Effectiveness Bank web site Matrix row
Supported by  Alcohol Research UK web site Society for the Study of Addiction web site Skills Consortium web site. Opens new window
Matrix Row logo Drug Treatment Matrix row 5
Reducing crime, protecting families


Time to consolidate the lessons of the last five instalments of our course on drug treatment research. Row 5 explored key studies on treatment in relation to safeguarding the family and the community from crime. A common theme was the contradictions involved in offering or imposing treatment centred on the patient’s welfare within a system which prioritises the wider community, and sees the patient essentially as a threat.

Click button to view the matrix with this row highlighted or go straight to your chosen cell in the row by scrolling down and clicking the blue titles.

View row in matrix
Also see hot topics on supporting families, drug testing and sanctions, naltrexone implants and injections, treatment practitioners, why some treatment services are more effective than others, and protecting children.
Not an Effectiveness Bank subscriber? Join mailing list for research updates.

Cell A5 Intervening to safeguard the community
Focuses on the interventions themselves. ‘Bite’ commentary addresses two highly controversial issues: whether it is ever safe to leave children to live with seriously problematic drug users; and incentivising opioid-dependent offenders to take the opiate-blocker naltrexone – unacceptable infringement of autonomy, or as caring as holding back someone about to walk off a cliff?

Cell B5 Coercion tests therapeutic skills
Moves up a level to the contribution of the practitioner delivering the intervention. Commentary advances a general rule: The trickier the situation, the more the practitioner matters. A corollary is that therapeutic skills are even more important in formally coerced than in nominally voluntary treatment.

Cell C5 Reconciling the interests of community, clients, and families
Up another level to the roles of service managers. Explores what research can offer managers who have to reconcile the interests of clients, their families and the community, and the credentials of a well known model for working with offenders. Asks why cognitive-behavioural approaches are so prominent, and considers the feasibility of prioritising the child when the parent is the patient.

Cell D5 Reshaping treatment services to a criminal justice context
Up yet another level to the role of organisational structure and functioning. What adaptations are needed in organisations involved in coerced treatment, and how does this affect their relationships with the ‘clients’ coerced through their doors? To protect children, must treatment services reshape themselves as family services?

Cell E5 Crime-reducing drug treatment systems
Up to the final level of whole local treatment systems. Asks whether coercion and/or collaboration with enforcement authorities undermine treatment’s community protection impacts, and whether to maximally reduce crime, systems should focus on coercion or voluntary engagement.

Alcohol Treatment Matrix for alcohol brief interventions and treatment
Drug Treatment Matrix for harm reduction and treatment in relation to illegal drugs
About the development and construction of the matrices
Share your discovery of the matrices by sending an email to your colleagues.

The Drug and Alcohol Findings Effectiveness Bank offers a free mailing list service updating subscribers to UK-relevant evaluations of drug/alcohol interventions. Findings is supported by Alcohol Research UK and the Society for the Study of Addiction and advised by the National Addiction Centre.