C.E.P.T.A.
The CAMPAIGN for EFFECTIVE PREVENTION and TREATMENT of ADDICTION.
7c. Drug Testing & Treatment Orders.
When did you last hear of one that really worked?
DRUG BASED CRIME
Can We Really Make Drug Treatment &
Testing Orders Work in
a CEPTA report
Drug Treatment and Testing Orders are proving extraordinarily successful in some other countries, where it is clearly emerging that the nature and effectiveness of the "treatment" component is by far the main factor determining the success or otherwise of these Court Orders.
It is therefore not surprising that
It does not take much enquiry to reveal that, amongst our self-styled recognised professional drugs agencies, the word "treatment" does not include the idea of actually "curing" anybody of any habitual or even casual usage. It mainly covers methadone replacement "therapy", but as this is confined to heroin, one has difficulty in determining exactly what passes for 'treatment' in relation to addicted ‘cases’ using amphetamines, cannabis, cocaine, LSD and other substances.
In fact, one finds these described by one DrugScope supported national drugs agency as "not physically addictive and therefore not really requiring rehabilitation", a statement so misleading as to be merely justification for their lack of a cure and also a wonderful excuse for repeatedly "assessing" and "referring" users to long-term "counselling", "advice" and "throughcare", etc. - all basically "none cure" activities which nevertheless earn a good living for those responsible for their delivery !
The whole purpose of Drug Testing &Treatment Orders is to Reduce RE-Offending. Their success can therefore only be measured in terms of how often previous offenders come back to Court for further judgement, so that a previous offender who never again re-offends is clearly a total success.
It follows that the only truly successful treatment is that which results in a former drug user achieving total abstinence for life. Any form of treatment which falls short of this not only generates further criminal re-offence, but also renders the invested treatment time and its costs a total waste, and imposes an additional demand on police, court, probation, prison and treatment resources.
Unfortunately, case studies, statistics and newspaper headlines show that large numbers of U.K. 'users' discharged from what currently passes for "treatment" start to re-use shortly thereafter, and that this recidivism is accompanied by a directly related surge in crimes committed by such former users and offenders.
On the other hand, in other countries, curative treatment delivering lifelong abstinence actively reduces the size of the group of existing drug users and thus reduces the number of criminals who will re-offend.
As a result, in places like the town of Provo in the State of Utah, Judge Kay Lindsay and other judges of the Fourth District Juvenile Court based their version of Drug Treatment & Testing Orders solely on treatment utilising a programme developed in the Arizona State Prison System in 1966, which delivers a lifetime cure in over 69% of cases first time through the programme.
Judge Danny Black of Alabama refers first time ‘non-drug’ criminal offenders to a related programme and first time ‘drug-using’ offenders to local providers of the Arizona developed programme and, on video, says he doesn't know where they would be today without these programmes. In a February 1998 letter, Los Angeles Judge Patrick Murphy writes that, since July 1966, he has referred in excess of 450 criminal defendants to these same programmes and as a result:
i) compliance with all terms and conditions of probation, restitution, fine
payments and community service now approximates 90%,
ii) there has been a significant reduction in recidivism, with re-offending now
running at less than 1% of those who had completed the programme, and,
iii) benefits from the programme include: enhanced relationships at home,
increased productivity at the workplace and increased self-esteem.
These results come from a treatment
programme which delivers comfortable lifelong abstinence from all types of
drugs - illicit, prescribed and legal (inc alcohol). Such results do not
come from any form of psychiatric drug-based programme such as methadone
replacement "therapy", which merely substitutes a hard-core methadone
user for a former heroin user. Methadone does not shorten unemployment
and other state provided benefit queues. It does not produce more
responsible citizens, and
Crime Prevention: is essentially the business of recognising in advance the factors creating a potential for crime, and then acting to ensure that those factors are not permitted to mature into a criminal act.
However, drug taking is today's major factor in creating a potential for crime. So that eradicating that factor is therefore a legitimate and vital activity for the police, as part of their overall crime prevention activity.
Because there are infinitely more "existing" drug-using criminals than there are "new" user offenders, it follows that the curing for life of the existing group is going to have a vastly greater and more immediately beneficial effect on crime figures, policing and incarceration costs, than any other activity. Furthermore, the delivery of "lifelong abstinence" cures for repeat offenders is facilitated by the fact that such "existing" delinquents are all already known to the police, and so do not have to be detected.
So how should we handle re-offending criminals who are also drug-users? Clearly by giving the offender the opportunity to cure his or her habit.
And how do we cure drug-users of their habit?
Not by continuing to utilise our so-called 'recognised professional drugs-agencies', i.e. those responsible for the bulk of the present ineffectual "treatment" of drugs offenders. In spite of all the time, money and honest effort thrown at "the drugs problem" over the last three decades, consumption of all types of drugs is still rising. This is not - as the psycho-pharmaceutical lobby would like us to believe - because more and more individuals are taking up drug usage. No . . . .
It is because, once started on drugs, nobody is being cured of the habit, with the exception of those who go through withdrawal in their coffins!
The answer to this is to abandon the current, failing, psycho-pharmaceutical 'treatment' practices we have endured over the last quarter of a century, and to then adopt a proven rehabilitation methodology which - in the vast majority of cases - delivers a lifelong cure first time through the programme. This is what has been done and continues to be done successfully in the United States, Mexico, Taiwan and 36 other countries including Australia, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Italy, New Zealand, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, etc.
Bear in mind that whilst curtailing drug supplies appears as the major problem, it is demand which keeps the smugglers, the basement factories and the illicit growers, etc., in business. And by far the greatest demand is from the population of "existing" drug-users.
Cure them and you cut demand and
make supplying a less interesting business. Cure them and you
slash crime rates. Cure them and you reduce policing and incarceration
costs. Cure them and you stabilise the
Curing drug usage IS crime prevention, and ensuring that real cures are able to occur is therefore a legitimate objective for police endeavours.
© Copyright C.E..P.T.A. and E. Kenneth Eckersley, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 & 2005. All World Rights Reserved
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