PRISON BREAKOUT

THE RATES OF DISEASE AMONG INMATES IS ROCKETING UPWARDS

Six weeks into his prison term at the Springhill Institution for
conspiring to traffic marijuana, Michael Patriquen suddenly became
very ill. His joints and muscles began to burn. His cognitive skills
began to dim as insomnia took over. Extreme flu-like symptoms and
fatigue meant even walking became a painful ordeal. It took two fellow
inmates to carry the Nova Scotia man from his cell to the prison
cafeteria just to fetch a coffee.

Patriquen, whose federal licence to grow and use marjuana helps him
stem the chronic neck pain from a 1999 car accident, was at a loss to
explain his deteriorating health. With his weight dropping quickly,
the 50-year-old husband and father of two was transferred to
Westmorland Institution, a minimum security prison in Dorchester, N.B.

It was there blood tests informed him he had been infected with
Hepatitis C, a fatal disease with no cure, that attacks the liver.

"Every joint and muscle in my body just burned as if they were on
fire. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I was sick like the worst case
of the flu one had ever had. It was total exhaustion. I couldn't get
any relief. I was too tired to get up, but too awake to stay in bed. I
just lay there and suffered," Patriquen says.

Living for 18 months on a diet of liquid food and sleeping pills, he
barely recognized himself when he was released this March from
Westmorland.

"When I came out, there wasn't much left of me. I was pretty much
dead. I was 150 pounds. I was 204 (pounds) when I went in. I just
looked horrendous," Patriquen says.

What particularly upsets Patriquen, and part of the reason the
imposing but well-spoken mustachioed man wants to tell his story, is
that his struggle with Hep C is becoming increasingly commonplace in
Canada's prisons.

According to Carolyn Ploem, rates of Hep C infection among inmates at
New Brunswick's three federal prisons are between 28 and 40 per cent.
The total spread of the disease is not known because testing is
voluntary and is not tracked by corrections officials, says Ploem.

"Hepatitis C is rampant in both provincial and federal institutions,"
says Ploem, a Halifax-based research consultant who worked on a
project last year to educate inmates at Westmorland on the dangers of
Hep C. "The risks don't stop behind bars."

Sharing needles remains the most likely way for an inmate to contract
an infectious disease, Ploem says, although unsafe tattooing and
sharing things like razors are also risks.

Patriquen, for his part, says he was infected with the virus after
cutting himself while cleaning a blood-splashed reception cell during
his first day at the Springhill Institution in Springhill, N.S. The
room, he later learned, had been occupied by a Hep C-positive inmate
only hours earlier, and Patriquen claims he found blackened needles
and burnt aluminum pop cans used to ingest drugs.

"They've got a raging epidemic going on inside. It's something
(corrections officials) find very embarrassing. They're given control
of people and expected to guard their health and they just can't do
it," Patriquen says.

Hep C is only one concern. Infection rates of HIV among inmates,
already 10 times the level of the Canadian population, are also on the
rise. At some prisons, as many as 12 per cent of inmates have HIV.
Nearly two per cent system-wide are infected and the rate among female
prisoners is more than double that. The number of AIDS cases jumped
from 14 in 1990 to 235 out of a federal inmate population of about
12,815 in 2002.

And worse yet, says Ralf Jurgens, executive director of the
Montreal-based Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, like Hep C the problem
is likely under-reported because only about a quarter of inmates
undergo the voluntary testing.

"Unfortunately, we've had cases where people have come into prison
without an infectious disease and leave with one. When you have
certain types of drug use, intravenous drug use, there's a high risk
diseases will be passed on. It's a big concern of ours," says Ed
Muise, Atlantic region spokesman for the Correctional Service of
Canada, which operates the province's three federal prisons.

In 1996, after studying the success of clean needle exchanges in
European and Australian prison systems, a committee established by
Correctional Service of Canada recommended starting a similar program
within its own walls as a way to combat soaring HIV infection rates.
This has yet to be done.

"The need for a needle exchange in prisons has been stated repeatedly,
and Correctional Service of Canada has stated repeatedly it is looking
into the issue," Ploem says.

