Research on drug abuse and addiction treatment in prisons

Abstract

The causes of drug abuse and criminal behavior are closely linked. Not surprisingly, there is a high percentage of prisoners who during sentence execution abuse or are dependent on drugs. Antisocial personality disorder can be considered a common predictor of committing criminal offenses and drug abuse. A review of studies has revealed a high prevalence of inmates who use drugs while serving a sentence. Also, prison environment represents only a new context of the continuum of drug abuse by inmates. There are different theoretical approaches in explaining this phenomenon. Treatment programs based on empirically validated principles that guarantee the effectiveness, may be one strategy for solving the problem of drug abuse in prisons, with multiple positive effects.

Keywords

• drugs
• antisocial personality disorder
• prison
• treatment programs