Drug Treatment Helps Female Ex-Convicts Stay Out of Prison
A new national study has found that female prisoners who do not participate in a drug treatment program after their incarceration are 10 times more likely to return to prison—in just the first year following their release—than women who do participate in drug treatment. Over one-third of those women wound up back in prison during the first six months following their initial release.
According to the study led by Flora I. Matheson, a medical sociologist from St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, female prisoners who participate in a post-prison drug treatment program are substantially less likely to commit recidivism than women who do not receive treatment. Matheson, along with colleagues from the Correctional Service Canada’s Research Branch, conducted a longitudinal study on the effectiveness of a post-prison drug treatment program called Community Relapse Prevention and Maintenance (CRPM), a program offered to female parolees from six different federal women’s prisons across Canada since 2003.
Matheson and her team focused on female prisoners in particular since women offenders are at higher risk of substance abuse disorders and mental illness, especially in the first few weeks following their release, according to the researchers. Unfortunately, this group usually experiences a lack of multiple resources needed to support themselves after their incarceration, also leading to high rates of relapse and recidivism among the group. In their investigation, the researchers sought to weigh the effectiveness of programs like CRPM at this crucial period in these women’s lives as they attempt to successfully rejoin and participate in society.
During the study, female participants of the CRPM program attended 20 two-hour group sessions on a weekly basis for the community portion of the program. Bases on the study’s statistical findings, cocaine was the most commonly abused drug among the group (58.9% of participants), followed closely by crack cocaine (44.3% of participants). Over a ten-year period, the researchers mapped the participants’ survival skills and compared them with those of other substance-abusing female parolees who did not have exposure to the program.
As a result, women who did not participate in the CRPM program were more than 10 times as likely to reoffend and return to custody within the 52 weeks after their release, with more than one-third of the women returning to prison in just the first six months. The researchers stress that aftercare for substance-abusing women following their prison release is critical to their survival, requiring the need to improve access to such treatment programs as CRPM for these women.
Federal and state prisons may typically offer rehabilitation programs—such as drug treatment and counseling—to prisoners who are willing to commit themselves to treatment. These programs, usually entirely dependent on grants to stay afloat, are voluntary on part of the participants, and can also provide participants with resource tools following their release so they may continue their sobriety efforts once outside of prison. The goal is to rehabilitate prisoners struggling with substance abuse problems—who often times landed in prison due to drug-related charges in the first place—so that they do not reoffend once released and can successfully rejoin their communities and support themselves. However, there is currently a lack of sufficient treatment programs and resources available to women prisoners with substance abuse disorders during this transitional period.
Compared to non-substance-abusing women, these women tend to have higher rates of stress, hospitalization, and to have experienced childhood, physical, sexual, or domestic abuse, making them especially vulnerable to poor mental health, relapse, and recidivism. With the female prison population up by 5%, and over one-third of female offenders committing drug-related offenses, the researchers’ study highlights the importance of providing immediate post-prison treatment programs to this group in order to reduce crime, improve women’s health, and help these women successfully transition back into society.
Matheson is from the Centre for Research on Inner City Health, Keenan Research Center in the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital, as well as the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Her team’s study has been published in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health and is now available online.
Source: Medical News Today, Lack Of Drug Abuse Programs Lead To Higher Return To Women's Prisons, June 1, 2011