Correctional Service of Canada contends it is taking the issue of
disease seriously. It has started offering bleach to prisoners as a
way to disinfect needles, even though Ploem says there's little
evidence bleach kills Hep C effectively, and inmates caught with drug
equipment are still punished. A pilot project is also starting soon
that will offer safe tattooing methods for inmates.

But with no needle exchange, the result is a prison system that breeds
disease and threatens public health, says Jurgens.

"Most people hold the wrong conception that prisoners are behind walls
and they'll stay there. The reality is most prisoners are in prison
for a short period of time for non-violent crimes. They're members of
our community, and if we do not protect their health, we're failing to
protect the health of the community," says Jurgens. "This is a serious
public health issue and there is no shortage of evidence that needle
exchanges can work. But corrections officials don't want to do that
because it would be seen as condoning drug use. It's a hard sell to
Canadians."

In the past 10 years, 49 federal inmates were officially recorded as
dying of drug overdoses while behind bars. But some contend the
official record under-reports the problem, chalking up overdose deaths
to natural causes.

With easy access to intravenous drugs, needle sharing among inmates is
rampant. Needles become highly valuable on the prison black market,
and one needle will be shared by as many as 15 to 20 inmates.

Patriquen insists there's little awareness among the inmates he lived
with about the dangers of sharing needles.

"It's difficult to smuggle syringes in so that's why there's so few of
them," Patriquen says. "Any new arrival to the intravenous drug
community is going to use a needle shared by dozens of other guys, and
he's going to get a lot more than just a high. These guys have no idea."

James Miller, who runs treatment programs for addicted inmates through
the John Howard Society of Saint John, says the availability of drugs
in New Brunswick's prison system is so widespread that people are
often jailed with little effect on their drug habits.

"They get into the prison system and continue to be abusive to drugs
of all kinds over the course of time that they were incarcerated.
(Drugs are) plentiful. They're coming out onto the street no better
prepared, in many cases worse prepared, than they were before," Miller
says.

And inmates are coming out with new addictions to stronger opiate
drugs like Dilaudid and Oxy-contin, powerful prescription painkillers
that are quickly becoming the leading source of addiction among many
low-income communities in New Brunswick.

Miller is among those who argue random urinalysis testing and other
prison security measures make dilaudid tablets the drug of choice in
prison over softer drugs such as cannabis. These pill-based drugs are
easier to smuggle in, more difficult to detect on a person's body and
leave the user's blood system much more quickly than marijuana.

"A lot of these guys would say 'I just can't be smoking pot because
it's going to stay in my system for 30 days,' " Patriquen says.
"However, they go out and get a dilaudid pill, grind it up, borrow
someone's syringe and stick it in their arm, and it's gone in 12 hours."

Despite the stepped-up efforts of corrections officials, Canada's
prisons are a veritable farmer's market for narcotics, thanks in large
part to the work of the country's rich and powerful organized criminal
gangs. Success appears evasive in the fight to stem both the supply
and the demand for drugs inside prisons.

In New Brunswick, Miller suggests regionally-based gangs have
increasingly become involved in the prison drug trade.

"We've been left off the circuit for many years, but unfortunately now
we seem to be connected with it. Now it seems there's obviously profit
here to be made," Miller says.

For drug suppliers, the attraction is obvious. Prisons are a cornered
market, where a population heavy on addiction and desperation can
drive drug prices up to 10 times their street value.

"Those with drugs become very powerful. You create in jail a hierarchy
for organized crime, who are attracted to the potential for profit. A
good portion of the violence in prisons is around drug debts and
intimidation, and it's because you've got people desperate to use
drugs in an environment that's ruthless," says Graham Stewart,
executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada. "The more you
make people desperate, the more value there is in getting this stuff
into prison, the more people will find ways to smuggle it in."

The potential supply routes are hard to plug. The correctional service
points out that one medium-security institution housing 650 offenders
has about 1,905 people coming and going through its doors in a given
week, in the form of visitors, volunteers, staff, contractors, inmates
on conditional release and delivery personnel. Drugs have been
discovered hidden inside everything from food, shampoo bottles,
infant's diapers, cellphones, and in every imaginable nook and cranny
on the human body.

