The survey of The National Criminal Justice Treatment reviewed the treatment programs in existence in all correctional settings, which included local and state prisons, jails, and probationary systems for both adult and juvenile offenders.
Almost eight million adults and 700,000 juvenile drug abuse offenders throughout the justice system have been found to have limited or minimal (less than 10 percent) access to treatment options.
"The survey shows that far too few programs and services exist, and the ones that do exist are only offered to a handful of offenders," said NIDA Director Dr. Nora D. Volkow.
These substance abuse disorders have been shown to influence the criminal behaviors of these individuals.
"Since offenders are four times more likely as the general population to have a substance abuse disorder, treating the offender population could measurably lower the demand for drugs in our society, and reduce the crime rate," added Dr. Volkow.
Although treatment for offenders has been a national strategy for more than 10 years now to reduce these drug-related crimes from occurring and for the demand for drugs, more is needed to turn this problem around.
"The results from The National Criminal Justice Treatment Practices Survey (NCJTP) can provide needed data for agencies to plot the course for using existing services and converting them to programs and services that are designed to address risk of recidivism among offenders," said the study's director, Dr. Faye Taxman of Virginia Commonwealth University.
"It is clear that correctional agencies see that they need to increase their efforts to change offender behavior, and attention to the NIDA-funded research should help in this endeavor," added Taxman.
The NCJTP Survey has been published in a special issue of the "Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment."
