Drugs and Prisoners: Treatment Needs on Entering Prison^*

Abstract

An interview study was conducted among a group of incoming prisoners in a county jail in Ohio during the summers of 1997 and 1998 to assess their current drug treatment needs. “Incoming prisoners” refers to individuals who were being transferred from this county jail to the state prison system. Marijuana and cocaine were the most commonly tried illegal drugs among the subjects as well as the drugs of choice during the month prior to imprisonment. The Diagnostic Interview Schedule, combined with questions employed in the Drug Use Forecasting (DUF) project, was used to construct the questionnaire for this study. Based on the criteria of DSM-IV diagnoses, 57.5% of those interviewed had exhibited drug dependency at some point in their lives, and 51% were currently dependent on some substance. Thus, more than half of the incoming prisoners were in need of treatment for use of at least one substance. Cocaine dependence was the greatest problem facing this group of inmates, with an especially notable problem among the older females. Younger males were more likely to have current marijuana dependence. The study found that individuals currently dependent on cocaine or opiates perceived that they had a need for drug treatment, while those currently dependent on marijuana did not share this perception.

Notes

^* An earlier version of this article was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Washington, D.C., November 11–14, 1998. This study was funded by the Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services (ODADAS) and the Department of Sociology at the University of Akron. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors.

^* After all the data were collected for this study, we discovered some computer programming problems related to the interview schedule that affect the results of this paper. Overall, we underestimated some of the drug dependency variables. The percentage errors are maximally 7% for lifetime marijuana dependency, 2.5% for lifetime amphetamine dependency, 1% for lifetime sedative dependency, 2% for lifetime cocaine dependency, 1% for lifetime opiate dependency, and 1% for lifetime PCP dependency. No errors were found for lifetime hallucinogen dependency and lifetime inhalant dependency.

^† The percentage errors are maximally 5% for current marijuana dependency, 1% for current sedative dependency, and 0.5% for current cocaine dependency. No errors were found for current dependency on amphetamine, opiates, PCP, hallucinogens, and inhalants.