Dispatches from Bristol

The latest episode of Channel 4's 'Dispatches' screened on Monday 13th June and entitled 'The Thief Catchers' helped shed a bit more light on what dealing with chronic long term users of heroin was like when they're not a rich banker or wealthy bond trader. In order to feed their habit, each has to steal a small fortune on a regular basis either through shoplifting, street robbery or burglary. There is a general trend towards escalation in offending as their faces get well known to shopkeepers and they get moved on. Lying to all and sundry becomes automatic and consummate, even to friends and family in order to satisfy the constant craving for another fix.

In Bristol this type of offender comes within the remit of a Safer Community Partnership
initiative called IMPACT, but run in close co-operation with the local Drug Intervention Programme. The documentary served to illustrate just how the police have become key players in the whole 'offender management' business as a result of the last Labour governments 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' policy. I know partnerships are a much vaunted thing nowadays, but it still struck me that PC Dave was just doing PO Declans job.

The film followed the fortunes of three long-term male drug users, each of whom had earned the title 'prolific offender.' I found this slightly confusing because I don't think IMPACT is a Prolific and other Priority Offender project (PPO), but there are so many acronyms in offending nowadays it might be. Such schemes are similarly made up of all relevant agencies and undertake to offer clients a so-called 'premium' service. The IMPACT initiative did seem to be run on similar lines as supported accommodation appeared to be on offer pretty quickly, as did drug treatment or 'rehab' as it was continually referred to. 

Unfortunately the makers of the film never told us exactly what sort of drug treatment the three guys received. My guess is that it would have been methadone replacement and I don't call this 'being in rehab'. The trouble is that definitions have changed as proper residential drug rehab beds have become like hens teeth. A place in a hostel and community prescribing through DIP I guess now counts as 'rehab, but as Shaun's case in particular demonstrates, changing entrenched attitudes and long-term addictions is a mighty uphill struggle and failure is routine. Well it is when we insist on not using alternatives like prescribing heroin. I suspect Shaun wouldn't have felt quite the need to blow his entire Community Care grant of £2,000 on street gear if he could get a script.

Actually Shaun highlighted how the whole person and all their needs have to be addressed in order to try and effect change. His arm-slashing whilst in prison was not so much a mental health issue as an emotional issue, but this is often misunderstood as the recent 'Strangeways' documentaries showed on ITV. 

Overall a useful insight I suppose into just how difficult and depressing the whole subject of drug-abuse is. I did chuckle at one point early on though when we saw a typical new-looking probation officer, or probation services officer, walk into the interview room with several large ring binders, one of which looking suspiciously like an OASys manual. We watched her telling the guy that she wanted him to do a victim empathy test and place various offences in order of seriousness. Unfortunately we didn't hear how she dealt with his reasoning that maybe murder was quite understandable in certain circumstances and possession of a firearm wasn't that serious.