Five Key Stages of Criminal Justice Process

• Arrest: Arrest Referral, Caution, Police Bail. For young people, Final Warning, other police disposal.
• Pre-sentence: Probation referral, Court Referral
• Community Sentence: Drug Treatment & Testing Order. For young people Supervision Orders, Action Plan Orders.
• Custodial Sentence: Counselling, Assessment, Referral, Advice, Throughcare. (CARAT)
• Post sentence: Aftercare

The aims of such interventions are helpfully set out in a review of problem drug use and the criminal justice system for the Home Office. These include:

• Reduction in crime by these offenders
• Reduction of impact from their crimes on local communities
• Reduction in drug use that leads to crime

Specific drug interventions in these tiers to achieve these outcomes should be based on full assessment and include aspects of: -

• Information about drugs
• Education about risks, law and harm
• Motivation to enter treatment
• Skills in resisting drugs
• Medical treatment and prescribed drugs
• General healthcare
• Work on offending behaviour
• Work on psychological dependency
• Cognitive behavioural work
• Counselling
• Social care – housing, employment support
• Relapse prevention
• Problem solving skills

This means that interventions with this client group must enable referral to treatment to be an optimum aim of the intervention. Research evidence is conclusive that treatment can be a highly effective way of reducing the offending of drug users. However, these programmes must also target the offending behaviour and attitudes to crime of offenders.

Edmunds M, Hough M, Turnbull P, May T (1999) Doing justice to treatment: referring offenders to drug services DPAS paper 2 London Home Office.

Gossop M, Marsden J and Stewart D (1996) NTORS at year 1 London: Department of Health (http://www.doh.gov.uk/ntors.htm)

Each programme must not assume that treatment, on its own, will reduce all drug use, nor that reduction in drug use if it does occur, will result in reduction in crime for all individuals.

The type of treatment provided can vary and there is no one model of intervention that is more likely to be successful than others.

Guidance on models of intervention effective with offenders is available from the Home Office Probation Unit http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/docs2/seos.html

It is important that local partners agree on what they understand by treatment and are clear about what services they are buying.

• Groupwork can be effectively used with drug related offenders and there are many good examples of programmes.
• Appropriate treatment should be accessible as quickly as possible from the expression of commitment by the offender.
• The status of the project offering services does not necessarily matter. Interventions with this client group can be provided by the statutory or voluntary sectors, or by Probation staff working with GPs, for example. Whatever the status of the provider, they must be able to demonstrate the skill mix to enable them to offer interventions from across the range of measures listed above.
• In addition, action to tackle drug related anti-social behaviour may be important in a local area. This includes action to tackle begging, rough sleeping and sex markets

Interventions throughout this span of points of contact with the criminal justice system will enable those different groups dealt with at different stages to be contacted.

Leaving all interventions to the post sentence stage ensures that many drug users are missed and their behaviour unchecked for an extended period.