Methadone maintenance treatment in prisons: The New South Wales Experience

Abstract

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.