Prisons and Compensation
I wonder how far back the time frame is for making claims against the Home Office for being forceably detoxed from drugs on admission to prison?
Your author had this happen to him on 5 or 6 occasions while he was using drugs himself. Personally I believe that if I had received the nearly £4,000 compensation that the Home Office has paid out to nearly 200 individuals I would have used it all up on drugs on release and would have probably have killed myself in the process!
I would be interested to see how many of the recipients of this compensation end up dead within a month of receiving their money or their discharge from prison - whichever comes first.
Although this is not a laughing matter I have to admit that I would smirk a bit if their relatives were then to sue the Home Office for gross negligence - I think that most people who know anything about addiction could have told them that giving large sums of money to a using addict is asking for trouble. Like giving them a loaded gun.
Apart from all this I would like to clarify my position on this issue:
I have no problem with the idea of providing addicts (whether to illicit or prescribed drugs) with a proper, medically supervised detox on admission into prison. I do have a problem with the idea of maintaining addicts on methadone while they are in prison. This idea has only come about because some bureaucrat within the NTA and/or the current UK drug treatment mafia decided that giving addicts drugs equals treating addiction. Certainly the figures for those in treatment would show a dramatic fall if all those individuals who are merely given drugs that help maintain their habits were removed from the statistics.
Apparently the individuals concerned also objected to being subjected to "drug treatment programmes" while in prison - they were apparently treated against their wills and this was aginst their human rights!
A little bit of clarification would help here:
Prison drug treatment programmes in England are actually accredited as "offending behaviour programmes" rather than addiction treatment programmes.
Personally I have never liked this as I happen to think it makes for bad addiction treatment which should be about sick people getting well, not bad people getting good - although I also believe that the offending behaviour will inevitably be looked at in the course of any effective treatment programme.
For so long as prison drug treatment are accredited as offending behaviour rather than addiction treatment programmes however then fine, give the prisoners the right to decline them. However the consequence of refusing to do an offending behaviour programme - be it drug treatment, a sex offenders programme, anger management, Enhanced Thinking skills etc - ought to be loss of all priveledges, home leave and parole! We all have a right to make choices in life - but our choices always have a price attached! Why should this be any different?
Personally I can't wait for all the alcoholic prisoners demand parity!
Free booze for all prisoners who can demonstrate an alcohol problem prior to coming into prison! Now there's a thought - the Home Office are discriminating against alcohol addicts!
Your author had this happen to him on 5 or 6 occasions while he was using drugs himself. Personally I believe that if I had received the nearly £4,000 compensation that the Home Office has paid out to nearly 200 individuals I would have used it all up on drugs on release and would have probably have killed myself in the process!
I would be interested to see how many of the recipients of this compensation end up dead within a month of receiving their money or their discharge from prison - whichever comes first.
Although this is not a laughing matter I have to admit that I would smirk a bit if their relatives were then to sue the Home Office for gross negligence - I think that most people who know anything about addiction could have told them that giving large sums of money to a using addict is asking for trouble. Like giving them a loaded gun.
Apart from all this I would like to clarify my position on this issue:
I have no problem with the idea of providing addicts (whether to illicit or prescribed drugs) with a proper, medically supervised detox on admission into prison. I do have a problem with the idea of maintaining addicts on methadone while they are in prison. This idea has only come about because some bureaucrat within the NTA and/or the current UK drug treatment mafia decided that giving addicts drugs equals treating addiction. Certainly the figures for those in treatment would show a dramatic fall if all those individuals who are merely given drugs that help maintain their habits were removed from the statistics.
Apparently the individuals concerned also objected to being subjected to "drug treatment programmes" while in prison - they were apparently treated against their wills and this was aginst their human rights!
A little bit of clarification would help here:
Prison drug treatment programmes in England are actually accredited as "offending behaviour programmes" rather than addiction treatment programmes.
Personally I have never liked this as I happen to think it makes for bad addiction treatment which should be about sick people getting well, not bad people getting good - although I also believe that the offending behaviour will inevitably be looked at in the course of any effective treatment programme.
For so long as prison drug treatment are accredited as offending behaviour rather than addiction treatment programmes however then fine, give the prisoners the right to decline them. However the consequence of refusing to do an offending behaviour programme - be it drug treatment, a sex offenders programme, anger management, Enhanced Thinking skills etc - ought to be loss of all priveledges, home leave and parole! We all have a right to make choices in life - but our choices always have a price attached! Why should this be any different?
Personally I can't wait for all the alcoholic prisoners demand parity!
Free booze for all prisoners who can demonstrate an alcohol problem prior to coming into prison! Now there's a thought - the Home Office are discriminating against alcohol addicts!
posted by anaddict @ 9:53 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home