LEADING ARTICLE - HARD DRUGS, SOFT RULES

There Should Be Zero Tolerance Of Heroin In Prisons

Some 70 per cent of suspects have drugs in their system when they are
arrested. Since only the most serious of offenders are sent to jail, it is
perhaps no surprise that prisons are rife with convicts who want to take
drugs. What is more surprising is that they can do so with such apparent
ease: drugs in prison seem to be almost as readily available as on the
street. The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Sir David Ramsbotham, has now
accused prisons of being in the grip of drug barons, as many as ten per jail.

Yesterday Sir David rowed back a little. While it might have been fair a
few years ago to say that prison staff turned a blind eye to drugs, it is
not so now. Mandatory drug testing and closed circuit televisions have been
introduced, while searching has become more frequent, sometimes with
sniffer dogs. Now the Prison Service is proposing to ban prisoners from
physical contact with visitors if they have been caught with drugs. But
that will not stop visitors to other inmates from bringing in drugs. Still
drugs are obtainable. In the criminal justice system, the law must surely
be upheld.

Drug dealers in jails know that they have a ready market. Anything that
makes time pass more quickly or boredom more bearable will be in demand.
Some inmates arrive as addicts; many more will leave in that state.
Bullying and intimidation are commonplace, and debts are easy to run up and
hard to pay off.

Cannabis use has been tolerated in some jails because it calms aggressive
prisoners. Heroin, however, has few redeeming features. It is extremely
addictive and encourages recidivism. In order to finance a heroin habit, an
ex-prisoner is likely either to steal or to deal once out of jail.

Mandatory drug testing, introduced in 1995, may be having a perverse and
unintended effect. Because cannabis can be detected in the body up to a
month after having been smoked, prisoners are tempted to switch to heroin,
which is just as cheap and stays in the system for only 48 hours.
Recreational drug users are turned into junkies. A survey by the Institute
for the Study of Drug Dependence found that, after one year of drug testing
among prisoners, the proportion found taking opiates (mainly heroin) had
doubled, while the figures for cannabis had dropped by some 20 per cent.

Neither drug should be condoned in jails, but it is surely wrong to design
incentives for inmates to move from soft to hard drugs, which do much more
harm both to the individuals and to society. For the balance to be tipped
the other way, the penalties for being caught with heroin should be
toughened relative to those for cannabis.

Prisons should do their best to help those who are already addicts to kick
their habits. Too few jails have their own rehabilitation units, where
inmates can be treated and kept separate from continuing drug users. For
the future, however, the new drug treatment and testing orders in the Crime
and Disorder Bill may succeed in keeping addicts out of jail and in helping
them off drugs altogether.

Meanwhile, governors must institute a "zero tolerance" regime for heroin.
If it means barriers between visitors and inmates for those who have been
caught with the drug, so be it. Prisoners should be using jail as a means
for coming off hard drugs, not starting a new habit. All the rules,
regulations and penalties should be designed with that aim in mind.