Issues with Substance Abuse Assessment in Correctional Settings

Contextual Issues Contextual concerns go beyond simple base rate issues and validated populations. One must also consider that the environment in which the behavior of concern (in this case substance abuse), including all of its situational, interpersonal, and influential factors, is quite different between prison and the community where the abuse or dependence was initially an issue (Monahan, 1996). With the convergence of such factors not being adequately replicated in prison, an individuals behavioral patterns might be assessed quite differently then they would be in a free environment. While alcohol and drugs are available in prison to some extent, it is not nearly as obtainable as it is in the community. Subsequently, the degree of abuse is significantly lower.

Substance abuse assessment tools, generally developed on a community based abuser sample, tend to be very concise on their query of specific substances of abuse. Currently used instruments may not adequately identify abuse of the non-typical substances encountered in a prison environment. While abuse of alcohol, cocaine, and other hard drugs may be lowered or cease entirely in a prison environment, an individual may not be quite as substance free as the psychometric evaluations indicate. While the abuse of the more common substances may have been decreased, or eliminated, they may have in fact been simply replaced by new substances of abuse that the community based substance abuse screens were not designed to identify.

A valid correctional substance abuse instrument should evaluate this wide range of potential substances of abuse. While recognizing that drug and alcohol trafficking in prisons is minimized, a measure is required that is not naive to the home made substances that do exist in the prison environment. For the most part, abuse of these substances is not queried by any of the currently used assessment tools.

An additional, and epidemic, problem with the assessment of substance abuse populations in a correctional context is the extremely large amount of clients that must be assessed in a very limited amount of time (Belenko, 1990; Heaps & Swartz, 1995). With the very large population that must be assessed upon entry into the correctional system there is clearly not enough time for long interviews and assessments. A structured screening assessment interview like the popular Alcoholism Screening Inventory (ASI), which can take upwards to forty-five minutes to complete, is far to long a process to undertake in combination with other required assessments.

Furthermore, the unavailability of adequately trained clinicians to conduct such assessments is of particular concern (Swartz, 1995). With the presence of very few qualified clinicians to carry out initial screenings there is a growing need for an instrument that does not require considerable clinical ability for appropriate administration and scoring (Swartz, 1998). A desirable assessment instrument would provide a set of objective, invariant criteria, that does not require a high degree of clinical skill for administration or scoring. Once screening is completed a funneling process can occur, in which clients who need further evaluation can be referred for a more in depth assessments.

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