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Methadone maintenance treatment in prisons: The New South Wales Experience
Author(s) -
HALL WAYNE,
WARD JEFF,
MATTICK RICHARD
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
drug and alcohol review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.018
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1465-3362
pISSN - 0959-5236
DOI - 10.1080/09595239300185631
Subject(s) - prison , methadone , recidivism , methadone maintenance , psychiatry , medicine , drug treatment , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , psychology , criminology , family medicine
This paper uses the New South Wales experience with methadone maintenance treatment in prison to address the question: should methadone maintenance treatment be provided in Australian prisons for opioid‐dependent prisoners? First, it outlines three rationales for providing drug dependence treatment in prisons: as a way of giving prisoners access to community‐based forms of drug treatment in the prison setting; as a measure to reduce recidivism in opioid‐dependent prisoners; and as a measure to prevent the transmission of HIV and other infectious diseases within prisons, and to the sexual partners of prisoners on their release. Secondly, it reviews the kind of research evidence that supports the effectiveness of community‐based methadone maintenance treatment in Australia. Thirdly, the effectiveness of the New South Wales Prison Methadone Programme, one of the few prison‐based methadone programmes in the world, is evaluated in the light of the available research evidence.