STONY STOMPS STONERS

Pen Made Record Drug Busts in '06

They're clamping down on the number of convicts getting stoned at
Stony.

Staff at Stony Mountain Institution seized more illegal drugs in 2006
than in any other year in the prison's 125-year history.

Corrections officers made 75 seizures last year of narcotics and
contraband prescription drugs, carrying what the penitentiary calls an
"institutional value" of more than $248,000. The drugs were nabbed
before getting into the hands of inmates.

However, the union representing prison guards said the seizures
stopped only about 60% of the narcotics smuggled into the federal facility.

"Inmates will always find ways to get cleverer and cleverer to get
their drugs into the institutions. They've had to get better at it,
and they've gotten a little stupider, too," said Kevin Grabowsky,
regional president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers.

"People chuck stuff over the fence. They use bows and arrows, they use
tennis balls, they use dead birds -- a number of ways to put it into
an exercise yard that inmates have access to."

Improved Monitoring

The Correctional Service of Canada credits its recent success --
nearly triple the confiscations made in 2005 -- to vastly improved
monitoring and search techniques at the prison just north of Winnipeg
that houses 575 inmates. They say they are adapting to inmates'
ever-advanced methods of sneaking in and hiding drugs such as
marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, heroin and hallucinogens.

Adopting a zero-tolerance policy and increasing patrols, doing more
searches of vehicles and modifying fences and the size and shape of an
exercise yard have all shown results, Aimee Fortier, spokeswoman for
the medium-security penitentiary, told the Sun yesterday.

"We don't tolerate drug or alcohol use or the trafficking of drugs. If
you're making an attempt to introduce drugs to the institution, you're
facing a possibility of serving a sentence yourself," Fortier said.

Grabowsky said while Corrections is "making strides in the right
direction" in improving body and clothing searches, part of Stony's
success is due to a lack of smuggling sophistication among many
inmates and their outside supporters.