DRUGS IN PRISONS

 

24. May. 2010. – 11:20:38

To argue in the negative is always a difficult task. To remember negative thoughts or activities or perhaps the repression of such provides food and drink for those in the business of "therapy". For those even with elephantine memories the lack of memories of continual media exposure of prisons seems somewhat surreal. Perhaps as a society we are more pre-occupied with crime and criminals than we were in the past. Certainly prisons and all aspects of their place in the criminal justice system fill more media columns and TV hours than was the case twenty years ago.

There are annual reports, overcrowding, suicides, and of course drugs. I remember about the late 1980s listening to a report by a New York health officer on the Today programme on Radio 4 telling the audience that his city`s overwhelming crack problem would also be Britain`s in ten years such is the commonality of this modern plague. And so it has come to pass.

On 12th April I posted "CAN DRUGS BE EXCLUDED FROM PRISONS?". There have always been unsubstantiated reports that prison officers prefer their charges to be semi docile having had their regular fix than to be faced with 1000 offenders on cold turkey. Whatever the truth my impression is that if there were a will to control drugs entering prisons and money were available then the way would be found."

A couple of weeks ago a two part reality TV documentary of life in Wormwood Scrubs was screened. I`ve visited two large jails but not the Scrubs. They are not surprisingly depressing places for the visitor....three to a cell about the size of a garden shed where the inmates eat and defecate with only a curtain to separate the two bodily functions. In both establishments the senior prison officer who was our escort.....we were a group of JPs, lawyers and a judge.........was at pains to explain the strenuous efforts to curb drugs entering the buildings and their consequent circulation through the prison. The TV programme relayed the same sentiments from prison officers at the Scrubs....sniffer dogs, strip searching and sanctions available to offenders caught. But then we were shown the visiting hall[s] where despite CCTV and roaming warders with dogs physical transfer of drugs was not the most difficult task because there was no physical barrier between convict and visitor. I can understand the argument that to allow such contact can keep prisoners mentally stable and looking forward to re-joining their families when their stretch is completed. But in my opinion it is a bit like having the car`s air conditioning on full blast in the desert with the window open.

In the Sunday Times yesterday David Leppard in a thoughtful article provided some interesting information from an as yet unpublished report from the Policy Exchange think tank. It says jail prices of heroin, cocaine and cannabis are ten times street value and consequently a great temptation to prison staff to smuggle in and sell on. Of the 90,000 inmates of Britain`s prisons at any one time 14,000 were using drugs at least once a week. The Met police in 2006 found at least 1000 of the ten thousand prison officers were receiving income from corrupt practices including smuggling drugs.

Certainly if one third of prisoners is high or looking forward to their next fix it must make life easier for the staff who are without doubt very poorly paid for the job they do.

There are those and I am one who advocate the decriminalisation of currently class A- class C drugs and concerted efforts to treat drug addiction as a medical problem as opposed to a criminal problem. The consequences of such addiction are often ruinous to those close to in addition to the addict him/herself and in prisons drug addiction and suicide are not wholly dissociated bedfellows.

Dame Anne Owers the Chief Inspector of Prisons told an audience last week that British prisons have too many inmates suffering with mental health problems. She told her audience that when mental hospitals were closed down in the 1980s and 90s Care in the Community was promised. “In practice that has translated into Care in Custody. A large percentage of prisoners are mentally ill and prison officers are not trained to deal with them.” I think there is not one magistrate or judge who would disagree with those remarks.

I posted yesterday that short sentences are necessary. They are. But so are places of refuge and treatment for those who cannot cope with their lives. They are called asylums and every town or county used to have one. Now these buildings are often blocks of flats. Another example of misguided thinking and planning by those playing Monopoly with real money and real populations and who walk away from the very mess they created. Will it be any different this time?