STONY'S DRUG SCAN POLICY SLAMMED

Visitors Need Closer Screening, Judge Says

STONY Mountain visitors who test positive for having been in contact
with drugs should be barred from visiting inmates, an inquest into a
death at the institution says.

Michael Winzoski, 27, was found dead in his cell on Dec. 14, 1996,
and the report by provincial court Judge Ray Wyant ruled it death by
misadventure. Winzoski died of heart failure after a voluntary drug
overdose, said the report released yesterday.

Where he got the drugs wasn't clear, Wyant said, but Winzoski's
girlfriend was allowed to visit him even though she often failed the
drug scan visitors must go through.

Wyant's recommendations come 18 months after the inquest ended in
December 1999. The inquiry was delayed for two years due to an RCMP
undercover investigation into drug smuggling at the federal prison.
Two inmates and a Stony Mountain employee pleaded guilty to smuggling
drugs as a result of the investigation.

RCMP recruited a woman who was caught taking drugs into the
penitentiary to act as an agent for them. She took drugs into Stony
Mountain with the RCMP's knowledge, but Wyant said it's not clear
whether the drugs Winzoski took were part of those shipments.

'Appropriate'

"It is this inquiry's view that the actions of the RCMP were an
appropriate crime-fighting response to a real problem of drug
presence and trafficking within the federal penitentiary of Stony
Mountain," he wrote. "(Using an agent) was a legitimate way for the
police authorities to obtain the evidence necessary to stop one of
the ways drugs entered the institution . . . Even if the drugs that
killed Mr. Winzoski were, in fact, the same that came in on those
shipments, the RCMP are not culpable in his death."

However, Wyant made some recommendations on Stony Mountain's rules
governing drug screening and visits.

The inquiry heard that visitors are put through an ion scan, which
detects traces of certain drugs. Acceptable levels are determined for
each drug -- at low levels people could have accidentally come into
contact with the narcotic -- and failing doesn't necessarily mean the
person can't visit.

Wyant says any visitor who fails the test shouldn't be allowed a
visit that day and then be restricted to booth visits -- where the
visitor and inmate can't touch -- until three subsequent ion scans
are passed.

He had harsh words for conditions that led Winzoski to lie dead in
his bunk for as long as 13 hours before he was found.

"It is this inquiry's view that this is intolerable, unacceptable and
inexcusable," Wyant wrote.

Chris McKay, operations manager at Stony Mountain, said the
institution is reviewing the recommendations.