“Some of us need to be taken care of”: young adults’ perspectives on support and help in drug reducing interventions in coercive contexts in Denmark and the UK

Abstract

This paper provides an account of young people’s experiences of and perspectives on help and support in drug reducing interventions. It is based on interviews with young people age 14–25 who were in contact with the Criminal Justice System (CJS) and, at the same time, participated in a drug reducing intervention. The interview data forms part of the EU funded EPPIC project. Two main themes emerged from the young peoples’ accounts that cut across different types of interventions and social systems in both countries. The first revolves around the ‘system’ of welfare, criminal justice, health and educational services and the barriers young people encountered in navigating the system to find help. The second revolves around the young people’s experiences with professionals, including what they appreciated and what they found problematic in professionals’ approach to them. Basing our analysis on data from two different countries, we are able to emphasize similarities in the young peoples’ perspectives, despite being enrolled in different drug reducing and CJS interventions. The insights gained indicate a need for systems and service changes that can facilitate a better balance between building individual resilience and providing appropriate, timely and adequate support within a ‘resilience-building’ environment.

Keywords:

• Young people
• criminal justice system
• desistence
• users' views
• drug reducing interventions
• drug use
• offending

Acknowledgements

The content of this paper represents the views of the authors only and is their sole responsibility; it cannot be considered to reflect the views of the European Commission and/or the Consumers, Health, Agriculture and Food Executive Agency or any other body of the European Union. The European Commission and the Agency do not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains. See also www.eppic-project.eu.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The project 768162/EPPIC, which has received funding from the European Union’s Health Programme (2014–2020).

2 Being in contact with the CJS can include serving a prison sentence, being in remand prison waiting for one’s sentence, sentenced with electronic tag, be on parole and in supervision by the probation services, being sentenced to be in supervision by the probation services, or being in contact with youth services for under aged young people with offending behavior.