Motivational Interviewing Delivered by Existing Prison Staff: A Randomized Controlled Study of Effectiveness on Substance Use After Release

Abstract

A sample of 296 drug-using inmates in 14 Swedish prisons was randomized during 2004-2006 into three intervention groups; Motivational Interviewing delivered by counselors with workshop-only training, or by counselors with workshop training followed by peer group supervision, and controls. Drug and alcohol use was measured by the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) at intake and at 10 months after release. Complete data from 114 clients were analyzed by a stepwise regression analysis. All three groups reduced alcohol and drug use. Limitations in the study are discussed and future research is suggested. The study is financed by grants from the Research Committee of the National Prison and Probation Administration.

Substance use and problem awareness among drug-involved prisoners in Norway

“…Single-session motivational interviewing has been found to increase self-efficacy regarding the capacity to abstain from drugs, and detoxified inpatients were more likely to proceed to the preparation/action stages of change (Berman et al, 2010). Evidence of the effectiveness of motivational interviewing among drug-involved offenders has also been reported (McMurran, 2009;Forsberg et al, 2011).…”

Are Non-Pharmacological Interventions Effective in Reducing Drug Use and Criminality? A Systematic and Meta-Analytical Review with an Economic Appraisal of These Interventions

“…The other four studies (producing five publications) were conducted in Sweden [40], China [41], Spain [42,43], and Australia [44]. Six trials did not specify the sample gender [15,40,45,46,47,48], six trials contained female only samples [34,35,44,49,50,51,52], nine trials (and 13 publications) contained only male adult offenders [53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65]; and 22 trials (and 25 publications) contained male and female adult offenders [13,16,41,44,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81,82,83,84,85,86,87,88,89,90]. Eight comparisons considered young and/or juvenile offenders [16,49,56,57,66,…”

“…In a further eight studies a good description of the random sequence was provided resulting in a rating of low risk of bias [48,57,64,67,70,78,85,92]. The final five studies were rated at high risk of bias presented random sequence methods which caused concern [40,45,52,65,68]. …”

“…Three studies provided adequate descriptions and were therefore rated at low risk of bias [14,52,63]. The remaining six studies were classified as high risk of bias [40,45,67,74,85,86]. …”

“…In the majority of studies, blinding was rated as unclear by the reviewers ( n = 25). In a further seven studies, risk of bias was considered low [40,52,56,57,68,78,92]. The remaining eight studies were rated at high risk of bias from a lack of blinding [14,45,50,63,64,74,85,86].…”