Drug abuse, including alcohol, is a big problem for the people contained in prisons, both in the United States and worldwide. Imprisoned people are usually much more vulnerable to social and health problems and have little or no access to the proper treatment. In addition, social and racial tensions are another problem in prisons: they are usually higher than in communities and create another obstacle to substance abuse treatment. Those problems will be investigated in this research, along with actual demographics.
In the United States, the incarceration rate is the highest in the world. In 2016, 2.2 million people were inmates, and more than 60% of them experienced drug abuse, according to the U.S. National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (Taylor, Lee & Taxman, 2018). Substance use disorders are present in 50%, varying from 30% to 69% of women, according to a study conducted in the United States and several countries in Europe and Latin America (Fazel, Yoon & Hayes, 2017). The mean percent of men with substance use disorder is lower: 30%, but the heterogeneity is much higher: from 10% to 61%. As for alcohol abuse, the percentage is 24%, with a lower estimate of 18%, which is much higher than those for non-inmates (8% for men and 4% for women). In that way, women are generally more prone to substance abuse than men, but men are more prone to heavy abuse. Overall, the problem is significant and needs to be addressed and researched.
The main problem is that inmates often have minimal access to healthcare and substance abuse treatment. Drug- and alcohol-related disorders, in general, are increasing in the prison population, despite in general the trend decreasing (Fazel et al., 2017). Only 11% of prisoners obtain the proper substance abuse treatment, although therapeutic communities in prisons provide such treatment (Taylor et al., 2018). Prisoners and parolees are often unwilling to reveal that they have mental illnesses or problems with drug or alcohol misuse due to the stigma connected with that (Thompson, Newell & Carlson, 2015). In that way, there is a necessity for more effective education about drug abuse treatment to prevent the increase in drug abuse.
Most of the incarcerated people are men, but the proportion of men and women vary heavily from country to country. From the study of Fazel et al., it can be concluded that there are 37% of female and 62% of male prisoners in the studied countries (2017). Racial and ethnic differences are usually the obstacles to substance abuse treatment. For example, according to the study of Thompson et al., African-American people tend to speak about their mental illnesses, including substance abuse, regardless of their sex (2015). Those who visit therapeutic communities are more likely to have a large number of reported misconducts (Taylor et al., 2018). According to research, more trained staff can prevent unreported misconduct and teach participants the proper behavior more efficiently. Still, the problem of social stigmatization and inequity should be solved to provide effective treatment for inmates suffering from substance abuse.
As one can conclude, substance abuse is significant worldwide, and no direct solutions are present due to social stigma and a lack of research. The rates of abuse are three-four times larger among inmates than among the community population, both for men and women. In addition, they often avoid both reporting and participating in the treatment. They often have no money to participate, and, due to the stigma, they have little or no support from others. Racial differences in prisons create tensions and prevent obtaining the proper psychological and medical help.
References
Fazel, S., Yoon, I. A., & Hayes, A. J. (2017). Substance use disorders in prisoners: An updated systematic review and meta-regression analysis in recently incarcerated men and women. Addiction, 112(10), 1725–1739.
Taylor, L. R., Lee, J., & Taxman, F. S. (2018). Participant and program characteristics: Correlates of substance abuse treatment participation and prison misconducts. The Prison Journal, 99(1), 3–25.
Thompson, M., Newell, S., & Carlson, M. J. (2015). Race and access to mental health and substance abuse treatment in the criminal justice system. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 55(2), 69–94.