Research

Partners will undertake a needs assessment and literature review and conduct qualitative studies, i.e. identify the case study prisons, carry out the interviews with prisoners, prison professionals and service providers. Finally, they will undertake the evaluation of existing throughcare programmes.

The partners will carry out these activities in their own countries to enable the research, needs assessment and literature review to be culturally sensitive and sensitive to different groups of problematic drug users. These activities will provide an evidence base of what exists, what works and identify what gaps there is in provision and what the needs are from the perspective of service providers and service users. The network will facilitate sharing of experience from different professional perspectives and lead to a greater understanding of partnership and multi-disciplinary working.

A standardised, systematic and objective evaluation tool will be created to enable service providers to follow-up of individual outcomes. This in turn will enable agencies to produce aggregate outcome data for evaluation purposes. All partners will be involved in this, drawing on their experiences and the results from the literature review and research activities.

There is currently limited research and information about the extent of throughcare provision in European prisons or that identifies good practice. The project will focus on prisoners and in particular the sub groups of women, young prisoners and ethnic minorities in each of the partner countries. Both closed and open prisons will be included in the sample prison case studies.