PRISON DRUG POLICY 'CREATING ADDICTS'

The State prison system is feeding the problem of drug addiction by turning
heroin users into methadone addicts, the NSW Opposition said yesterday.

Latest figures from the Department of Corrective Services show the average
daily number of inmates on methadone is 1,036 - one in seven of the prison
population.

The number entering jail while methadone-addicted in 2000-01 was 1,277 and
the number of methadone addicts who left the system was 1,828. The number of
prisoners who started using methadone in prison in the same year was 762.

Shadow Corrective Services Minister Michael Richardson criticised the
government policy on the drug, saying: "Methadone is known as liquid
handcuffs because it's tougher to shake than heroin."

He said the proportion of methadone addicts in the NSW prison system was
higher than that in other jails in the world.

"We have an opportunity to get offenders off drugs while in jail but we are
keeping them addicted.

"When they leave jail, they haven't shaken the habit, they are drugged up on
methadone. The system is setting these people up to re-offend."

Mr Richardson said NSW should investigate the privately-operated Acacia Jail
in Perth, where prisoners who were not on methadone when first locked up
were not given the drug while in prison.

"[And] all prisoners on methadone are weaned off it as soon as possible," he
said.

He said that when the Coalition was last in government in 1995, there were
significantly fewer inmates released back into the community on methadone
than came into the system on methadone. "That's how it should be," he said.

"But instead of using jail to shake addiction, this Government is feeding
addiction and taxpayers are paying to keep criminals on drugs.

"It is a ridiculous and ultimately self-defeating policy."

However, head of the Corrections Health Service Richard Matthews said the
methadone program in NSW jails was "one of the best in the world" because it
helped to reduce re-offending by inmates and protected them from heroin and
serious blood viruses.

Dr Matthews said that an important principle of the prison health system was
to maintain inmates on any legally prescribed regime which they had been
using before being locked up.

"You don't change their treatment just because they have been chucked in
jail," he said.

Dr Matthews estimated that more than 70,000 milligrams of methadone were
prescribed to prisoners every year. He said that to claim methadone was used
on inmates for social control was "nonsense"