JAIL UNIT WITH HALF INMATES ON DRUGS

Shotts Induction Centre Tops Prison Abuse League

DRUG barons, murderers and the most dangerous prisoners in Scotland are
relaxing in their cells with heroin and other hard drugs.

More than half the 50 inmates at the maximum security National Induction
Centre, a separate unit within Shotts prison which only takes prisoners
serving eight years or longer, are showing positive for drugs in random
mandatory tests.

The rate of positive tests is half as high again as other maximum security
jails and more than twice as high as at Scotland's largest young offender
institution, Polmont. NIC inmates are testing positive for opiates rather
than for soft drugs such as cannabis, it is understood.

The NIC governor, John Gerrie, confirmed: "It is true, we are over 50 per cent.

"It is not entirely surprising, given that a large number of our prisoners
have been involved in illicit drug activities and that they are all
starting out on very long sentences.

"Some of them are facing more than two decades in prison and won't even be
considered for liberation until well into the next century. They're going
through all kinds of adjustments, as they start to realise what this long
sentence means to them and to their families."

Mr Gerrie added: "We are not being complacent, far from it.

"What we want to do is to introduce an addictions worker, to inform them
about the harm they are doing to themselves with drugs and reinforce that
is important to stay healthy."

Drug-taking is rife in Scottish prisons, although most inmates only have
access to minute quantities of drugs smuggled in by family and friends,
much of which has been heavily "cut", or diluted with flea powder and other
impurities.

In Aberdeen's Craiginches jail, where a prison officer had his throat cut
by a prisoner on Monday, Kitkat chocolate bars have been withdrawn from
sale because inmates were using the silver paper to "chase the dragon", the
slang term for smoking heroin.

But the level of positive tests at the NIC is nearly twice as high as in
other prisons. In Perth, a maximum security jail which takes some long-term
prisoners, positive drug tests are understood to be 35 per cent.

In Polmont young offenders institution, where all the prisoners are under
21, fewer than a quarter of inmates are testing positive.

Full details of the drug test failure rate at all Scotland's jails are due
to be published by the Scottish Prison Service next month.

Long-term prisoners will spend an average nine months in the NIC at the
start of their sentences, being assessed and analysed and put through
various intensive courses, before they are sent on to Perth, Glenochil or
Shotts main jail to serve the rest of their sentence. They include west
coast drugs barons who have made a fortune from their illegal trade and
international drugs smugglers.

The normal penalties for being caught taking drugs have little meaning for
them - docking up to two weeks prison pay, at UKP6.50 a week or adding a
maximum of 14 days to a 20-year sentence.

A prisons insider commented: "If your release date is April 2018, it is not
going to make much difference to you now if you are getting out two weeks
later.

"People serving life sentences have no idea when they're going to get out
and the idea their sentence is going to be extended by a very few days is
really not the issue.

"We tell them if they are not going to kick their drugs habit they are
going to have a hard time in prison, as they put themselves at the mercy of
the people who supply drugs."

A spokesman for the Scottish Prison Service said that there were now moves
to introduce weekend drugs testing, to clamp down on the syndrome of
prisoners getting high during the extra long hours they spend locked up on
Saturdays and Sundays.

Till now prisoners have only been drug tested during the week. Rumour has
it that many inmates are switching to heroin at weekends, secure in the
knowledge that it leaves no trace in the system after a couple of days.
Cannabis lingers in the body for up to six weeks.

The spokesman added: "A lot of the drugs problems at the NIC is the nature
of the prison.

"Mr Gerrie is dealing with virtually every high profile prisoner in
Scotland. He has got some very, very difficult and unusual people in his
jail. A lot of them are the major drug dealers."

A report on the NIC by Scotland's prisons inspectorate is due out tomorrow.