A House of Commons report, The supervision of community orders in England and Wales has highlighted the low level of alcohol related community orders, partly as a result of a lack of available treatment. The report claims that 'despite alcohol misuse being shown to cause a quarter of offenders to commit offences, only 2% were given an alcohol treatment requirement.' Research by King’s College cited in the report argues that the use of alcohol (as well as mental health and drug misuse requirements) did not correspond with the incidence of offenders exhibiting these needs.
A section of the document summarised:
'The National Probation Service considered an alcohol requirement to be appropriate only for offenders with chronic alcohol addiction. In less severe cases, probation staff had the option of addressing problematic drinking through offending behaviour programmes, supervision or referral to other agencies, such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Core training for probation staff included training on dealing with alcohol issues and the National Probation Service was piloting a low intensity alcohol programme. For those with a chronic alcohol problem, an alcohol treatment requirement may be their best hope of obtaining help to beat their addiction and reduce the likelihood of reoffending.'
A local initiative was also highlighted where Wiltshire Probation service funded its local Primary Care Trust to provide 176 alcohol-related offender assessments and 1,232 alcohol treatment sessions at a cost of £79,000.
The report makes recommendations including:
- Require Probation Areas to report the percentage of community orders which end before sentence requirements have been completed and the reasons for noncompletion
- Implementation of new data collection system
- Increase the provision of alcohol and mental health treatment
- Assess the effectiveness of the National Probation Service’s work with alcohol misusing offenders
- Make the Lower Intensity Alcohol Programme available across the National Probation Service
Comments