Prison officers in NSW have threatened to walk off the job if the incoming O’Farrell government introduces a needle exchange program in NSW prisons. The Liberal Party announced on the weekend it would consider implementing a trial prisoner needle exchange program if elected next month.
Harm minimisation advocates welcomed the decision, but the ALP and the union representing prison workers say it would encourage illegal drug use and put jail staff at risk.
“We are strongly opposed to any type of needle exchange program in the prisons,” Matt Brindley, chairman of the Prison Officers Vocational Branch of the PSA, told Crikey. “There would definitely be some type of resistance to it. We’d have to sit down and work it out, but there would be very swift and very strong industrial action.”
John Ryan, CEO of drug policy group Anex, said drug use is already rampant in the state’s prisons.
“It’s illegal to have needles in prison but that doesn’t stop them getting in,” he said. “Sometimes they come in through corrupt staff such as prison officers … Sometimes they come in through visitation and sometimes prisoners themselves bring them in. People will do desperate things like inserting needles in their anus to get them in.”
A 2009 NSW Inmate Health Survey found that 43% of prisoners used illicit drugs in jail. Most — 97% of those who injected themselves with drugs — reported using a shared needle during their last injection, putting them at risk of contracting HIV and other diseases.
Ryan says prisoner needle and syringe programs are running successfully in 12 countries, including Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Germany: “It’s not a crazy idea, it’s a very sensible idea and we just need a bit of courage for its implementation.
“This is about protecting families of prisoners; it’s about protecting everyone’s dollar because virus prevented from being transmitted means less health costs down the track.”
ACT Chief Minister John Stanhope has voiced his support for a needle exchange trial at Canberra’s Alexander Maconochie Centre.
A comprehensive 2004 review of international prisoner needle exchange programs found they had reduced needle sharing, blood-borne disease transmission and needle-stick injuries for prisoners and staff. The review found no instances of needles being used as weapons.
Such evidence hasn’t swayed NSW Corrective Services Minister Phil Costa, who said in a statement that a needle exchange scheme would create a “drug paradise” in the state’s prisons: “Offenders are put in jail for good reason; they are not put in there to have a drug party. The last thing we want to see is our prison population [in] a drug-induced haze.”
Chris Puplick, former chair of the Australian National Council on AIDS, Hepatitis C and Related Diseases, told Crikey Costa is a “gibbering idiot”. “He has been minister for prisons and during that time has not had one single success in terms of doing anything about the drug problem in prisons,” Puplick, a NSW Liberal MP in the 1980s, said.
“What he has done is he has presided over a system in which there are drugs in prison, prisoners share needles and the rates of HIV infection go up. We’d all like to see a situation where there are no drugs in prison but that is not going to happen.”
What was that journalists were saying about O’Farrell having no policies and remaining a small target?
Prison reform almost always gets swept under the carpet by populist governments offering “tough on crime” policies of interference in judicial independence, without knowing or caring what goes on behind the walls or what sort of broken people emerge blinking onto the streets after doing their time. AIDS? Gang r@pe? Learning dog-eat-dog social habits to survive? All part of the punishment for crime, according to many. And we turn around and act superior about Abu Ghraib.
Judges respond to this by sentencing less, not more. Unlike most politicians, judges frequently see the effects of once salvageable people having been treated like animals by the state which claims to set moral standards, and they respond with shorter sentences and more suspended sentences–sometimes with tragic results, but what else can they do?
John Stanhope of the ACT has stood out from this crowd, taking enormous amounts of political flak for the cost of creating one of the world’s best maximum security prisons, designed to take away a convicted criminal’s liberty without taking his self respect or his life too.
I hope Barry O’Farrell’s early probing of the idea of prison harm minimization is the first bold step along the road less travelled, the one Governor Macquarie trod in balancing tough punishment against a second chance.
Phil Costa seems to think that allowing needles is akin to legalising drugs – it isn’t. If you catch someone with drugs, you can still prosecute them for this.
How much are the prison officers who oppose this making from supplying the prisoners?
Drugs are already getting in, so this is making it safer. The syringes are not pre-loaded with drugs!!!. Just one less thing to share or buy in jail
I doubt if corrupt prison guards would be financially harmed by a clean needle supply. If anything, opponents in Corrective Services are likely to fear an increase in that corruption, and they should be listened to. Whether we go down the needle path or not, I think the most significant thing is that the incoming government is interested in prison reform despite the lack of TV cameras there.
It makes a lot of sense to me, particularly if there’s already been a study or studies overseas. I think the workers at prisons are similar to many in the police force – fixed and rigid in their views, and won’t educate themselves on better methods and options to sort out serious issues. I hope this means that Barry O’Farrell will keep the ‘safe injection rooms’ at Kings Cross, which has also shown that it saves lives and enables addicts to explore safe options for getting free of drugs.
I also hope that Barry O’Farrell puts the last Minister who was responsible for young offenders on to the payroll, or at least asks for his ideas and researches them. He was an intelligent young man with positive ideas on a change in methods. He took them to Cabinet and was refused. He resigned the next day, and prompted the resignation of Fr Chris Riley, who’s worked with young people(who’d lost their way?) for decades now. He believed that the new ideas would bring forth positive results – at last! Typical of these so-called Labor leaders in NSW. Shame on them!
The figure re people in jails with drug, alcohol and related problems are very high. Over 80% of inmates in Gouburn jail are on medication for mental illnesses. About the same proportion or more did not finish their high school education. A high proportion of drug offenders etc came from a physical or violent background. And just as important, there’s no real concrete tried and true program that helps offenders, particularly young offenders to turn their lives around upon release!
This idea is just one of many positive programs that could make a real difference. It’s not ‘going soft’ on crime or criminals at all!