Facing drug problems and advancing sentence plan. Prisoners’ perspectives on drug treatment programmes in Finland

ABSTRACT

In Nordic countries, the rapid development of various prison-based drug treatment (PDT) programmes emerged in the mid-1990s, and this development can be viewed as a criminological shift towards a “new form” of penal welfarism combining control and rehabilitation in a revised form in a new era. This article examines PDT programmes from the prisoners’ perspective to analyse their motives to participate, experiences, and relationships with counsellors, guards, and prisoners. Data were collected from interviews of the prisoners and observations in three Finnish prisons. Both the motives connected to handling drug problems and those connected to gaining an advantage for the duration of time spent in prison were experienced simultaneously by participants. Prisoners made a clear distinction between guards and drug counsellors and were somewhat confused by staff roles that combined both rehabilitative and control features. These findings suggest that new hybrid roles already found among correctional staff seem to exist also for prisoners.

KEYWORDS:

• Prisoner
• prison
• drug treatment
• rehabilitation
• drugs
• programmes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank The Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) under Grant [210305/F10] for funding this project, the Criminal Sanctions Agency of Finland for co-operation, the research groups from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden led by Torsten Kolind, Hedda Giertsen, and Odd Lindberg for their astute comments on article drafts, and the participating prisoners and counsellors for all their help and patience.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) under Grant [210305/F10].

Notes on contributors

Teemu Kaskela

Teemu Kaskela is presently a Ph.D. candidate at Helsinki University and works as a researcher at the A-Clinic Foundation. His research interests include drug treatment, prison, and criminality.

Jouni Tourunen

Jouni Tourunen works as a research manager at the A-Clinic Foundation. He has studied substance abuse treatment services in Finland, especially opioid substitution treatment and rehabilitation in prison context. The A-Clinic Foundation is the largest NGO in the field of substance abuse treatment and rehabilitation in Finland.