We are often asked if RAPt is a religious programme. The answer is that RAPt is not a religious programme, but it does have a spiritual element.
What are the 12 Steps?
The RAPt programme is based on the 12 Steps developed by the Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous fellowships. These are a series of steps that those with drug or alcohol problems follow from the beginning of treatment throughout recovery. Step One asks the sufferer to accept his or her problem while the later steps provide techniques to help the addict to make personal changes.
Many people think that 12-step programmes are religious in their focus because the word,'God' is used in the literature. It should be emphasised that, although there is a spiritual aspect to this method, one of its primary ideas is to allow participants to develop their own belief systems.
Does this programme really work?
Yes. Twelve Step programmes are seen by both medical and legal professionals as an effective way for an addict to achieve the emotional and behavioural changes necessary to work through their problems and stay away from the substances that caused destruction in their lives.
The drug treatment programme used by RAPt has a clinical history that dates back to l949 when the Minnesota Model was founded in America from ideas developed by Alcoholics Anonymous.
The effectiveness of the RAPt programme was highlighted in 2003 when RAPt published independent research from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. In 1997, 200 prisoners were interviewed, some of whom had been through the RAPt programme and some who had not. Two years later, after the prisoners had been released, they were interviewed again, and asked about their drug use and their offending behaviour.
Of the RAPt graduates who were re-interviewed, over half were still clean, compared with only a fifth of those who had not been through the programme. Only 16% of the RAPt graduates had been reconvicted since their release, compared with 43% of non-graduates. These results far exceed results obtained from any other treatment programme in prison.
How much does it cost to go through a RAPt programme? Who pays?
The 12 week RAPt drug treatment programme costs approximately £3,500 per individual. This is inexpensive when one considers that the same amount would pay for only two weeks in private residential treatment.
The money to pay for treatment derives from two sources. Some of the funding is provided by the Prison Service. However, a substantial proportion of our funding still comes from charitable sources. In the year 2002-3, RAPt spent some £400,000 of charitable donations on providing the specialised training required by counsellors who work with substance misusers caught up in the criminal justice system. At this point in time, despite societal problems with alcohol abuse, the Government does not provide statutory funding for those whose alcohol use has lead them to commit criminal offences. It is thanks to Comic Relief that RAPt is uniquely able to provide an alcohol counsellor in HMP Holloway.