By The Completion Of The 18-month Scheme, The Researchers Could Find Only 27

By the completion of the 18-month scheme, the researchers could find only 27 of the 210 offenders who "seemed to emerge drug free" - and they were able to come to that conclusion only by a) overlooking the fact that only 13 offenders passed the final urine tests and b) ignoring their use of cannabis. The best that the researchers could say was that the scheme was "promising but not proven".
The reason for compulsory treatment therefore does not rest on statistical evidence, as the government knew of the dubious nature of these findings. The real reason I believe rests with the theory of 'therapeutic state': The American sociologist, James Nolan, uses this phrase to talk about how governments justify themselves to their population. According to Nolan, governments are now using the language and practice of therapy to justify their efforts in the fields of education, welfare and crime. He uses the specific example of the American drug courts. Here, he says, we see a merger between the 'tough on crime' values of the American right, and 'emotivist' justifications for delivering therapy through the criminal justice system.
Fitzpatrick, of the University of Nottingham writes, 'As the state becomes less able to prevent or even to control crime, so its rhetoric and policy initiatives become more punitive ... as the state can no longer guarantee the well-being of freedom and security in return for mass loyalty, it preserves its political authority through the policing and active enforcement of citizenship obligations'.
I argue that the link between drug use and crime has been highlighted by New Labour's policies in order to divert attention away from other economic factors, which are also large players in the increase of crime rates we have seen, but which cannot be easily addressed. As long as we can say that crime is caused by something, which is done by other people, who can be brought into therapy and 'cured' by the state, then we can rest easy that we are doing all we can to prevent the misery caused by crime.
I would also like to make a point in relation to hard drug-therapy, and another example of New Labour not attempting to tackle the real problem with drugs. New Labour makes reference in their policy since 1997 to increasing their availability of methadone on prescription for addicts. Prima facie this seems like a helpful measure to addicts, but in fact methadone, is more addictive than heroin and also more likely to cause fatal overdose. In a detailed study, Dr Ben Goldacre found that: "Methadone is a more dangerous drug than heroin, and causes more deaths than even adulterated street heroin." A study by Dr Russell Newcombe, senior lecturer at John Moores University, Liverpool, found that methadone was four times more likely than heroin to cause a fatal overdose.