It's worth bearing a few things in mind:
1. A proportion of the prisoners that brought this case were on remand, so hadn't been tried and convicted of anything
2. If cold turkey was an effective route to coming off smack, don't you think a few drug treatment programmes would use it?
3. The self rightous codemnation of anyone that's ever committed a criminal offence is a bit rich coming from a forum where I'd guess about 80-85% of us have admitted to some sort of criminal act at some time over the last year or two. Drug references abound, drink driving, criminal damage, reckless driving, assault, histories of football hooliganism etc. etc. etc. It's all in these threads if you go back a bit, (most of them in the last one posted by Walrus!).
4. All the law says is that prisoners are entitled to the same medical treatment as the rest of the population. It's hardly wooly liberalism it's one of the bare minimum standards you'd expect from a civilised country with a reasonable human rights record. Drug treatment falls into the area of medical treatment and so legally these fellahs are entitled to get the same kind of methadone programme as someone voluntarily entering treatment on the outside. The governments coughed the cash because they knew they'd lose if it went to court.
5. By coincidence I watched the first of a new series of 30 days last night, with that Morgan Unspellable bloke that did Supersize me. If anyone else saw it, think about the two prisons he was in and which one was more likely release people onto the street that you wouldn't want to bump into on a dark night
Agreed 100%! No sense throwing good money after bad
