The drug scene has numerous negative effects as the drugs affect the mind, distort individual judgement which is why they are so attractive. Drugs if used regularly can cause psychological dependance where the addict thinks they need the drug; however the habit may well be able to be broken with little or no ill-effects.

Physical dependancy is different the addict needs the drug and often the breaking of the habit results in withdrawal and often severe illness. The damage of prolonged drug use can result in tolerance where the body needs even greater amounts to achieve the same effect. This becomes very expensive and addicts may resort to crime to obtain money to replenish their habit which we see so often today.

Mental addiction imprisons the mind where the drug becomes an obsession in the worst cases, excluding any possibility of a useful life. Anti-social behaviour results not just in the damage to the victim but more to the individual who then may experience a wasted life mindset plus the added costs to the taxpayer of the legal process to prosecute.

Intervention may involve social services and a number of other stakeholder partners in the process, which is why we believe the cost savings to be made in early prevention are easily recognised. Investing in family prevention through awareness would prevent future embryos of pregnant drug users who are forced to share the drugs of their mothers through the placenta. Injecting drugs directly into veins carries the risk of AIDS and hepatitis when syringes are shared.

Whatever the motives for drug taking either being social pressure escape or even creativity the results are often broken shattered lives as for many the problems are still there when they are ready for the next fix. For every poet and writer who appeared to do be in a “creative zone” under the influence of drugs there are many thousands who are hooked, depressed and see little value in living the pain of being conscious to ones responsibilities. When down from a high soon the addict is in the depths of a great low and the cycle of life and death seem to merged into one big blur.

This is one of the reasons we are so passionate about our giving back project and the powerful effect it has on young people. www.givingback.org.uk

Prevention must be in the form of investment in methods that work and produce the required investment. The “learning by doing” approach is one we favour immensly being different and diverse in our methodology, we understand that not always is conformity and equality the best seeds to plant, in the soil of social change in the big society ideology of new ways of working.

We could ask why doesn’t the fly try a different approach?. Maybe it is the same reason we can ask ourselves why is it that we can get so locked in on the idea that a particular set of beliefs offer the most promise of success in our daily work activities. Reminds me of a meeting once where someone said I have been doing this for 30 years. Ironic as it seems that we can so easy equate years of experience with results.

When I hear people say I have been doing it this way for 30 years I only have to look at the results to see if that particular way of thinking and doing is the best approach to achieving the best outcome. In some cases it is the most productive and efficient way, in other cases it is a drain on the budget, energies and heartache of all involved.

What logic is there in continuing, until death to seek a breakthrough with “more of the same?” in the case of the fly the approach of trying harder made a lot of sense. However trying harder is not necessarily the solution to achieving more or getting the most successful result. Most people just burnout with the try harder attitude instead why not work smarter by incorporating a new set of beliefs.

Most organisations will have approaches to case loads that seem very serviceable and which enable the task to be achieved. However we are living in times of constant change and when we have a department or office habit down to a tee we become very attached to it.

We get so proficient that we won’t relinquish that habit pattern infact we become very hostile and territorial of someone who challenges it. This resistance to change is born out of self talk beliefs and strategies that whisper the rationale of doing something new will make us clumsy, we will feel ackward, and more at risk.

If we stake our hopes on changing or addressing anti social behaviour or running more rehabilitating programmes without changing the habitual ways of organisational thinking then all the reseach and knowledge in the future will not support the transitition of real change.

We need to rethink how we are thinking, not become boxed in by perceived constraints. Whilst we can acknowledge that we want change our real limits are far beyond what our artificial mental boundaries dictate to us. We have to give up some of those “sensible” thinking patterns that at times become a curse that put a ceiling on how far we can reach out to effect real positive change.

What does this mean in the area of recidivism and youth offending? Well it means we have to give up relying on beliefs and behaviours that seem to have served us for many years and entertain something far beyond our comfort zones of current thought. Let’s face it more of the same will always equal more of the same.

Individuals who have a tendency to violence will find it a powerful attribute against any opponent when inside a prison. In prison to fit in and avoid conflict prisoners may make behavioural adaptation changes that conflict with being a “good prisoner” in the eyes of the staff and legal system. To survive the short term they may have to make choices that challenge their long term survival.

