Treatment - a new definition

Whilst preparing for a workshop I ran at a conference this week, I happened upon a new definition of ‘treatment’. I was planning an interactive session to look at the evidence base for coerced treatment. My thesis was that coercion appeared appropriate in the context of drug prohibition, but that a public health approach made more sense within a legally regulated regime.

Paul Hayes, the head of the National Treatment Agency, has repeatedly stated that the money pouring into heroin and cocaine treatment would not be there, were it not for the crime reduction-led treatment agenda. And that alcohol treatment by contrast, had to take its place in the NHS pecking order. I would claim that this backs up my contention that a crime-led agenda would naturally lead to a treatment process that would be initiated from within the criminal justice system and further that it would make sense, within this regime, for ‘treatment’ that reduces acquisitive crime to be court-ordered.

A significant problem here is that, to the extent that crime reduction is paramount, clinical and personal needs are de-prioritised. Thus a process of dehumanisation takes place and treatment workers, struggle to reassert the people, rather than ‘offenders’, at the centre of the treatment initiative.

As part of my preparation I ‘Googled’ the word treatment. One of the examples that popped up was the following. I think that it speaks for itself:

Treatment: Any method, technique, or process, including neutralization, designed to change the physical or chemical character or composition of any hazardous waste so as to neutralize such waste or so as to render such waste non-hazardous, safer for transport, amenable for recovery, amenable for storage, or reduced in volume. Such terms includes any activity or processing designed to change the physical form or chemical composition of hazardous waste so as to render it non-hazardous.

Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality