Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the level of alcohol dependency in the criminal justice system.

Research shows that around three quarters of people in contact with the criminal justice system in the United Kingdom have a problem with alcohol and over a third are dependent on alcohol; this includes those in police custody, those in probation settings and those in the prison system.

Public Health England has advised that in 2014/15 there were 79,952 new presentations to alcohol treatment in the community. 7,688 (10%) of these were referred to treatment via the criminal justice system (including arrest referral services, prisons and probation). See Report on Adult substance misuse statistics from the National Drug Treatment Monitoring Service 2014-15, table 4.5.1, which is available at:

http://www.nta.nhs.uk/uploads/adult-statistics-from-the-national-drug-treatment-monitoring-system-2014-2015.pdf