Younger weaker prisoners who are bullied or coerced into smuggling drugs, or other contraband into the prison system in these cases, may find the adaption experience becomes mutually destructive as they compromises all their ethics and values. Coping strategies are soon developed to cope with the threat of being bullied and this may be in the form of a prisoner offering up under duress portions of his food ration to his aggressor. Whilst in the short term this may avert an act of immediate violence, such a strategy will mark the prisoner out as being vulnerable and others may also try to exploit his vulnerability.

Dave often shares his experiences of how and why many prisoners buckle under the pressure of other peers in the “Giving Back” School Programme. www.givingback.org.uk

One of the more common primary adaption behaviours that occurs inside prison is the individual attempts to make the environment fit the person. The individual begins to attempt to make their cell a “home from home” with photographs of they loved ones and bedtime rituals. These temporary behaviours require high levels of energy that run counter-productive to the actual environment and due to the amount of effort required to maintain these rituals long term the individual succumbs to the environment and quickly depletes available mental and emotional resources and breaks down.

In other cases prisoners begin to pay attention to the disparities between behaviours and the behaviours demanded by the environment. Rather than expecting the environment to adapt to their needs, they begin to adapt and change their own behaviours to fit in, and meet, the needs of the environment. The prisoner will begin to learn the language and culture, the social hierarchies and on-going power status struggles between inmates and may form coalitions with other prisoners. This adaptive behaviour may in fact protect their survival within the prison system, it may also prevent their actual release from the system depending on the social dynamics.

Prisoners move through various strategic behaviour from mere self-survival into growth and conformity. It may seem paradoxical, but some prisoners will flourish inside the prison as they know how to turn the limited scope of opportunity in that environment to their advantage. To those outside of this system such behaviour is labelled “institutionalisation”. Individual behaviour either moves the prisoner away from the prison system or further ingratiates them into it.
Behaviour is hugely contextualised and lack of trust leads many prisoners into social paranoia when it comes to contravening personal moral code and loss of self-respect, dignity, hope privacy and identity.

At the Respect Group we employ IEMT Integral Eye Movement Therapy which works on an algorithm that generates rapid changes in the area of negative emotion or identity related neurological imprints. IEMT moves the client into the present and enables them to stay out of past negative experiences permanently.

IEMT employs identity and linguistic modules to identify the behavioural and psychological patterns that are common to clients who appear to have a resistant problem that has defied all previous change work.

February 2008 saw the operational prison capacity exceeded with over 82,000 prisoners and as of October 2010 the figure stands at over 85,494, this increase highlight the uncertainty that the home office predict a prison population of over 100,000 in the next year.

Re-offending rates are currently ranging from 59% to 70% with one third of petty offenders losing their homes whilst in custody; two-thirds losing contact with their families; with an added ratio of two thirds losing their jobs. Around half of prisoners having a reading age of 11 year old. Two in five prisoners lack literacy skills and four in five lack basic numeracy aptitude.

The number of women in prison has risen: From 1,800 in 1994 to 4,300 in September 2010. 40% of women going to prison have previously attempted suicide. The staggering statistic is that in January 2008 it has emerged that over 16,000 prisoners had been released early over the previous 7 months in an attempt to free up prison places.

Government statistic’s demonstrate that 12,000 people a year are released from prison to homelessness, therefore it has become apparent that current structures available are inadequate, not leading a newly released ex- offender straight back to re-offending. A recent visit by the Respect Group in late 2010 to HMP Holme House determined that this one prison has a 30% rate of releasing individuals into homelessness.

A growing number equalling 10% of British prisoners have served in the armed forces, and that figure may well increase with the present cut backs to the armed forces from active duty combatants.

After working inside the Prison System as a lecturer and now working outside in the offender rehabilation arena, one thing as a team we see over and over again is the amount of money that is spent is addressing the needs of recidivism and the value of return of that investment, which in so many cases appears never to realise the expected outcomes promised.

David was recently interviwed by Radio Newcastle and handled a number of questions of many complex subjects, the main being does prison work?.