Pubdate: Wed, 23 Feb 2000 Source: Australian, The (Australia) Copyright: News Limited 2000 Contact: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/ Author: John Ellicott DRUGS GO INTO JAIL 'BY THE TRUCKLOAD' STANDOVER merchants in the country's largest women's jail forced weaker prisoners to vomit up their doses of prescribed methadone so they could feed their own addictions, a state parliamentary committee has been told.Prisoners were also forced to place tampons in their mouths to absorb the drug for others. The committee inquiring into the increase in the prison population in NSW was told drugs "come in truckloads" to Mulawa women's prison in western Sydney. Some warders were involved in the distribution of narcotics, the committee heard in evidence given in camera at the jail last week, and nearly half the weekend visits to the prison involved drug smuggling. Inmates complained they could not get off the drug carousel because there were not enough counsellors - only two to look after 281 women. Group sessions promised by authorities had not been held for six months because of staff shortages, one of the counsellors told the committee. Counsellor Ute Geissler said about 90 per cent of the 281 women in Mulawa had a drug problem, about 10 per cent more than the figure acknowledged by authorities. An inmate told the committee that many women at Mulawa would not go to pick up their methadone medication because they would be set upon by other prisoners. She said when she first went to jail she was asked for a bowl and handkerchief and couldn't understand why. "Because they had cracked down on the methadone taking, the girls had to swallow it in front of the staff and they (the tough inmates) made the girls go around the corner and put their fingers down their throat, and they vomited up and strained it through the hanky and into the bowl and then they drank it, the methadone," the inmate said. Another inmate told the committee some women were forced to put tampons in their mouths so it soaked up the methadone, which the tougher prisoners later collected for their own use. They described a "nightmare scenario" on visiting days because "half the visits each weekend are related to obtaining drugs". Ms Geissler complained that "we do not have enough staff". "Some (inmates) only want to see us because the court told them to do that, or it would look good for parole or something like that, but others are genuinely interested and we do not even have the time to sort that out," she said. NSW Opposition Leader Kerry Chikarovski said the statements showed "the drug problem was effectively out of control in the state's prison system". The NSW Department of Corrective Services said sniffer dogs were used on all visitors and all staff had bags searched before beginning work, a spokesperson said. There was a shortage of counsellors because of funding restrictions. - --- MAP posted-by: Derek Rea