The Quick Win or the Long Game?

I haven’t blogged for some time now and while clearing up in my office earlier this evening I found this brief anecdote written a couple of years back and recounting something that happened over a decade ago

I’m sure some of you will tell me that things have moved on since writing this but unfortunately I work in the drug field and am still relatively close to the criminal justice system (professionally not personally) and often see first hand the choices that different parts of the system make, which are often short term and characterized by the “quick win”.

So here’s the anecdote:

Some time ago I had a conversation with a police Superintendent who was the in the role of Area Commander (AC) that went something like this.....

AC - as a result of a test purchase exercise we have solid Intel and evidence on numerous drug dealers in the area

ME - and what next?

AC - dawn raid, arrest the drug dealers, get the drugs / cash / weapons etc, court, jail, pub. Job done

ME - and then what?

AC - then nothing, drug dealers gone, the place is safer, move on to the next problem...why

ME - because after the enforcement the drug problem remains.  You'll get a few weeks of instability (violence etc as new people replace those arrested) as the market shifts / re-forms and then its business as usual with one key difference

AC - what’s the key difference?

ME - only now you don’t know who any of the main players are because you cashed that hand in when you went round kicking off doors and arresting everyone

What the AC said to me at that point has remained with me ever since, he said, "I’ve got to kick off the doors".

I realised at that point that the police's job was uncomplicated, if a tad inefficient.  Their job was to make arrests.  That’s their target.  To put it simply, find and arrest the bad guys. Round em up, ship em out.  Then it’s the courts job to prosecute them and then it’s the prisons job to hold them safely away from the public and then it’s the probation services job to rehabilitate them (well, those that qualify e.g. sentenced prisoners serving over 12-months)

A more disjointed system with built in conflict you could not design if you tried.  In fact I'm not sure this one was designed, I think it sort of grew like topsy, one wobbly bit on top of another

What’s interesting to note is that sometimes they seem to be pulling in different directions based on the targets they have been given or set for themselves?  

We don’t have time in this blog to do a through analysis of the criminal justice system and its deficiencies / conflicts and conundrums – although that might be an appealing distraction one rainy day!

Take the drugs issue for instance.  The police, instead of using the Intel and advantage they have in the community they commit to large scale clean ups, dawn raids etc as described above.  They cash their chips in, in one go and after the press photo shoot, off down the pub for a celebratory beer.

Once in prison, usually on remand at this stage, the arrested "dealers" (some of whom are really users caught up in the fray - another inconvenient truth that is often overlooked) are not segregated, their calls are often not monitored, in fact very little joined up or coordinated work happens between prisons and police.  

Suddenly you have a load of drug dealers (and some extra users) deposited into a few remand prisons where there is a ready market of existing drug users and a ready supply of drugs, which is about to get a whole lot worse - after the obligatory violence etc, as the prison market shifts to accommodate some new ‘faces’.  As well as violence there may also be a hike in drug purity and a drop in price, as the marketing men go to town and try and get their supply into a cell near you.  A sort of sinister version of the brand wars

Once in prison, the prison service target is not to identify and arrest the ‘bad’ guys, like the police, instead its to meet a % drug testing target, the random mandatory drug testing target - its all in the 2008 Centre for Policy Studies Pamphlet (Inside Out) so I wont bore you with the details all over again but essentially, if the prison can meet a target showing that the % of positive drug tests is below some arbitrary figure then all is well with the world and the prison goes up the fantasy football (prison) league table - job done, shift over, down the pub.

Post Script

More recently (last six months or so I think) I read that Chris Grayling MP seems to be introducing policing type tactics and maybe even targets into the prison service

The prison service has a fundamentally different outlook to the police and their drug strategy, such that one exists, mirrors a community approach in terms of treatment, e.g. lots of methadone as the backbone of an opiate substitution approach, and watching prisons balance yet another role will be interesting given the cultural divide between prisons and the police (I know, I’ve worked with both groups)

Also, many of the prison drug coordination roles have been dismantled; there are very few dedicated drug roles in prisons, and not much going on between prisons locally, regionally or nationally (still!!)

Colleagues tell me that if anything things have just deteriorated further.  Since the 2008 CPS Report  resources have been systematically pulled out of prisons; Opiate Substitution Therapy is resulting in methadone queues and the trend for non-drug treatment related prescribing e.g. the use of Tramadol / Gabapentin / Pregabalin etc have also increased.  So much so there is a roaring trade in prescribed meds and in regurgitated methadone, a new symptom of the methadone rich approach. 

What hasn’t changed in many prisons is the lack of purposeful activity.  The lack of a viable and credible alternative to the boredom that drives the desire to use drugs to get through each boring day

The Criminal Justice System should try rehabilitation before trying to ‘transform’ it.  It could learn something from the rehabilitation principle of delayed or deferred gratification (meaning to resist the temptation for an immediate reward and wait for a later reward) rather than going, it seems, always going for the quick-win or instant gratification, much like the AC that just had to "kick off doors" in the anecdote above

Best regards

Huseyin