The Issue

Eighty percent of state prisoners report a history of drug or alcohol use.¹ In fact, more than half (55 percent) of state prisoners report using drugs or alcohol during the commission of the crime that resulted in their incarceration. The statistics are similar for those exiting our nation's jails: two-thirds of this population were actively involved in drugs prior to their admission, and 36 percent were using drugs or alcohol at the time of their offense.² A number of challenges have made it difficult to get people the right drug or alcohol treatment they need:

• Proliferation of outdated or non-validated instruments that do not measure addiction treatment needs accurately
• Number of people incarcerated who have a history of substance abuse that far exceeds availability of treatment
• Treatment programs that frequently do not adhere to evidence-based treatment modalities
• Difficulty recruiting and retaining qualified, culturally-competent treatment professionals
• Lack of streamlined service delivery and aftercare to prevent and respond to relapse
• Compartmentalized, uncoordinated treatment of co-occurring disorders, particularly substance abuse and mental illness

The Response

The Justice Center has developed several resources related to individuals with substance use disorders involved in the criminal justice system:

• Reinvesting in Behavioral Health Care to Reduce Crime and Involvement in Criminal Justice Systems: A Blueprint for State Administrators and Policymakers - The Justice Center, in partnership with the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors and national experts in substance use disorders, is developing a behavioral health blueprint for policymakers seeking to reinvest in the expansion and improvement of behavioral health care services, including substance abuse treatment, to reduce recidivism among people on probation and parole. (Coming soon)
• Justice Reinvestment State Brief: Kansas - Describes a strategy implemented in Kansas to analyze drivers of prison growth, which included large numbers of people under community supervision returned to prison, whose revocation can be traced to failure to comply with substance abuse treatment. This brief also describes processes by which Kansas official reinvested savings generated from averted corrections costs into substance abuse treatment.
• Assessment and Risks/Needs Determination Tool - This interactive web-based tool offers the following features: 1) a description of what information should be collected about an individual's risks and needs; 2) a timeline of when this information should be collected; 3) suggestions about who should be tasked with collecting this information; and 4) a database of assessment instruments commonly used in corrections settings, including those used to assess substance use disorders.

¹ Christopher J. Mumola, Substance Abuse and Treatment, State and Federal Prisoners, 1997, US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: 1999), NCJ 172871.
² Doris James Wilson, Drug Use, Testing, and Treatment in Jails, Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: 2000), NCJ 179999.