One Million Arrestees May Be at Risk for WithdrawalSeptember 24, 2004
Research Summary
New research suggests that roughly one million arrestees per year may be at risk for untreated alcohol or opiate withdrawal in U.S. jails.In an article published in the Setpember, 2004, issue of the American Journal of Public Health, researchers used community-level mean rates of self-reported alcohol and opiate dependency to establish the number of arrestees with substance use disorders.
Of the 11 million people arrested in 1997, 1.2 million were alcohol dependent and 440,000 were dependent on opiates. These figures account for rearrests.
Yet, only 28 percent of jail administrators reported that their jails provided alcohol or drug detoxification services. Among those, only 10 percent reported offering off-site detoxification services.
Ultimately, the authors found that 63 percent of all arrestees were detained in facilities reported as never detoxifying inmates. Roughly 756,000 are at risk for untreated alcohol withdrawal and 277,000 for untreated opiate withdrawal.
While the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC) and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have established guidelines for managing withdrawal, less than 10 percent of jails are accredited through NCCHC, and the Federal government operates few jails.
The study has a number of caveats, mainly regarding data availability and quality. However, the ethical implications of this problem are clear -- people are likely to go into withdrawal before they can be booked, let alone convicted of crimes, increasing the opportunity for sickness and even death among the arrestee population.
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