A recovered alcoholic is appealing for help in raising $1 million to finance an addiction treatment programme for Bermuda’s young offenders.“I call it an alternative lifestyle programme, not just drug and alcohol treatment,” said warehouse worker Bruce Gibbons, who feels traditional programmes available in Bermuda don’t go far enough to address the roots of addiction.Mr Gibbons hopes to lease a facility at Southside, St George’s, to treat up to 50 people for two years at a time.His idea is based on the “working, self-supporting community” that treats ex-abusers and ex-convicts at San Francisco’s Delancey Street Foundation.“My foundation would offer an environment that digs deeper into the psychological background with the younger offenders, who have a higher rate of being salvageable than older repeat offenders,” he said. “I am speaking of people 35 and younger. We have a lot of people in Bermuda on drugs and committing crimes who come from lower economic backgrounds, have little education, and very little of a social or cultural identity.”Branding prison “a waste of taxpayer’s money”, he envisages a non-profit foundation that would address psychological problems, offer education as an incentive, and expose residents to arts and culture.“The Delancey Foundation runs its own moving business, they sell Christmas trees and have purchased their own land,” he said. “I want to run a separate community that’s not just therapeutic, but that can use peoples’ talents to gain an income.”The problem is raising funds: half the anticipated $1 million initial outlay would be consumed by leasing alone, he said.Mr Gibbons said he hopes to cover costs through funding from charitable international companies combined with assistance from Government.“Anyone coming to the programme would have to get sanction through the parole board, because they would still be inmates,” he said. “I’d be trying to get people who were sentenced to prison for three to five years. I’d be working with the court system, so that if an individual can successfully complete the two years, they could get released sooner.”According to a spokesman for the Ministry of Justice, Mr Gibbons submitted a proposal several years ago to the National Drug Commission.“It was reviewed but not supported at that time,” the spokesman said.“Since then, the Drug Treatment Court Programme, which began in 2000, has been developed as well as the Right Living House in 2009, a therapeutic community within the Prison Farm Facility.“Both of these programmes are evidenced based programmes which have resulted in positive behaviour change in clients who have returned to the community transformed and productive individuals.”However, Mr Gibbons described existing treatment in Bermuda as “regular drug and alcohol programmes many offer housing and help with jobs, but I don’t believe isolating addicts from the public helps.“Bermuda is a small country and you can’t avoid the people and places you were around. You need more understanding of the psychological issues, and then you can work around it.”