EXPERTS WANT FREE NEEDLES AT NEW JAIL

A panel of experts called for free condoms and needles in the planned
ACT prison at a drugs-in-prison seminar at the Legislative Assembly
yesterday.

Seventy per cent of male prisoners and 40 per cent of women prisoners
were injecting drug users, according to national figures, and a large
number had started injecting in jail, according to Gino Vumbaca.

Executive officer of the Australian National Council on Drugs and
formerly with the NSW Department of Corrections, Mr Vumbaca said the
first step was to acknowledge that it was not possible to stop drugs
getting into jails.

NSW was the only jurisdiction offering methadone in prisons, the
provision of which has been proven to reduce drug-related harm.

Generally, he said, drug treatments and programs available outside
should also be available in prisons. If anything the need was greater.

The coordinator of the Australian Intravenous League's National
Hepatitis C project, Jude Byrne, said prisons were havens for the
spread of infectious disease, through unsafe sex, unsafe injecting and
unsafe tatooing.

"Imprisonment dies not need to be garnished with exposure to illness,
cruelty and lack of medical care," she said.

"In the ACT we have the chance to do it right. We do not have to fix a
broken system, we can build a state of the art facility, that
acknowledges the reasons for prison and does not seek to add to the
difficulties already unherent in being incarcerated."

Bill Aldcroft, of ACT Prisoners Aid, said that help when prisoners
left the jail had to be planned.

Many prisoners left jail with only a brown paper bag containing all
they owned. Most were broke, had nowhere to live, and some were
halfway through drug treatment that did not continue outside jail. He
knew of two prisoners who had left jail with outstanding debts to
their dealers. Upon release they had robbed a bank not to live it up,
but to pay off the drug debt.

Expressions of interest for the establishment of the 300 bed facility
were called late last year, with construction scheduled to begin in
2001.

Seminar organiser and deputy chair of the Social Justice and Equity
Committee John Hargreaves siad he was concerned that crucial issues
had not been worked out before tenders were called.

The ACT community had the right to tell the tenderers what it wanted
in its community jail, rather than being told by temderers.