About RAPT

RAPt is a charity offering treatment to alcoholics and drug addicts caught up in the criminal justice system.

It helps offenders to recover from addiction and to help prevent them from continuing the cycle of drug misuse and criminal activity.

RAPt now runs eleven intensive substance abuse treatment programmes for addicts in ten prisons. With the support of the prison service, programmes now operate within Aylesbury, Downview, Coldingley, Wandsworth, Everthorpe, Littlehey, Send, Swaleside, Norwich and The Mount.

These 12-step, abstinence based programmes have foundations in the teachings of Narcotics and Alcoholics Anonymous, and have proved extremely successful in helping prisoners regain control of their lives and their offending.

Official research has shown that following release from prison, graduates of the RAPt programme are more than twice as likely as non-graduates to abstain from substance use and half as likely to be reconvicted.

RAPt is in the process of developing residential treatment and support services for addicts in the north and the Midlands and has recently opened a community based programme in the London Borough of Southwark for released prisoners and young people, extending its work outside the prison walls.

Our history

In 1991, a group of people (some of them recovering alcoholics and addicts), inspired by work they had seen in American prisons, set up a charity to meet the needs of drug addicted prisoners.

A year later they opened the first intensive drug rehabilitation programme in a UK prison at HMP Downview in Surrey.

Over the next ten years this programme was rolled out in additional prisons increasing the number of vulnerable prisoners RAPt was able to help.

In 2000, RAPt became the first organisation to have its treatment programme accredited by the Home Office - the official seal of approval.

RAPt is currently extending its work outside the prison setting so it can also help those living amongst us in our communities.