RECOVERING heroin addicts who are sorting their lives out with help from a Burton drug centre say “scoring is easier in prison than on the streets”.
Mike Trace, who leads a charity which runs drug rehabilitation programmes in prisons, has claimed that the Ministry of Justice and the Department of Health are “fighting each other about who runs treatment in prisons”.
He said last year a record 20,000 English prisoners were prescribed the addictive heroin alternative of methadone instead of being encouraged to become drug free.
The Mail interviewed a group of recovering heroin addicts who were all telling a similar story — that there is ‘no help at all’ in jails and that methadone is the only answer.
Philip Brown, 37, who served 12 years in prison, said giving inmates methadone was throwing a blanket over the problem.
He said: “All the years I have spent inside I have never been offered treatment. Prisoners are given methadone which is more addictive and it is a way of controlling people.
It’s a controlling tactic. More people become hooked inside than out.” Methadone can be effective with helping heroin addicts beat addiction but critics dispute that drug services use it as a troublefree alternative and are not determined enough in getting users drug-free.
Andrew Whalley, 46, who was recently released after spending 10 years behind bars for a drug-related robbery with a firearm, said: “The only help I’ve ever been offered is a safer injecting course.
“For nine out of my 10 years in prison I was using drugs every day. Prison sometimes saved my life — it’s free methadone, clothes, a bed, food.
“If you give an inmate free methadone and keep their addiction active, then discharge them from prison, then surely when they come out they’ve got to commit crime.
Prisons contradict themselves.” Meanwhile, Darren Holt, 36, who has served 19 years for drug-related offences, said: “I originally became a heroin addict in prison. My last five-year sentence I told prison medical staff I wanted to get clean but they refused to listen. I was so desperate to get off the methadone they were giving me I detoxed myself in the end.”
Noreen Oliver, the founder of Burton Addiction Centre, who has been through treatment for alcohol dependency in the past, said: “The interest in drug treatment affects families, individuals and the community. We need a balanced system rather than methadone being the preferred treatment in prisons.
“The majority of the 60,000 population that use drugs in prison are repeat offenders.
“In total 850 prisoners out of 60,000, are only given the chance to become clean — it’s shocking.”