle: It is.
Q462 Chairman: As of today, do we
know how many prisoners actually use cocaine, either powder cocaine
or crack cocaine, in prison?
Maria Eagle: It is very, very
few.
Q463 Chairman: But do we have a figure?
"Very, very few" is very imprecise.
Maria Eagle: On the basis of our
random mandatory drug testing statistics we can say that 0.2%
of the positive findings are positive for cocaine of some type
and that is about 100 people. That number has not changed since
1997 and we do not consider that we have got a problem of cocaine
abuse in prison, which is not to say that some of our offenders
who are in prison did not use cocaine before they came into prison,
either powder or crack.
Q464 Chairman: You are not unduly
worried that there is a lot of cocaine circulating within prisons
in England and Wales?
Maria Eagle: No, not unduly worried,
no.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q465 Martin Salter: Presumably, Minister,
we have a serious problem with drugs being passed into prison
but I would not have thought that cocaine would be the drug of
choice for somebody locked up; I would have thought people would
not be looking for stimulants and would be far more likely to
be looking for things to make them fuzzier than cocaine does.
Have you got any figures in terms of the amount of heroin, for
example, or other Class A drugs that are being discovered? You
have given a figure for low incidence of cocaine use but there
is a relatively high use of drugs in prison today, is there not?
Maria Eagle: Yes. We have various
ways in which we might count that. The random mandatory drug testing
is the best way of actually detecting drug use because you have
to grab somebody and test them and if it is positive for a banned
substance then that is the basis of your numbers about what problem
we have. We can say that random mandatory drug testing figures
have been falling over the years and overall in this last year
7.7% were positive for some substance. That had fallen from 24.4%
in 1996-97 and it has been on a downward path.
Q466 Tom Brake: One of the earlier
witnesses talked about some users having a £600 a night habit;
I am not sure whether that was cocaine, crack cocaine or other
drugs but, clearly, if they need to raise that amount of money
this is driving crime. Do you have any feel for, perhaps, in what
percentage of crimes that are committed someone has a cocaine
dependency, excluding the very obvious ones about drug smuggling
and possession?
Maria Eagle: There is clearly
some sort of relationship between drug use and crime. The Home
Office Drug Interventions Programme shows that a high number of
those arrested for acquisitive crimes, such as burglary and ,
test positive for use and the majority of those arrested for acquisitive
crime (73%) are using heroin or cocaine at least once a week,
they are habitual users, and 26% who were arrested for committing
acquisitive crime reported taking heroin or cocaine weekly. There
clearly is a link but I do not think it is completely obvious
what the causation is and whether it is the drug use that causes
the crime or the crime that then also has some more complex interaction
with drug use. Certainly, given those sorts of numbers, it is
not surprising that we have a lot of people in prison who have
had or have a dependency problem of one kind or another.
Q467 Mrs Dean: Minister, could you
tell us what treatments for cocaine dependency can be accessed
through the criminal justice system?
Maria Eagle: I am glad to say
that you can access a full range of treatment in the community
through the Probation Service's work, either being managed in
the community on licence or community orders, for example, a full
range of community drug treatment is available there: the offender
substance abuse programme, the addressing substance-related offending
programme are available in the community. In addition, in prisons
there is a comprehensive drug treatment programme in place which
addresses all drug misuse. Specifically for cocaine you would
be looking at clinical support for those withdrawing from cocaine
use and psychosocial interventions which are provided through
our Counselling, Assessment, Referral, Advice and Through-care
Services (known as CARATS for short), one of which there is in
each prison that will provide that kind of psychosocial intervention.
Then we have a range of accredited drug treatment programmes which
are designed to address drug misuse in general, some of which
are more suitable for cocaine and crack cocaine dependency than
others. I would just like to say very briefly we do have an issue
in our prisons. The courts send people to prisons for very varying
lengths of time; if we only have people on remand for a short
period or somebody for a very short sentence that severely limits
what kind of intervention we can offer. If we have somebody sent
to prison for a long sentence that gives us more possibilities,
so we do try and design interventions which enable us to at least
offer some help to all of those people depending upon what kind
of substance misuse or drug they are involved with, what the length
of their sentence is and their circumstances. We have a full range
of interventions available.
