DRUGS IN PRISON
NO HIDING PLACE
Efforts to stop drugs from being smuggled into
prisons are failing – so why aren’t we tackling
prisoners’ drug use through universal testing,
argues
Neil McKeganey
SUCCESSIVE UK GOVERNMENTS
have
acknowledged that it is all but
impossible to stop drugs getting into
prisons. For many people, that
acknowledgement will seem utterly
inexplicable. Prisons represent the
single most controlled environment
on the planet, and if you can’t stop
drugs getting into prison what
possible hope is there of stopping
their proliferation anywhere else?
An estimated 38 per cent of
prisoners in Scotland have used illegal
drugs in prison, and a quarter of
prisoners in England say that drugs are
easy to get. The arrival of legal high
drugs, which are harder to recognise
and easier to conceal, only makes the
challenge of stemming the flow of
drugs into prison that much harder.
If we are unable to stop drugs
getting into prisons, then perhaps
what we should be doing is switching
our focus to stopping drug use. Drug
testing is our best means of
identifying what substances an
individual has used, and whether that
use is recent or in the distant past. We
can identify the use of cannabis,
cocaine, heroin and a host of other
drugs. At the moment though, drug
testing programmes are used within
prisons on a limited basis, with
relatively small samples of prisoners
selected for random, though
infrequent, testing.
If prisons were instead to mount a
massive programme of regular and
exhaustive drug testing of all
prisoners, the entire environment of
prison-based drug use would change.
Out would go the statistically small
risk of having your drug use
identified, and in would come the
certainty that staff would identify
which prisoners were using which
drugs, and with what frequency.
Recent research evaluating the
effectiveness of drug treatment in the
community has found that when
treatment is aligned with regular drug
testing, coupled with proportionate,
certain, and swift sanctions for those
testing positive, the treatment itself
becomes much more effective.
There will be those who will object
to any suggestion of using drug
testing to try to stem the demand for
drugs within prisons. Yes it will be
expensive, but so too is the current
investment in a security system of
drug searches and drugs surveillance
that is failing to stop drugs getting
into prison. There is an analogy here
with our capacity to tackle drink
driving. We could provide all the
education and all the counselling in
the world, discouraging drivers from
drinking alcohol, but the game
changer in tackling drunk driving was
the breathalyser – the capacity to ask
a driver to blow into a tube and get an
immediate read-out of his or her
alcohol consumption. It was the
certainty of that measure and the
knowledge of the punishment that
would follow that enabled us to tackle
the problem of drunk drivers.
Effective prison-based drug
treatment and rehabilitation could
become the norm rather than the
exception, and we would have made a
major advance in tackling our drug
problems within wider society. The
alternative? Continuing costly
investment in a system that fails to
stop drugs getting into prison, and
continuing costly provision of prison-
based drug treatment that is
undermined as a result.
Professor Neil McKeganey is
director of the Centre for Drug Misuse
Research, Glasgow. A sociologist who
has carried out research on tackling
drug problems in Scotland over the
last 25 years, he is currently carrying
out research evaluating the
effectiveness of drug treatment
within UK prisons.
challenging times
My biggest challenge, as an addict who
has been off drugs for over seven years
now, is coping with the entourage – or
let’s call them friends or drug friends.
Some are still in active addiction, some
are still seeking help, others (sadly) are
still in denial. I’m struggling with my
unconscious need to want to help
however I can, and I forget that this kind
of change has to come from within.
I find myself preaching abstinence
when I know how that makes me look
and sound, as I remember people and
family and drug workers looked like fake
priests to me, who didn't even believe
what they were preaching. Not to
mention that my own journey, and my
responsibility towards myself, should
dictate staying away till someone wants,
from the bottom of their soul, my hand
for that first step in admitting that help
is what they sincerely want and need.
Hence I'm off preaching and I try to
lead by example. Maybe that’s the best
help I can provide – showing them that
I've done it, and that what one individual
can do, another individual can do too,
with the right environment, the right
help and above all, the willpower to take
a life-changing decision.
Aboudi Naboulsi
Russell BRand:
help oR hindRance?
I wonder howmany
DDN
readers
watched the documentary of Russell
Brand commenting on the drug war (
End
the Drugs War
, BBC 3). Word on the street
is that outspoken ‘recovering (or not)
folk’ were not happy about the content,
and others were just grateful that said
issues are getting any airtime at all. One
articulate morphine-scripted friend said,
‘the problem is that the message he gives
makes it OK for treatment providers to
radically reduce harm reduction services’,
and that should worry us all at a time
where overdose deaths have doubled in
the UK and the government is planning
to build more private prisons.
To give credit where it is due, Brand
is an ardent advocate for ending the
war on drugs and in his book
Revolution
he gives a whole page to
recommendations that demand nobody
ever be charged or arrested for mere
possession of (currently illegal) drugs.
For that I, for once, am grateful. On the
other hand, he doesn't seem to get the
critical importance of services which
provide active users with drugs and
even safe, clean places to take them.
Letters and Comment
14 |
drinkanddrugsnews
| April 2015
‘If prisons were
instead to mount
a massive pro-
gramme of regular
and exhaustive
drug testing of
all prisoners,
the entire
environment of
prison-based drug
use would change.’
