Just nine beds available for full rehabilitation
WHILE addiction counselling and methadone maintenance treatment is available in most Irish prisons, there are only a small number of full rehabilitation programme places.
Although some €4.5m was spent on drug treatment in prisons last year, only 50 inmates successfully completed the country's single prison drug rehabilitation programme.
In total, over the past eight years, only 370 inmates completed the programme. Another 110 have started it, but failed to complete the programme.
The programme is only available at Mountjoy and just nine beds are available in the prison's medical unit for participants.
Each course of treatment is designed to last six weeks, meaning that, when staff holidays are taken into account, the maximum number of addicts that can be treated fully in one year is just 72.
But according to the figures seen by the Irish Independent, the programme has not been at maximum capacity at any point since 2001.
The dearth of rehabilitation spaces has led to claims by the Irish Penal Reform Trust that the Prison Service's fight against drugs is placing too much of the emphasis on security when more needs to be done in the area of treatment and therapy.
But in a report compiled by the Comptroller and Auditor General, the Prison Service blamed the low usage of the programme on the increased availability of methadone maintenance treatment in prisons.
"Where methadone treatment is available, there is likely to be less of an incentive for misusers to seek rehabilitation treatment," the report stated.
The most recent figures showed that 500 inmates were receiving methadone maintenance treatment at the end of 2007.
- Shane Phelan
