A PIONEERING charity is claiming success against the spiralling problem of drug crime by treating prison inmates for drug and alcohol abuse. The Addictive Diseases Trust rehabilitation programme is the first to establish itself full-time in a British penal institution, Downview Prison, Surrey, and has rehabilitated a third of the people it has treated. The work comes at a time of growing public concern about the links between crime and drugs. Shadow Home Secretary Tony Blair said drug-related crime cost £2 billion a year, half of all property crime was drug related and the number of notified addicts had risen five fold since 1982. The ADT programme began in 1991. It is modelled on 200 such programmes in American prisons, most of which now have drugs-free wings. The reoffending rate among ‘graduates’ of one course in Arkansas is down from 65 per cent to 20 per cent.

The ADT programme, which has been followed by 127 people, involves complete abstention from mood-altering substances plus group and individual therapy. ‘Over a third of those who have completed our 72-day treatment programme are clean and sober today,’ says Jonathan Wallace, its director. In England and Wales there are more than 45,000 people in prison, of whom over half have addiction problems. There are only 14 places on the ADT course, which receives no statutory funding and is struggling for financial survival. I sat in an ADT therapy group in Downview Prison with 14 men – from murderers to thieves.

Their crimes, committed in the grips of addiction, were harrowing. To send a man on an ADT course costs £1,000; to keep him in prison costs over £19,000 annually.

The men talked about how one landing shared a needle for a couple of months; how they maintained drug habits of up to £100 a day (people get hurt when debts are unpaid); and how a desperate addict will go to any lengths – including stabbing an inmate – for his drugs.

Johnny, 31, pimp, burglar, drug dealer and addict completed the ADT programme. He has spent a third of his life in prison and this month was released for the 12th time. Now he intends, sincerely, never to reoffend. He started smoking marijuana at the age of nine, did 30 burglaries when he was 13, lived off immoral earnings at 16 and carried guns for protection when dealing in drugs.

His cousin was a prostitute. ‘She told me to take money off the hookers and have sex with them. I didn’t know what to do with all the money. I didn’t have any hopes or aims. ‘

Today things are very different. He has lost contact with his two children from different women but intends to settle down, have a family and become a counsellor. ‘I want to be honest.’

His mother was 17 when he was born and he was sent to live with his grandmother. His mother was a prostitute, which brutalised him. ‘When I was seven I saw her having sex with her clients.’ He played truant from school from 13 and was then sent to approved school. Johnny started taking drugs when he was nine and his habit eventually cost him £300 a day. ‘For several years I did four burglaries a day to feed my habit.’ Each time he was released from prison, he would reoffend within two weeks. ‘I’d even go on home leave and commit burglaries, sometimes taking stolen property back to prison.’

Prison made him feel resentful towards authority and the criminal justice system. ‘There’s nothing to do apart from listening to music or taking drugs. I saw myself as a lost cause.’

He decided to change last year when, hallucinating on Ecstasy and running from the police, he fell from a roof and broke his neck. ‘I wanted to do something constructive while I was locked up. The programme taught me to accept the things I didn’t like about myself and confront my past. It made me want a drugs-free lifestyle. It wasn’t prison that changed me. It was the ADT programme.’