1,300 held taking drugs into prisons

More than 1300 visitors to prisons have been arrested trying to smuggle
illicit drugs into jails in the past year, the Prison Service said
yesterday.

The scale of the arrests follows measures to curb the widespread abuse
of drugs in prisons, including the use of a mandatory drug testing
programme, more drug "sniffer" dogs and the installation of "amnesty
bins" at some prisons where visitors can dump illegal drugs without
being arrested.

Pam Wilson, the head of the Prison Service's order and control unit,
said there were plans to extend voluntary drug testing schemes to every
prison so that all inmates had access to them if they wanted to stay
clean.

At the same conference, organised by the London Policy Drugs Forum, Mike
Hough presented estimates showing that there were probably at least
100,000 problem drug users in England and Wales, spending an average of
UKP200 a week. "Their combined drugs bill is at least UKP1 billion a year,"
said the former senior Home Office researcher, who added that about half
this sum was raised through stolen goods being sold on to others.

For the 97 per cent of drug users who engaged in casual or recreational
use there was little evidence of links with property crime, but for the
3 per cent who were problem users the evidence of a link was
overwhelming.

"Problem users we interviewed spent on average UKP333 a week on drugs,
financing this through shoplifting, burglary, fraud, dealing and
prostitution," said Professor Hough of the South Bank university,
London.

Home Office figures, which show that one in five people arrested has a
drug problem, underline the nature of the link between crime and drugs.

At the other end of the criminal justice process, Dr Wilson said,
results from the Prison Service's mandatory drug testing programmes had
shown that about one in four inmates was using illegal drugs in prison,
mostly cannabis.

She cited results for London prisons which ranged from 35 per cent of
inmates testing positive in Pentonville and 25 pre cent in Wormwood to
only 8 per cent at Wandsworth.

Dr Wilson also quoted interim results from an Oxford Centre for
Criminology study of the drug testing programme in five prisons, which
disproved claims that there was widespread switching from soft drugs
such as cannabis, which were easily detected by the tests, to heroin and
other opiates, which quickly left the body.

She said there was considerable frustration that while mandatory drug
testing was in operation in all 137 prisons, drug treatment programmes
were only available in 59 of them.