Pubdate: Thu, 28 Sep 2000
Source: Edmonton Sun (CN AB)
Copyright: 2000, Canoe Limited Partnership.
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Author: Mindelle Jacobs

DRUG POLICY FOR PRISONS IGNORING REALITIES

If drug-using prisoners were never let out of jail or just shot for
breaking the rules, the Corrections Canada zero tolerance policy would work
like a charm.

Vast numbers of inmates would continue taking drugs, prison administrators
would continue pretending there isn't a problem and society would continue
ignoring the issue because, let's face it, who cares about a bunch of cons
high on heroin or whatever else they scrape up off the cell floor?

It's a little more complicated, though, when you live in a country where
justice is supposed to be tempered by compassion and rehabilitation is
deemed to be as important as, if not more so than, punishment.

In the real world, most prisoners return to the community after relatively
brief periods behind bars. They also, unfortunately, bring their drug
addictions as well as hepatitis, HIV and other infections with them.

By then, of course, it's no longer a prison problem - it's society's burden
- - and Corrections Canada can pretend all over again that it is effectively
cracking down on drug use behind bars.

Laurence Stocking knew all about these destructive mind games. He's the
killer who was found dead of an accidental heroin overdose in Ontario's
maximum-security Millhaven penitentiary in November 1998, only months after
being involuntarily transferred from the medium-security Joyceville
Institution.

He was also a vociferous advocate for prison health reform who was
instrumental in convincing other inmates at Joyceville to participate in
blood studies conducted by two local doctors.

The findings were alarming - one-third of the inmates tested (including
Stocking) had hepatitis C and one-quarter of them were injection drug
users.

Stocking, 39, gave interviews to CBC Radio about the study in 1998 and - go
figure - subsequently found himself shipped over to Millhaven's
top-security unit.

We'll never know the real reason behind his transfer. At this month's
inquest into his death, prison officials denied it was because Stocking
aired the prison's drug problems in the media. Instead, they cited security
reasons.

But it doesn't take a wild stretch of the imagination to believe
Corrections Canada would have been incensed with Stocking for going public
with a story about rampant drug abuse in prison.

The inquest, which ended Tuesday in Kingston, Ont., heard what all medical
professionals working with inmates know and what prison brass are loath to
admit.

"Whatever's available on the street is available in prison," a Joyceville
con testified. It's just more expensive, he said.

To Dr. Mary Pearson, who helped test the inmates at Joyceville, the answer
is clear. Drug-addicted prisoners need clean needles, methadone treatment
and counselling.

The bleach kits inmates now receive simply don't work when 40 people are
sharing a needle, she says.

She found it ridiculous that she could treat a drug-addicted inmate's
abcess but couldn't stop him from sharing an HIV-infected needle with
others by providing clean syringes.

"(Stocking) was a wonderful soldier in the fight towards harm reduction. We
need more people like him," she says.

But it is easier politically to punish drug-using prisoners than treat
them, says Benedikt Fischer, a University of Toronto public health expert.

"The prison system is so far removed from society at large that people
don't give a (bleep) about it," he says. "People just don't deem prison
inmates worthy of health care."

And that's why Stocking died.
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