SAVE THIS PRISON PROGRAM

Former Saskatchewan premier Roy Romanow recently spoke to a seminar
at the University of Toronto, where he reiterated some of the
highlights of his acclaimed royal commission on the future of health
care, including the commission's lofty goal of making Canadians "the
healthiest people in the world." The biggest challenge, Romanow told
students, is changing government attitudes. "Governments have to view
the decisions they make through the prism of 'will it invest in the
well-being of our society - in our health and overall quality of life
- - or will it diminish those things?' "

The federal ministry of public safety's decision to cancel an
experimental prison tattoo program aimed at reducing the spread of
AIDS and hepatitis will do nothing to improve the well-being of
society. Although Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day claimed the
$960,000 program wasn't "demonstrably effective," a study by the
Correctional Service of Canada viewed the program through a different
angle of the Romanow prism and found it did.

The Correctional Service's findings should not be underestimated.
Prison administrators aren't known for their willingness to embrace
change. Yet a draft evaluation by the CSC found the program had "the
potential to reduce harm, reduce exposure to health risk, and enhance
the health and safety of staff members, inmates and the general public."

None of these findings is new or particularly surprising to Dr. Peter
Ford, a Kingston doctor who proposed the tattoo program and tested it
in Joyceville Institution 14 years ago. Ford thinks a lot like Roy
Romanow - and, as a former consultant to the Correctional Service,
has hands-on experience with the prison culture as well.

Ford is also the author of a number of groundbreaking research
studies that discovered an epidemic of hepatitis C in federal
penitentiaries in the mid-1990s. The virus, which inflames the liver
and can lead to cancer, spreads like wildfire in prisons because
inmates use dirty needles to ink tattoos and inject illegal drugs.
Legalizing the tattoo program was intended to reduce hepatitis
infections - and to a lesser degree, HIV infections - by providing
prisoners with sterile equipment. By all accounts, it appeared to be working.

The guards' union, meantime, is on record as opposing the
government-funded tattoo program, arguing that it undermines
workplace safety. Giving inmates clean needles, the guards say, is
like handing them a lethal weapon. The prevalence of HIV and
hepatitis, however, suggests prisoners can get their hands on
potentially harmful weapons whether or not they're supplied by
Canadian taxpayers.

Ford has been calling for a national debate on the hepatitis epidemic
for years, warning that the burden on the health-care system will be
astronomical. Most inmates will eventually leave prison and make a
new home in a community. Often, they choose to settle in Kingston.
"Hepatitis C involves a long, expensive death with long hospital
admissions," Ford says. "It really is a horror story."

Ford is fighting to save the tattoo program. He believes it can be
run for a lot less than $960,000 by making prisoners pay for their tattoos.

The Correctional Service of Canada should be lobbying to keep the
program as well. By fighting to preserve this preventive health
initiative, the CSC will be helping to fulfil the Romanow
commission's vision of making Canadians the healthiest people in the world.

The CSC will also prove that government attitudes can - and do - change.