TENNIS BALLS, ARROWS BEING USED TO FUEL PRISON DRUG MARKET

OTTAWA - The national union for Canadian correctional officers has
asked the prison service to station officers in prison towers at all
times to help stop the flow of illegal drugs into prisons.

The union said bold tactics being used to get illicit drugs into
Dorchester Penitentiary and other prisons include putting them into
tennis balls or attaching them to arrows fired over the walls.

"When the towers are not occupied, drugs are regularly being thrown
over the walls into the institution," said the union website.

Another solution to block the drugs could be using the same netting
found in National Hockey League arenas to protect end-zone fans from
flying pucks, said union spokesman Lyle Stewart.

Erecting the nets atop the walls would be "cheap and easy," he said.

The arrows and the drug-filled tennis balls are tactics contributing
to "a dramatic rise in the number of drugs being launched into
penitentiary grounds," said a review of the prison service released
last December.

The review, by former Ontario corrections minister Rob Sampson,
recommended "enhanced perimeter control" and more use of
drug-detecting dogs, among other things.

Both the union and the Sampson panel see rampant drug use in federal
prisons as a safety threat to inmates and staff.

The union raised "drug-throwing" as an issue with the correctional
service in the summer of 2007.

The so-called "drug throwers" who have tried such stunts at
Dorchester have been caught, said Andre Veniot, a spokesman for the
correctional service in Atlantic Canada.

"Drugs do get in our prisons," Veniot said. "It's a fact of life and
a problem for correctional organizations around the world."

The measures intended to keep drugs out of Dorchester include
drug-sniffing dogs kept on site, ion and X-ray machines that detect
drugs, and searches of visitors, inmates and the premises.

Eighty per cent of the roughly 12,000 federal inmates in the system
at any time enter prison with a history of substance abuse, said
Veniot, indicating there's a ready market for drugs. Half of federal
offenders committed the crime that put them in prison while they were
under the influence of drugs or alcohol, said the Sampson report.

It argued preventing illicit drugs from entering penitentiaries is
one of the most critical challenges facing the prison system.

"The current offender population is one that will look to find every
vulnerability in security systems to introduce drugs into the
penitentiary," it said.

Getting drugs into prison also fuels gang-related trouble in Canadian
prisons, said the report.

Veniot said he was unaware of any specific recent change in the
staffing of the towers at Dorchester, but such decisions are best
made by the institution's managers.

The correctional service is reviewing the recommended measures to
keep drugs out of prison.