FREE RIDE FOR DRUGS

Inquiry Hears of Jail Smuggling

Keeping illegal drugs out of the Calgary Remand Centre is an impossible
feat, the facility's deputy security chief told a fatality inquiry
yesterday into the morphine overdose death of an inmate.

Since corrections officers don't examine inmates' body cavities, prisoners
are free to smuggle drugs into the Remand Centre by placing them in their
orifices, Malcolm Parken told an inquiry into the Nov. 19, 2001, death of
Calgarian Reginald McLeod, 39.

"If a person's going to put something in their body, it's impossible to
stop it," said Parken, who's worked in the corrections system for 30 years.

He said in some isolated cases where such smuggling is suspected, inmates
are sent to a hospital where doctors are asked to perform internal exams,
"but they're reluctant to do so, for some reason," added Parken.

Provincial court Judge Cheryl Daniel was aghast at the admission, insisting
there must be a way for authorities to thwart the transport of drugs.

"I can't believe you're telling me it's carte blanche for anyone to secret
drugs up their rectum and they get away with it," said Daniel.

McLeod, a familiar face to remand staff, was found dead in his cell beneath
a blanket, a syringe containing morphine in his shirt pocket, his face
smeared with blood.

The inquiry heard McLeod had acquired 10 morphine tablets that a city
police report alleges were smuggled into the facility by another inmate,
later breaking them down for use in a syringe.

Parken said he wasn't privy to an allegation "a major shipment of drugs was
to arrive at the centre," just prior to McLeod's death, information
included in the police report.

Daniel wondered why such information wouldn't be shared.

"Do you and the police never talk about things like this -- is there a cone
of silence?" she said.

Parken and other Remand Centre corrections officers also said once drugs
are in the facility, it's difficult to ferret them out.