Pubdate: Fri, 19 Jan 2007
Source: Kingston Whig-Standard (CN ON)
Copyright: 2007 The Kingston Whig-Standard
Contact:  http://www.kingstonwhigstandard.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/224

SAVE THIS PRISON PROGRAM

Former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow recently spoke to a seminar 
at the University of Toronto, where he reiterated some of the 
highlights of his acclaimed royal commission on the future of health 
care, including the commission's lofty goal of making Canadians "the 
healthiest people in the world." The biggest challenge, Romanow told 
students, is changing government attitudes. "Governments have to view 
the decisions they make through the prism of 'will it invest in the 
well-being of our society - in our health and overall quality of life 
- - or will it diminish those things?' "

The federal ministry of public safety's decision to cancel an 
experimental prison tattoo program aimed at reducing the spread of 
AIDS and hepatitis will do nothing to improve the well-being of 
society. Although Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day claimed the 
$960,000 program wasn't "demonstrably effective," a study by the 
Correctional Service of Canada viewed the program through a different 
angle of the Romanow prism and found it did.

The Correctional Service's findings should not be underestimated. 
Prison administrators aren't known for their willingness to embrace 
change. Yet a draft evaluation by the CSC found the program had "the 
potential to reduce harm, reduce exposure to health risk, and enhance 
the health and safety of staff members, inmates and the general public."

None of these findings is new or particularly surprising to Dr. Peter 
Ford, a Kingston doctor who proposed the tattoo program and tested it 
in Joyceville Institution 14 years ago. Ford thinks a lot like Roy 
Romanow - and, as a former consultant to the Correctional Service, 
has hands-on experience with the prison culture as well.

Ford is also the author of a number of groundbreaking research 
studies that discovered an epidemic of hepatitis C in federal 
penitentiaries in the mid-1990s. The virus, which inflames the liver 
and can lead to cancer, spreads like wildfire in prisons because 
inmates use dirty needles to ink tattoos and inject illegal drugs. 
Legalizing the tattoo program was intended to reduce hepatitis 
infections - and to a lesser degree, HIV infections - by providing 
prisoners with sterile equipment. By all accounts, it appeared to be working.

The guards' union, meantime, is on record as opposing the 
government-funded tattoo program, arguing that it undermines 
workplace safety. Giving inmates clean needles, the guards say, is 
like handing them a lethal weapon. The prevalence of HIV and 
hepatitis, however, suggests prisoners can get their hands on 
potentially harmful weapons whether or not they're supplied by 
Canadian taxpayers.

Ford has been calling for a national debate on the hepatitis epidemic 
for years, warning that the burden on the health-care system will be 
astronomical. Most inmates will eventually leave prison and make a 
new home in a community. Often, they choose to settle in Kingston. 
"Hepatitis C involves a long, expensive death with long hospital 
admissions," Ford says. "It really is a horror story."

Ford is fighting to save the tattoo program. He believes it can be 
run for a lot less than $960,000 by making prisoners pay for their tattoos.

The Correctional Service of Canada should be lobbying to keep the 
program as well. By fighting to preserve this preventive health 
initiative, the CSC will be helping to fulfil the Romanow 
commission's vision of making Canadians the healthiest people in the world.

The CSC will also prove that government attitudes can - and do - change.
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MAP posted-by: Elaine