Washington

The US National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is embarking on a programme to study the treatment of drug abuse among prisoners in the United States — and to educate judges about the neurobiology of addiction.

NIDA officials hope that the programme will help to break the cycle of drug abuse, crime and imprisonment by finding better ways of selecting prisoners for different drug treatment options. The institute plans to spend $30 million on the programme over the next five years, conducting studies at ten prison sites across the country.

At a panel discussion at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in New Orleans last month, NIDA director Nora Volkow referred to the programme, which she dubbed “NIDA goes to jail”, as an example of how scientists can interact with societal issues.

Drug abuse is a vast problem for the US criminal-justice system: 60% of inmates have been convicted of drug-related offences. Nine out of ten parolees with a history of drug abuse return to drugs, according to Douglas Marlowe, a psychologist and criminal-justice researcher at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and many are re-arrested on drug-related charges.

The programme is still at the planning stage, NIDA officials say, but is likely to begin with a survey of prison administrators, clinicians, wardens and parole officers at the ten sites to establish existing treatment patterns.

NIDA will also sponsor clinical trials, beginning next year, of different ways of assessing prisoners for treatment before their release. By measuring factors such as motivation for treatment and levels of hostility, anxiety and risk-taking behaviour, researchers hope to match patients with the best type of treatment, says Wilson Compton, a psychiatric epidemiologist and head of prevention research at NIDA. “People haven't focused adequately on this population,” he says.

The institute also plans to step up its efforts to educate judges and police officers on the biology of addiction. Officials at Treatment Accountability for Safer Communities (National TASC), an organization based in Alexandria, Virginia, that helps to treat drug addicts, say that NIDA has been consulting with it on how best to do this. A National TASC report on current education efforts should be ready within a month, and will help NIDA to plan a pilot education programme to be conducted in North Carolina.

Marlowe thinks that this type of education is badly needed. “Judges have heard that drug addiction is a disease, but they don't know what that means,” says Marlowe. “They don't understand why a person relapses after being drug-free in jail for six months. If they know how cravings are triggered by environmental cues, they would understand.”