CHANGE IN FOCUS ON JAIL DRUGS

Drug Tests Under Review

THE CHIEF Inspector of Prisons in Scotland, Mr Clive Fairweather, no
longer believes that drugs will overwhelm the jail system.

He stated this yesterday while calling for a more focused anti-drugs
policy in Scotland's jails.

With the more coherent drugs strategy being developed by the Scottish
Prison Service, he was hopeful that a lot could be done in the future
to reduce the number of prisoners returning to the Community with drug
habits which led to more crime.

Launching his annual report, Mr Fairweather said he had "written a
long essay on drugs" because they pervaded an awful lot of prison
life, It was people turning to crime for drugs in the community which
had pushed up the prisoner population and in turn, prison
overcrowding.

"Drugs are the root of many of the problems inside prison, like
suicide, like violence, and if people come out with the same drug
problem, we are in a vicious cycle - more drugs, more crime, a return
to prison and more overcrowding," he said.

Prison was, however, an opportunity for the whole community to do
something about one of the greatest scourges of our time. Although he
and his inspection teams had been told repeatedly by prisoners that
many were turning away from cannabis use because it can be detected by
mandatory drug testing for up to three weeks, and towards opiate use
because heroin's half-life in the body is only three days, proof that
this was really the ease continued to elude them.

He is suggesting to the SPS that there may now, after a year, be a
need to completely review and redirect mandatory drug testing to
target only those who pose the greatest threat to secure custody and
those in most need of the opportunity to change. There was merit in
the argument that MDT was working most effectively against those with
the least corrupting drug habit - cannabis use.

Mr Fairweather also suggested more equitable punishments across all
the prisons for drug abuse, incentive schemes, including possible
in-cell TV for those remaining off drugs, more use of reception
testing to assess the size of drug problems early and more targeting
of resources at young offenders who were most likely to reoffend.

He praised the efforts of the SPS over a broad front, adding: "Looking
to the future, we believe that a mixture of MDT, education, addiction
programmes and incentives, together with the power of family
influence, could help turn the tide of drug misuse which previously
had been threatening to engulf the penal system."

Secretary of State for Scotland, Mr Donald Dewar, said he shared Mr
Fairweather's belief and welcomed the fact that l7 out of the 22 penal
establishments in Scotland now offered drug-free areas to suitable
prisoners and that by spring about a quarter of the available capacity
would be drug-free.

Meantime, a report from the Commons select committee on home affairs
criticised soaring prison rates in England and Wales, warning that
locking up more and more people was unsustainable, expensive and
ultimately ineffective in the long-term goal of protecting the public.

They called for more effective use of community sentences, including
electronic tagging and home detention curfews, but criticised the lax
way some community sentences were enforced and the lack of research
into which ones were successful in keeping criminals away from more
crime.

Paul Cavadino of NACRO said the report was a sea change away from the
'prison works' philosophy.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry