Prisoners lack drug addiction treatment

Nearly one-quarter of a million people addicted to heroin are incarcerated annually, but many U.S. prisons have no addiction treatment, researchers say.

The study, published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, finds 55 percent of prisons offer addiction treatment under any circumstances and less than half provided any linkage to community drug treatment post-release.

Amy Nunn, an assistant professor at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, R.I., says the majority of facilities say they prefer drug-free detoxification. However, 27 percent of medical directors said they did not know how beneficial methadone is for treating inmates with opiate addiction and half were unaware of the benefits of another treatment drug, buprenorphine.

Pharmacological treatment of opiate dependence is a proven intervention, is cost-effective and reduces drug-related disease and re-incarceration rates, yet it remains underutilized in U.S. prison systems, Nunn says in a statement.

Improving correctional policies for addiction treatment could dramatically improve prisoner and community health as well as reduce both taxpayer burden and re-incarceration rates.