Substance Abouse while in prison Research Paper

Substance Abouse while in prison - Research Paper Example This paper will evaluate the prevalence of substance abuse in prisons and also their health implications to the users. Adequate literature will also be reviewed to identify the effective responses which have been formulated to deal with the problems of substance abuse in prison as well as the evidence of harm reduction strategies. This paper hopes to give insights and motivation for those countries going through the same menace to consider implementing such responses to curb the drug use in their prisons. The prison population is composed of a large percentage of drug users particularly in the developed countries. According to Zurhold, Stà ¶ver, & Haasen, (2004), there is an estimated fifty percent of prisoners who have been involved with substance abuse a time in their history in the European Union and an estimated 80% of prisoners in the USA. Injecting drug users are more than 50% of the entire population of the drug users in prison (Dolan et al., 2007), while in the contemporary community, they account for barely 1-3% which shows that drug use in prison is more dangerous than in the broader community (Aceijas et al., 2004). Many users of drugs in prisons are highly dependent on the drugs as more than 80% of prisoners in developed countries have been reported to have been under the influence of illicit substances while they were in prison. The situation is mostly prevalent because most of the notorious drug users have been in prison at a point in time. The collection of many large scale substance abusers at the same time and at the same place enhances exchange of ideas and practices such that the result of it is a population of heavy abusers of drugs and other illicit substances. Many prisons have put very strict measures to inhibit the entry of drugs in the prisons but in most countries, this has been very unsuccessful. Despite those