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Despite a considerable increase in drug testing within the criminal justice system (CJS) through schemes such as the drug interventions programme, research is equivocal about its added value, as a recent series of reports from the UK Drug Policy Commission highlighted. The role of drug testing needs to be clarified and its cost‐effectiveness confirmed through studies with comparative regimes. Any further expansion of drug testing within the CJS should be undertaken with caution.

Britain is undergoing its biggest change in drug policy and practice ever — and most of it without a shred of evidence to back it up. Despite mountains of evidence that community treatment works, criminal interventions, such as DTTOs, are still being extended, expanded and re‐invented across the UK — at huge cost to the UK taxpayer and at the expense of other forms of treatment. Neil Hunt is part of a pan‐European research study looking at coercive treatment within the criminal justice system. We reveal what the government is not telling us about their crime agenda.

There has been an increasing realisation within government circles that gaining insight into how and why an intervention works or does not is as important as measuring any change that it brings about. Without understanding the mechanisms for change, ensuring that the intervention is effective when transposed to different contexts can be highly challenging. However, while the need for high-quality, robust qualitative research is recognised, the theoretical and methodological tools available to researchers within the field have not kept up. Government-commissioned evaluation requires a methodology that provides genuine insight into how policy and interventions work on the ground and findings that can be generalised beyond the specific samples upon which they are based. In order to fill this conceptual gap, NatCen Social Research has developed an approach to qualitative research that draws on a wide range of existing traditions but that is robust and coherent enough to meet the needs of CJS evaluations. Recent work has led to a new articulation of this approach and a new moniker, ‘critical qualitative theory’ or CQT. This chapter describes the key tenets of CQT and draws on three of published studies of interventions that are focused on or relate to the criminal justice system to illustrate the methodological advantages the approach brings. In particular, the chapter explores the different approaches taken by the authors to the issues of generalisability, the balance between inductive and deductive procedures and how they have approached analysing the data at a case and a theme level. The implication of the different theoretical and methodological choices made by the authors is then discussed in terms of the nature and quality of the authors’ analysis.

The links between substance use and offending are well evidenced in the literature, and increasingly, substance misuse recovery is being seen as a central component of the process of rehabilitation from offending, with substance use identified as a key criminogenic risk factor. In recent years, research has demonstrated the commonalities between recovery and rehabilitation, and the possible merits of providing interventions to substance-involved offenders that address both problematic sets of behaviours. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the links between substance use and offending, and the burgeoning literature around the parallel processes of recovery and rehabilitation.

This is provided as a rationale for a new treatment approach for substance-involved offenders, Breaking Free Online (BFO), which has recently been provided as part of the “Gateways” throughcare pathfinder in a number of prisons in North-West England. The BFO programme contains specific behaviour change techniques that are generic enough to be applied to change a wide range of behaviours, and so is able to support substance-involved offenders to address their substance use and offending simultaneously.

This dual and multi-target intervention approach has the potential to address multiple, associated areas of need simultaneously, streamlining services and providing more holistic support for individuals, such as substance-involved offenders, who may have multiple and complex needs.

Given the links between substance use and offending, it may be beneficial to provide multi-focussed interventions that address both these behaviours simultaneously, in addition to other areas of multiple and complex needs. Specifically, digital technologies may provide an opportunity to widen access to such multi-focussed interventions, through computer-assisted therapy delivery modalities. Additionally, using digital technologies to deliver such interventions can provide opportunities for joined-up care by making interventions available across both prison and community settings, following offenders on their journey through the criminal justice system.

Recommendations are provided to other intervention developers who may wish to further contribute to widening access to such dual- and multi-focus programmes for substance-involved offenders, based on the experiences developing and evidencing the BFO programme.

As the processes of globalisation continue and social networks evolve, the communities in which we live are becoming increasingly complex places. The ongoing processes associated with globalisation indicate that an unprecedented number of people are increasingly drawn economically, socially and culturally towards countries and areas that are perceived to offer the greatest opportunities for them and their families.