FINDING FREEDOM IN JAIL (LTE 2)

Certainly drug-using offenders out of prison are better targets for drugs
tests than those in prison. But the situation for in-prison testing is by
no means as bleak as is sometimes made out. If significant numbers of
prisoners are acquiring heroin habits while confined, that ought to be as
much a concern as the spread of any other life-threatening disease, and
testing with sanctions ought to be part of the response.

Tests can be run very cheaply - about pounds 3 a time - and can be focused
on inmates most likely to be using based on their prior histories and on
the results of random tests. Prison life is defined by a mass of privileges
and amenities, many of them trivial when viewed from outside.

Manipulating those minor "goodies" ought to give prison governors more than
adequate capacity to punish detected drugs use.

Professor Mark Kleiman University of California