Since 1990 the Home Office Drugs Prevention Initiative has been piloting a community-based approach to drugs prevention. Small teams work with communities in their resistance to drug misuse; the projects draw help and support from local business people, voluntary workers and a wide range of statutory and non-statutory organizations. Research reported in this document was undertaken to describe and evaluate Get It While You Can (GIWYC), an arrest referral scheme for substance-abusing offenders in Brighton. Workers with the project made contact with drug- and alcohol-using offenders in order to assess their needs and refer them to appropriate services. The evidence from this evaluation suggests that the impact of GIWYC was considerable. All major stakeholders - police, local drug and alcohol agencies, court professionals, and clients - agreed that the scheme had helped to put a substantial number of substance-abusing offenders in touch with services offering assistance. A key component in ensuring that clients took up treatment was the level and nature of support provided by GIWYC workers, making it useful to term GIWYC a supported placement service rather than an arrest referral scheme. Figures, references