Substance use and abuse in Guyana’s prisons: self-medication by inmates

The ‘Survey of Individuals Deprived of Liberty: Caribbean 2016-2019’ produced for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) across six Caribbean countries – including Guyana – highlights the conditions of prisons, the characteristics of inmates in prisons, the factors behind their incarceration, the judicial processes leading to their convictions, and inmates’ perspectives of re-entry into society. One theme that emerges across these aspects of Caribbean prison worlds is substance use, both prior to incarceration and within prison walls. For example, the study illustrates that individuals who use drugs and/or alcohol before committing a criminal offence have higher levels of recidivism than those who did not consume such substances. This observation suggests, as does the international literature on drug treatment programmes during custody, that substance misuse is a risk factor in criminal recidivism.