How to turn over a new leaf

When drug addicts are released from prison they tend to slip back into their old ways.

Paul Roach has a plan to help them kick the drug habit

It is estimated that four million people use illicit drugs in the UK each year.

Many - possibly 100,000 to 150,000, mostly young people addicted to class A drugs - rely on crime to fund their habits.

Much of our prison population is drawn from this group.

A recent Home Office study suggests that this group of offenders costs the state, directly or indirectly, as much as 18 billion a year.

Recent statistics dealing with drug-relapse and re-offending rates show that our current drugs policies and drugs intervention programmes are failing.

And it is in relation to these hard-core addicts relying on crime to feed their habits, that these failures are most significant, because of the way these heroin addicts network.

Heroin addicts believe their drug is the best to the extent that they really live and die for it.

Many new addicts are created as these socially irresponsible addicted offenders actively promote the drug.

The more candid of them tell their lawyers what a fantastic drug heroin is, so one can imagine what they are telling their friends.

This promotional attitude, combined with cutting and selling a proportion of their stash to make some profit to fund their habits, creates tomorrow's addicted offenders.

Until this group of offenders is rehabilitated, there will be a continuing exponential increase in the number of addicts.

Most addicts withdraw from the drug in prison.

Drugs are available inside, but the vast majority cannot afford them.

Most prisoners get their heads down and withdraw.

Having achieved withdrawal, it is but a short stroll to the gym for that first workout.

In no time, those wheezing, emaciated, shoplifting junkies emerge as Arnold Schwarzenegger lookalikes.

At a given point, prisoners are released pursuant to the early release provisions.

This is at the half-way point for sentences of less than four years.

Having been released, the age of an offender and the length of sentence dictate the level of post-release supervision prescribed.

For young offenders there is a minimum period of supervision of three months.

Prisoners who have reached the age of 21 receive no supervision for sentences of less than 12 months.

Where supervision applies, this might be a weekly or fortnightly meeting with the probation officer and a condition to keep the service informed of their whereabouts.

You do not have to be a psychic to predict that if newly withdrawn addicts are released into their communities with no obligations or supervision they will fall back into heroin use.

This is a wasted opportunity.

Prisoners are often released with no accommodation, no money and no friends apart from heroin addicts.

And, most critically, they are still raw from the process of withdrawal and vulnerable to relapse.

Prisoners are released clean, only to become re-addicted and then to re-offend during the unexpired sentence which is subsequently activated.

The cycle of failure is depressing and wholly predictable.

The irony is, that on the day of release, we have achieved what any number of non-custodial community-based sentences have consistently failed to do - we have helped addicts withdraw from the drug.

This is when support and motivation is imperative.

Before the situation becomes irretrievable, post-release licence provisions need to be redesigned giving encouragement to prisoners to reform.

I suggest this plan:

- Certification as drugs offenders;

- Post-release condition of daily urine tests to show abstinence;

- Return to prison on breach;

- Drugs counselling;

- Expenses for daily attendance for testing;

- Accommodation determined pre-release, and;

- Benefit receipt organised pre-release.

Sounds expensive, doesn't it? But would it cost 18 billion? I doubt it.

Paul Roach heads his own two-partner firm, practising criminal law in Suffolk and Essex