PRISON METHADONE 'SAVES MONEY'

Prisoners who stay on methadone treatment programs for eight months
or more are less likely than other heroin-addicted inmates to return
to jail, at least in the short-term, Australian researchers say.

A four-year study of almost 400 heroin users in NSW jails has
prompted the researchers to call for an expansion of methadone
programs in Australian prisons.

They said broadening the programs to include more prisoners would
substantially save taxpayers' money.

The researchers found the risk for released prisoners to end up back
in jail decreased the longer they stayed on methadone treatment.

"Compared to periods of no treatment, the risk of re-incarceration
was reduced by 70 per cent during methadone maintenance treatment
periods for eight months or longer," they wrote in the journal, Addiction.

"Longer, and by implication uninterrupted, periods of methadone
maintenance treatment significantly delayed re-incarceration,
reflecting reduced criminal activity in released subjects."

Study author Kate Dolan, of the National Drug and Alcohol Research
Centre at the University of NSW, said the price of methadone
treatment for one inmate was around $3,200, yet keeping them in jail
for a year if they returned to prison was about $64,000.

That means methadone treatment only needs to keep a person out of
jail for 20 days to be more than cost-effective.

"Methadone is very effective and actually quite cheap when you
consider what it costs to put a person in jail for a year," Associate
Professor Dolan said.

"What it says to me is that we should be increasing methadone
programs in prison.

"If they keep on methadone, they stay on the straight and narrow.
They need to be on it eight months ... to stabilise themselves. They
settle down and they start to study or perhaps get a job in prison,
owning up to their responsibilities."

Prof Dolan said in NSW alone, half of the 8,000 prisoners were heroin
injectors, yet less than a quarter of these were on methadone treatment.

"We have about one in three drug injectors in the community on
methadone so we should be aiming for at least that in prison," she said.