Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of prisoners with a history of opioid misuse were provided with Naloxone when released from prison in the latest 12 month period for which information is available; and from which prisons those prisoners were released.
Of the 23,230 adults who left treatment for opioid dependence that were released from a prison or other secure setting between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2019, 4,008 were given take-home naloxone, including training on its use as a way of counteracting the effects of opioid overdose.
This was an increase in the proportion of adults receiving take-home naloxone (17%), compared to the previous year (12%).
Information on which prisons or secure settings these people were released from is not held centrally.
Statistics on alcohol and drug misuse treatment in prisons and other secure settings is available from Public Health England’s national drug treatment monitoring system. The latest report was published in January 2020 and is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/substance-misuse-treatment-in-secure-settings-2018-to-2019