Drug treatment funding has decreased in real terms, official auditors estimate in a report on ‘the costs of tackling drug harm in prisons’, by the National Audit Office (NAO). Meanwhile, the problem of illicit drugs in prisons is ‘substantial and worsening’.
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO said: “The proliferation of illicit drugs in prisons undermines rehabilitation, damages health, and destabilises prison environments. Yet too many of the basic controls and interventions are not being done well enough – from repairing critical security equipment to aligning health and operational priorities. Our recommendations are designed to help the prison and health services direct resources to where they can have the greatest impact on this serious problem.”
Money
The audit found that His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) has significantly underspent on two investment programmes. Between 2019-20 and 2021-22, HMPPS spent only three-quarters of its £100m security investment programme budget; the largest underspends were in gate security. The Service was also allocated £114m between 2022-23 and 2024-25 for prison-based and cross-cutting initiatives as part of the cross-government drug strategy ‘From harm to hope’, published in 2021 as a ten-year strategy by the then Boris Johnson Conservative Government. The actual budget was revised to £97m to make savings and, of this, HMPPS spent only £67m. The prison service cited ‘delays in increasing staff numbers, and failure to procure baggage scanners’ as the reasons, according to the report. Delays in recruitment were put down to ‘recruitment controls’ and the time taken to do vetting.
The prison service spends an estimated £8m a year on monthly random mandatory drug testing on prisoners. However, prison staff told the NAO that these random tests were operationally resource intensive. The prison service has been trialling more innovative methods of identifying drug prevalence, by testing prison wastewater for traces of illicit drugs. The prison service had planned to roll out naloxone, a potentially life-saving drug used to treat opioid overdose, so prison officers could administer it in medical emergencies. However, an ‘unforeseen complication’ was that HMPPS did not have the required licence to buy restricted medication.
Drones
The report noted that use of drones appears to have been increasing rapidly, to deliver packages; ‘and HMPPS believes it will continue to do so as commercially available drones become cheaper’.
Problem
In April 2025, according to the auditors, half of prisoners had an identified drug problem, an estimated 40,000 people in prisons in England and Wales. As for data, the report noted that since January 2025, HMPPS has required prisons to report monthly any instances where a prisoner was observed to be under the influence of drugs. The auditors found, however, that the data remain ‘variable’ and sometimes some prisons don’t submit a return.
Liaison
The audit report suggested ‘performance information, continued willingness to innovate, continued learning from robust evaluation and, above all, a renewed commitment to cross-government partnership working’. The auditors saw a need for liaison between prisons and health services; for a ‘shared understanding of need and well-aligned incentives for staff to support prisoners’ treatment and recovery. However, in a context of wider pressures on prison capacity, prison staff reported they lacked the influence needed to improve health-related services’.
For the full report visit https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/the-costs-of-tackling-drug-harms-in-prisons/.
Background
Last year, Prisons Minister at the Ministry of Justice James Timpson announced £40m new investment to ‘help combat the flow of contraband which creates unsafe environments in our jails’.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Inverness Prison perimeter wall.
