OPEN PRISONS TOLD TO GET TOUGH ON DRUGS

HENRY McLeish, the Scottish home affairs minister, will order a crackdown on
drugs in open prisons today after a string of damaging reports about opiate
abuse.

It is understood that he will call on the Scottish Prison Service to impose
a strict "one strike and out" policy on inmates of open prisons caught
taking drugs.

Last year two prisoners absconded from Castle Huntly open prison, near
Dundee, claiming they were trying to escape the hard drug culture in the
jail, even though inmates are sent there from more austere conditions in
closed prisons only after they have repeatedly tested drug-free.

In fact, 27 per cent of the inmates at Castle Huntly failed random drugs
tests last year.

It is understood that a report due out today on one of Scotland's two other
open prisons, Noranside jail, near Forfar, shows that not only are 14 per
cent of inmates testing positive for drugs, heroin is the drug of choice for
nearly two-thirds of those caught.

Elsewhere in Scottish prisons 44 per cent of positive tests show traces of
heroin.

"Part of the requirement to be sent to an open prison is you have to show
you are clean of drugs in a closed prison, but that regime is not being
continued in open prisons," a Scottish Office source said.

"We're saying that the SPS should introduce a policy that when you test
positive you're immediately returned to closed conditions. That is the
crackdown and that is what the SPS will do: if you test positive just once
it's one strike and you're out."

Confirmation of high levels of heroin abuse in open jails is likely to
reinforce suspicions that fear of mandatory testing is driving prisoners to
switch from cannabis, which lingers in the bloodstream for up to six weeks,
to highly addictive opiates which are less detectable as they leave the body
within as little as two days.

Confirmation that heroin is widely available at Castle Huntly came from a
former inmate, Gary Kennedy, 24, from Methil, Fife, who told Perth Sheriff
Court how he had run away from the jail after becoming a heroin addict
there.

His solicitor, Chris Fyffe, told the court: "He asked the prison authorities
for help with his heroin problem and was refused. His reason for absconding
was to seek help. He sought help in Fife and he no longer has that drug
habit."

Kennedy produced a letter from Fife Healthcare NHS Trust showing he had
sought the help of a drug counsellor immediately on leaving Castle Huntly.

Passing sentence last November, Sheriff John Wheatley said that he accepted
there was some truth in Kennedy's claims and did not send him back to
prison, sentencing him instead to two years' probation and 200 hours'
community service.

But Sheriff Wheatley gave less credence to a second prisoner who ran away
from Castle Huntly claiming that he was afraid his wife would leave him if
he went back on drugs. Alan Galbraith, 26, from Glasgow, was sentenced to
serve a further 60 days for absconding.

"When he was transferred to Castle Huntly he became aware that access to
drugs was easily available," said Galbraith's solicitor, Susan Kempton. "He
was keen to remain free of drugs and after a period of 13 days within the
prison the pressure on him to take drugs was too much."

In his last inspection of Castle Huntly, Clive Fairweather, the Chief
Inspector of Prisons, recommended "much tighter searching procedures and
other anti-drug measures".

Drugs readily find their way into open prisons through packages left at
gates or thrown over the wall into the grounds, as well as the riskier route
of visitors smuggling them in.

An SPS spokesman said: "Security levels in open prisons are much lower, and
prisoners are there on trust to a great extent, although they are still
subject to mandatory drug testing.

"At present they are given two chances before they are sent back to closed
conditions. Basically what is being recommended is zero tolerance of drugs
in open prisons and we have accepted that."