Sgt. Robert Power, the RCMP's director of criminal intelligence for
New Brunswick, says prisons represent a valuable market for organized
crime in the province. Power says these gangs are based around the
province's main urban centres and have connections with suppliers from
the larger Italian, Asian and biker gangs in Quebec and Western Canada.

Although authorities believe the country's larger organized crime
gangs have little presence in the province, both Saint John and
Hillsborough-based Bacchus outlaw motorcycle gang and the Damners
Motorcycle Club, which has a chapter in Grand Falls, have affiliations
with the Hells Angels.

"There are organized drug trafficking networks operating within the
province, in different areas of the province, whether it's Bathurst,
Moncton or Saint John. And they look after their own local areas,"
Power says. "And generally speaking, the same sources that provide
those narcotics on the street, are likely the source of the narcotics
that are making their way into the institutions."

Just because an inmate is behind bars doesn't mean their connections
to their drug networks on the outside end, Power says. Visitors are
often requested to smuggle drugs in, and prisoners released on weekend
parole can be pressured to pack contraband back into the facility.

"Organized motorcycle gang members that are incarcerated have a level
of influence over inmates and they would exploit them and their
visitors accessing the institution, either through threats of violence
or promises of favour," he says.

There's no question drugs in jails are big business. In a single 2001
operation, federal corrections officers seized drugs worth an
estimated $5.67 million in jail prices. The value of the drug market
inside Canada's provincial and territorial prisons systems, which more
than 100,000 Canadians pass through each year, is anyone's guess.

Considering most corrections authorities agree they're only catching
about 10 to 15 per cent of all drugs smuggled into their institutions,
the drug market among the roughly 12,800 federal inmates in Canada
could, by some estimates, be worth a whopping $20-million or more a
year to the prison economy.

In the Atlantic region, nearly 80 per cent of federal inmates have
some sort of substance abuse problem. Besides creating an enormous
profit potential for those selling drugs, it also poses a serious
security problem as powerful elements of organized crime struggle for
control of the drug supply.

"There's a lot of money to be made, and as police increasingly target
organized crime, we're getting an influx of multi-millionaires inside
our system. And they have not only influence but affluence, and it's
very difficult to curb their activities once they're inside," says
Julie Keravel, chief of security and intelligence for Correctional
Service of Canada.

Through the use of intimidation, violence, and manipulation or
corruption of correctional officers, criminal gangs exert enormous
influence inside prisons. One particularly telling example comes from
the head of the service's organized crime intelligence unit, Luciano
Bentenuto.

He told a Vancouver conference last November how members of a powerful
motorcycle gang at one federal institution convinced other inmates
they needed a different brand of pasta sauce in their prison kitchen.
The prison authorities eventually conceded, and the sauce - which was
imported exclusively by one Canadian company - was shipped to the
prison by a trucking firm affiliated with the motorcycle gang. It was
later learned the importer, to corrections officials' chagrin, was
also controlled by organized crime gangs, and hidden inside the cans
of sauce was heroin, cocaine, and other drugs.

Authorities at the Donnacona Institute, a federal maximum security
prison west of Quebec City, discovered last October someone was
shooting heroin and hashish-filled arrows into the inmates' exercise
yard from a nearby forest. Donnacona is home to some of Canada's most
notorious organized crime gang members, including the Hells Angels,
the Banditos and the Indian Posse. Earlier that same month,
corrections authorities at the institution confiscated $40,000 worth
of drugs that had been smuggled into the prison inside tennis balls
thrown over the exercise yard's security wall.

But Muise says the high-profile motorcycle gangs and other
heavyweights who rule the lucrative drug trade in the rest of Canada
have made few inroads in this province's federal prisons. Instead, he
says the most influential gangs in New Brunswick's institutions are
prison-based - that is, groups with little organization outside of
correctional facilities.

Although he describes it as a "constant battle," Muise contends the
introduction of ion scanners and drug dogs at Dorchester, Westmorland
and Renous have reduced the volume of contraband entering those
institutions.

His national counterpart isn't so sure.

"I can't say there are less drugs now. Certain substances have
decreased, but are there fewer drugs today? No," says Keravel. "We
will never completely empty our institutions of drugs. However, we
will never give up."

