Despite the high prevalence of substance abuse problems in incarcerated offenders, the development and evaluation of treatment programs for the group is very rudimentary and lags behind current thinking and research activities in the substance abuse field. Alcohol and drug abuse are increasingly considered to be myriad collections of various clinical conditions. Emerging multivariate models have indicated the need to identify homogeneous subgroups of abusers in order to match them to appropriate treatment. This article describes a typology of substance-abusing offenders derived from application of multivariate statistical algorithms. Five types of substance abusing offenders are described, and recommendations as to the components of treatment required to address the needs of each group are provided.
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