DAY WANTS TO TIGHTEN PRISON DRUG-SEARCH POLICY

Public Safety Minister Seeks To Prevent Children From Being Used To
Smuggle Drugs Into Jails

ABBOTSFORD - Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day says he is already
working to ensure that children are not used as unwitting mules to
sneak illicit drugs into federal prisons.

Day wrote last fall to the head of the Correctional Service of
Canada, asking that the drug search policy be updated so that babies
and young children visiting prisoners could not be used "to traffic
narcotics," his aide Melissa Leclerc said Thursday.

She was reacting to a news conference here by the Union of Canadian
Correctional Officers, at which a guard from Matsqui Institution said
he was threatened with discipline for calling the children's ministry
about a baby whose stroller had tested positive for cocaine last November.

Terry Leger, who is also the Matsqui union president, told reporters
that for the safety of the child, he felt obligated to alert the
children's helpline to the fact the test done when the baby visited
Nov. 11 indicated close contact with drugs.

"The concern right from the get-go was this child's safety," said
Leger. "I think we have an onus to protect children."

But when the ministry contacted Matsqui for more information, Leger
was called in by his supervisors and threatened with an investigation
for allegedly breaching the prisoners' privacy, he said.

Leger said he felt intimidated and discouraged from doing what he is
obligated to do under the law -- report any suspected abuse of a child.

"If some people see what I am going through, it might be a
deterrent," said Leger, who has been a correctional officer for eight years.

Terry Robertson, the union's regional president, said there have been
instances both in B.C. and nationally where children have been
discovered to be carrying drugs into the prisons.

And Robertson said with the increasing number of organized gangs
inside B.C. correctional facilities, the illicit drug trade among
prisoners is booming.

"The current gang crisis on the streets of Greater Vancouver is part
of the same war for control of the prison drug trade," Robertson
said. "Federal penitentiaries are awash in drugs because the people
who bring drugs to our inmates have little fear of arrest."

He said an increasing strategy is the use of children to smuggle the
drugs in. And Robertson said some institutions, including maximum
security Kent prison, do not even test children with a special
drug-detecting ion machine because they don't want to scare them.

Leger recounted another case at medium security Matsqui in which
visitor logs showed another woman, who twice arrived with a baby,
tested positive eight times between March and July of last year for
cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin and THC.

Despite the positive hits, she was allowed to continue with her visit
on three of those occasions.

"Clothing on the woman's baby tested positive for cocaine and meth
residues. Police were not called to investigate on any of these
occasions," Leger said.

In both cases, he was alerted to the findings of the tests by other
correctional officers and did not deal with the visitors himself.

But Leger said he has since encountered another two occasions in
which babies or small children have tested positive for drug residue.

Robertson said the correctional service needs a clear, consistent
policy denying anyone who tests positive for drugs access to the
institutions. And he said staff wanting to report to the ministry for
children should be supported, not accused of violating an inmate's rights.

"Rules and procedures change from institution to institution, even
from manager to manager," Robertson said.

The ion machine analyses small cotton swabs done randomly of
visitors' clothing. If they test positive for narcotics, they are
usually sent away without being allowed to visit, but are not
automatically searched.

The correctional service's B.C. spokesman, Dave Lefebvre, said he was
unable to comment on the union's allegations. He referred all calls
to Leclerc, who issued a short e-mail response to the issues raised.

She said Day's letter to Keith Coulter, commissioner of the
Correctional Service of Canada, said the minister wanted to make sure
the search policy "clearly supports the overarching priority of
deterring drug trafficking into penal institutions."

"Our government is determined to ensure that penitentiaries are drug
free," Day's statement said. "Keeping drugs out of our institutions
is vital for the safety of our correctional officers and for the
rehabilitation of offenders."

The Vancouver Sun revealed earlier this month that escalating gang
conflicts inside B.C. prisons over the drug trade has led to violence
among prisoners and security concerns for prison guards.

In Quebec last October, a woman and six-week-old baby visiting a
well-known gang member in prison were sniffed out by a narcotics dog.
Police were called and found 32 grams of heroin on the infant.