Miller says more is needed than simple prohibition to stop the
prevalence of drug use among inmates.

On April 1, the New Brunswick government instituted a tobacco ban in
its five provincial jails in Bathurst, Moncton, Saint John, Madawaska
and Dalhousie. Public Safety Minister Wayne Steeves said at the time
the ban would promote a safe and healthy environment at its
correctional facilities. But Miller argues all the ban has done is
move tobacco onto the prison black market, upping the price and giving
gangs another commodity to control.

"They've taken a problem that was already there, and instead of
addressing the actual problem and try to get people off of tobacco,
they've just made it another traded commodity. And it's probably the
worst of all the traded commodities, because there are so many in
prison that do smoke," he says.

The costs on the system are also increasing as more members of
organized crime gangs are put behind bars. Medical expenses rise as a
result of increasing incidences of violence. More prisoners are
seeking refuge in prison infirmaries, and more staff are requesting
leaves of absence. Requests to be placed in voluntary segregation, by
inmates fearing for their own safety, are climbing.

Called "checking out," prisoners who amass sizeable drug debts will
request placement in voluntary segregation in an attempt to avoid
physical harm from dealers.

"Guys will get in debt, and all of a sudden they can't pay their debt.
So their case becomes very difficult to manage because there's money
owing, and it can lead to violence, there's no question about it. It
very challenging," Muise says.

Keravel refuses to say how much Correctional Service of Canada spends
on security to keep drugs out of its institutions, only that
correctional officers spend a "good portion" of each day searching for
drugs, and that drug prohibition is the number-one drain on security
resources.

According a recent report from the John Howard Society of Canada,
roughly $2.1-million was spent last year on urine testing,
$2.7-million was spent on drug detection equipment (including ion
scanners), another $350,000 is spent each year maintaining and
operating those ion scanners and $1.4-million was spent over three
years on drug dogs.

About 11 per cent of inmates in random urinalysis tests consistently
test positive for drug use. Another 14 per cent refuse to take the
test. In some inmate surveys, 11 per cent of 4,285 federal prisoners
reported having injected since arriving in their current penal
institution. In some regions, up to 23 per cent of prisoners said they
had injected drugs since coming to jail. Inmates, for their part, will
also do everything they can to throw off urine tests, including
drinking vinegar.

In 2001, the Auditor General's office estimated federal correctional
facilities spent about $169-million enforcing drug prohibition, or
about $13,200 per inmate. If the Auditor General's assessment is
accurate, that's about one-fifth of the cost of incarcerating a male
offender for one year.

Although Correctional Service of Canada does a better job than most of
its provincial counterparts when it comes to treatment for
drug-addicted offenders, only about $12 million of the $169 million
annual anti-drug budget is spent on rehabilitation and methadone
treatment programs.

But while as many as 80 per cent of offenders have some kind of drug
or alcohol abuse problem, a national survey conducted by Correctional
Service of Canada in 2001 found that provincial and federal prisons
directed an average of under 17 per cent of their total treatment
program resources specifically towards fighting substance abuse.

Patriquen, meanwhile, is awaiting answers from a battery of tests he
hopes will give him some indication treatment of his Hep C is
possible. As far as he's concerned, Correctional Service of Canada is
legally responsible for destroying his health.

"This could kill me. They've got this problem on their hands and
they've really done nothing. They knew they had a problem with HIV in
prisons in 1994. They struck a committee, the committee made
recommendations, and they don't have the political courage to follow
through on those recommendations," he says. "The rates (of disease)
just keep getting higher every year. Innocent people such as myself
are infected with a fatal disease, and they just keep their mouths
shut."

For the John Howard Society, Patriquen is a walking example of the
more than 97 per cent of all offenders in Canadian prisons who are
eventually released back into the general public, and indicative of
the increasingly sick correctional system.

Stewart looks at the numbers and grows frustrated.

"If you don't do something other than just incarcerate people or put
in place measures that are intended to punish people for drug use as
opposed to keeping people healthy, we're going to have an enormous
problem in our communities and jails are going to be the incubators of
the that problem."