Table Prison-2. Prevalence of lifetime injecting drug use among prisoners (estimated percentage)
| Country | Source / ref. | Year |
Definition and methodological comments |
Drug used (and, if any, restriction on base popn.) |
% IDU |
|||
| Austria | 1 | 1999 | injecting drug use prior to imprisonment Comment: national survey in a selection of representative prisons: 4 for male adults (n= 143), 2 for female adults (n= 69) and 5 for male youth (n=51); convicted and on remand |
(adult males) | 26 | |||
| (adult females) | 32 | |||||||
| (male youth) | 9 | |||||||
| 2 | 1996 | intravenous drug users Comment: estimated by experts |
15 | |||||
| Belgium | 2 | 1997 | people reporting lifetime injecting drug use prior to imprisonment Comment: survey in one prison amongst on remand and convicted prisoners (n=115) |
22 | ||||
| 3 | 1993 | people reporting having ever injected drugs Comment: survey in one prison amongst volontary prisoners entering prison (n=1.627) |
15 | |||||
| Finland | 2 | 2000 | people reporting injecting drug use (ever used) Comment: national survey among a sample of voluntary HIV tested convicted prisoners (n= 1.612) |
(poly-drug users) | 39 | |||
| heroin/ opiates | 5 | |||||||
| amphetamines | 56 | |||||||
| France | 2 | 1998 | people reporting lifetime intravenous drug use prior to imprisonment Comment: survey in 4 prisons (n=1.212) |
12 | ||||
| 2 | 1996 | people reporting lifetime intravenous drug use Comment: survey in one prison (n=574) |
23 | |||||
| 3 | 1997 | people reporting injecting drug use (lifetime) prior to imprisonment Comment: survey in 3 prisons among on remand and convicted prisoners (n=960) |
14 | |||||
| Germany | 1 | 1997 | people reporting injecting drug use (lifetime) prior to imprisonment Comment: survey in one prison among on remand and convicted prisoners (n=437) |
33 | ||||
| Greece | 3 | 1996 | people reporting lifetime injecting drug use Comment: survey in 10 prisons (n= 861) |
34 | ||||
| 4 | 1995 | injecting drug use prior to imprisonment (based on self-reports and serum tests) Comment: survey in 2 prisons amongst convicted voluntary prisoners (n= 544) |
69 | |||||
| 5 | 1995 | injecting drug users Comment: survey in one prison (n=1.183) |
31 | |||||
| Hungary | 1 | 1997 | people reporting injecting drug use prior to imprisonment Comment: national survey in a sample of all prisons amongst adult male prisoners of Hungarian citizenship (n= 951) |
any illicit drug (males) | 1 | |||
| Ireland | 2 | 1999 | people reporting injecting drug use (injector status known) Comment: survey in 5 of the 7 Irish committal prisons (n= 593) |
any illicit drug | 29 | |||
| 3 | 1998 | people reporting injecting drug use (injector status known) Comment: survey in 9 prisons: all the 5 high risk prisons and a random sample of the medium risk prisons (n= 1.205) |
any illicit drug | 43 | ||||
| 5 | 1996 | men reporting ever engaged in injecting drug use Comment: survey in one male prison (one-fifth systematic sample) (n=108) |
(males) | 56 | ||||
| Italy | 7 | 1997 | people reporting injecting drug use (lifetime) prior to imprisonment Comment: survey in 3 prisons among on remand and convicted prisoners (n=678) |
30 | ||||
| Latvia | 1 | 2003 | people reporting lifetime injecting drug use prior to imprisonment Comment: national survey in 11 (out of 15) prisons with at least 100 convicted persons (n= 2.867) |
20 | ||||
| Portugal | 1 | 2001 | people reporting lifetime injecting drug use prior to imprisonment Comment: natiowide survey (47 prisons) in a random sample of on remand and convicted prisoners (n=2.057) |
any illicit drug | 27 | |||
| 2 | 1997 | people reporting injecting drug use (lifetime) prior to imprisonment Comment: survey in 3 prisons among on remand and convicted prisoners (n=535) |
52 | |||||
| Spain | 6 | 1997 | people reporting injecting drug use (lifetime) prior to imprisonment Comment: survey in one prison among on remand and convicted prisoners (n=101) |
47 | ||||
| Sweden | 2 | 1997 | people reporting injecting drug use (lifetime) prior to imprisonment Comment: survey in 9 prisons among on remand and convicted prisoners (n=305) |
65 | ||||
| U.K. England & Wales | 1 | 2001 | women reporting having ever injected drugs prior to imprisonment Comment: national survey of female prisoners on remand and convicted in 10 prisons (n= 301) |
any illicit drug (females) | 38 | |||
| cocaine/crack (females) | 5 | |||||||
| heroin/opiates (females) | 35 | |||||||
| amphetamines (females) | 7 | |||||||
| other tranquilizers (females) | 1 | |||||||
| 3 | 1997-1998 | people reporting having ever injected drugs (inside or outside prison) Comment: survey in 8 prisons: 6 adult male prisons (n= 2.769), 1 female prison (n= 407) and 1 male young (under 21 years) offenders prison (n= 714) |
(adult males) | 24 | ||||
| (females) | 29 | |||||||
| (young males) | 4 | |||||||
| 5 | 1997 | people reporting having ever injected drugs Comment: nationwide survey in all 131 prisons (n=3.142) |
23-40 | |||||
| 6 | 1996 | men entering prison reporting a history of injecting drug use Comment: survey in one prison |
(males) | 29 | ||||
| 7 | 1995 | men entering prison reporting a history of injecting drug use Comment: survey in 3 prisons |
(males) | 15 | ||||
| U.K. Scotland | 9 | 2003 | people reporting having ever injected drugs during the current imprisonment Comment: national survey in 16 prisons among all prisoners available at the time of the survey (n= 4741) |
any illicit drug | 11 | |||
| 10 | 1991-1996 | men reporting a history of injecting drug use Comment: survey in 6 male prisons (n=2.286) |
(males) | 32 | ||||
| 10 | 1991-1996 | women reporting a history of injecting drug use Comment: survey in one female prison (n=132) |
(females) | 46 | ||||
| 10 | 1991-1996 | young offenders reporting a history of injecting drug use Comment: survey in 2 young offenders institutions (n=562) |
(young offenders) | 18 | ||||
| Notes: | ||||||||
| Caution should be applied when considering that a survey is said to be 'national' as this refers to its intended geographical coverage, but does not mean it is necessarily representative of the national situation, which would depend on any sampling procedures adopted. Note that the size of the prison population surveyed is not available for most of the studies displayed in this table, and sample sizes reflect different proportions of the population in different countries. | ||||||||
| England & Wales 1997: results are provided for 4 different sub-groups of population: male remanded, male sentenced, female remanded, female sentenced. Women and men on remand represent a small proportion of the prison population, and thus these groups were over-sampled. Ranges reported here represent the minimum and maximum values obtained across the 4 sub-groups. | ||||||||
| Sources: | ||||||||
| For sources and bibliographic references, refer to [Table Prison-0]. | ||||||||