Q468 Mrs Dean: Are you able to give
us numbers for referrals to cocaine treatment across the National
Offender Management Service, completion rates of treatment and
success rates after a year? Do you have those figures?
Maria Eagle: Yes, we do have those
figures but subject to some caveats in respect of the fact that
many of the people who are accessing these services are engaged
in polydrug misuse and so you cannot necessarily completely isolate
cocaine or crack cocaine from other substance misuse. 44% of entrants
into prison treatment programmes reported crack cocaine or powder
cocaine as one of their two main drugs of choice. In the longer
higher intensity programmes, the therapeutic communities and 12-step
programmes, that number goes up, so 72% of those entering therapeutic
communities, 65% of those entering the prison 12-step programmes.
In the community the treatments that I referred to, the offender
substance abuse programme, addressing substance-related offending,
it is a much lower number. Those reporting crack cocaine were
19% and 7% reporting powder cocaine use. Again, we can provide
you with full sets of tables.
Chairman: That would be very helpful.
Q469 David Davies: Is prison therefore
more effective in helping people get off drugs than community-based
approaches?
Maria Eagle: There is broad equivalence.
We do have quite good completion rates.
Q470 David Davies: Can I just come
back to things you said earlier on? You said that it is harder
to get hold of hard drugs in prison and you have said that when
you have got people on remand it is a shame you cannot do more
with them even though, presumably, if they come off remand but
are found guilty they go back into the community, so everything
you have said to this point would lead me to believe that you
believe that prison is actually more effective than community-based
sentences in helping people with drug problems.
Maria Eagle: Not necessarily.
It is important because people are coming in and out of prison,
whether it is because they are remanded or given a community sentence
or remanded and then sentenced to a long prison sentence. We need
to make sure that there is proper through-care from the one setting
to the other and that is increasingly what we have been trying
to do. In that sense, Mr Davies, if I might say, there is more
equivalence between the outcomes and between the different settings
than you might originally have thought.
Q471 David Davies: You said it is
harder to get hold of hard drugs in prison than it is outside.
Maria Eagle: It is, of course.
Q472 David Davies: You also said
it was a shame you cannot do more to help people who are in on
short sentences.
Maria Eagle: That is because of
the length of time; you can only do so much in three or four weeks
with somebody.
Q473 David Davies: Exactly, so you
would rather see longer sentences to help people more?
Maria Eagle: Longer sentences
could be more effective at tackling for the longer term that substance
abuse problem that an individual has. If you look at what the
National Treatment Agency say, they say—
Q474 Chairman: Are you saying in
answer to Mr Davies send them to prison for longer and that will
help them with their drug problem and that is better than a—
Maria Eagle: No.
David Davies: I am on your side here.
Q475 Chairman: That is exactly what
Mr Davies is asking.
Maria Eagle: No, I am not saying
that that is the only way of helping people with their drug problem.
Q476 David Davies: But it would help
people?
Maria Eagle: It would enable us
to help them in prison but if we have through-care that puts them
into community services that are just as effective then it does
not matter where the setting is that they get that help as long
as they access the help.
Q477 David Davies: I believe you
think I am being hostile, but I am not, I am actually on your
side here.
Maria Eagle: I am just trying
to be clear.
Q478 David Davies: I am sort of agreeing
with you and I am just helping you to put this on the record,
something which you and I agree with, that if somebody goes into
prison and is kept there for a longer period of time than is currently
the case, and we do not throw them into a cell and leave them
to it but we help them, we help them with their drug issues and
other things as well, we have got more of a chance of rehabilitating
those people and turning them around. That is a statement of fact,
is it not?
Maria Eagle: As long as they get
help for their addiction problems in whichever setting they are,
whether they are in the community or whether they are in prison—
Q479 David Davies: But in the community
they have got more access to hard drugs, you said that earlier
on.
Maria Eagle: It depends upon the
support they get in the community. There is no reason why it cannot
be just as effective.
David Davies: But the community is awash
with hard drugs.
Chairman: We need to move on; we take
your point.
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