SMUGGLERS USE INVENTIVE WAYS TO GET DRUGS INTO PRISONS

Even Dead Birds Used to Sneak in Contraband, Committee
Hears

Smugglers continue to find novel ways to get drugs to Canada's federal
inmates, including launching tennis balls -- even dead birds -- filled
with contraband over perimeter fences and into exercise yards, a
parliamentary committee heard Thursday.

In some cases, outsiders shoot arrows over prison walls with drugs
stuffed in their shafts or taped around them, while in other instances
drugs will be delivered using old-fashioned slingshots, said Don Head,
commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada.

"We still have a lot of challenges," Head said. "As we put our time
and energy to choke off the drug supply at one spot, people become
quite innovative at looking at how to get drugs in."

Thursday's hearing was the first in a series of meetings the House of
Commons public safety committee plans to hold to study how drugs and
booze get into the prison system and how they affect the
rehabilitation of offenders and the safety of correctional officials.

Last year, there were 1,700 drug seizures in federal institutions, the
committee heard. About 80 per cent of convicted offenders arrive in
prisons with a history of substance abuse. Head testified that
contraband is not only being sent over fences, but being smuggled into
prisons by visitors, who conceal drugs in body cavities and other
places, including in babies' diapers.

Inmates have been known to pay between $200 and $2,000 just for a
pouch of tobacco.

A very small number of prison staff, including correctional officers,
food service workers and psychologists, have also been caught
smuggling drugs. There were 12 such cases in the past year, resulting
in dismissals, he said.

Head said in 2008, the federal government provided the agency $122
million over five years to detect and thwart drug smuggling.

That money has helped to increase the number of drug sniffing dog
teams and allowed prisons to install thermal-imaging and infrared
technology to help detect people sneaking up to prison grounds.

The percentage of inmates testing positive for drugs in random urine
tests has dropped from 11 per cent to about 7.5 per cent -- a positive
sign, Head said.

But Pierre Mallette, national president of the Union of Canadian
Correctional Officers, testified that while new tools have made it
more difficult for drugs to get into prisons, there remains a thriving
"underground economy" controlled by money-driven inmates who have
affiliations to organized crime and gangs.