A tough-on-drugs stance in the Canadian prison system harms prisoners

A new pilot program in two Canadian prisons is a sign that our prisons can change.

The department responsible for our federal prison system, Correctional Service Canada, announced this week that it will launch a pilot program for needle exchanges. A wider program is set to launch in January 2019.
Groups like the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network applauded the move. On the other side, the union representing correctional officers decried the program. They said in a statement, “Correctional Service Canada has decided to close its eyes to drug trafficking in our institutions.”
In fact, it is the opposite. A tough-on-drugs stance in the prison system harms prisoners and any other rehabilitative efforts.
A Correctional Service memo obtained by The Canadian Press in February told the Liberal government that “a program to provide clean drug-injection needles to prisoners could reduce the spread of hepatitis C by 18 per cent a year.” The memo also noted that a safe tattooing program that ran for two years was viewed positively by both inmates and staff alike. That program was cut by the Conservative government in 2007.
That government’s hostile approach to drug users led to the creation of Bill C-12, the “Drug-Free Prisons” act. At the time, Howard Sapers, then-correction investigator, described the proposed act as “not about making federal prisons drug-free or treating substance abuse. It is about punishing illicit drug use in prison.”
When it comes to drug use, experts have largely concluded that a public-health approach is the best way to go. This type of thinking is behind the push to decriminalize marijuana and to provide safe injection sites. By serving the needs of drug users in an open way, we can not only lower the use of drugs but also crime rates related to drugs. Our societies become healthier by treating, not punishing people for their problems.
“I think that everyone, whether you’re inside or outside of a prison, should have access to very basic health,” said Dr. Emily van der Meulen, an expert in needle exchange programs.
The rates of Hepatitis C and HIV in prisons have dropped over the last decade. Nonetheless, HIV rates in the prison population are six times those of the wider population.
In 2016, Dr. van der Meulen was part of a team that studied the issues and came up with several recommendations.
Centring the experience and advice of prisoners themselves, they found, was necessary for any needle exchange program to work. Says Dr. van der Meulen: “If you don’t consult prisoners, if you don’t work with prisoners, if you don’t actually include them in the development of these programs, you’re going to have all sorts of problems with the program.”
One key lesson their study came away with “across the board,” she said, was that confidentiality is paramount.
I also spoke to Rebecca Jesseman, policy director at the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, who cautioned that if prisoners have to apply to access the pilot program, they might not. A lot of inmates, she said, don’t want to be stigmatized for being a drug user, especially by prison staff.
People held in prisons are right to be concerned about the impact of admitting drug use to prison staff. Former corrections guards have described harassment and abuse towards one another and toward inmates themselves.
Clearly, there is an immense power imbalance that puts drug users at a massive disadvantage.
We have allowed our prisons to become storehouses for the problems we choose not to fix: poverty, violence against women, mental health and drug addictions. The people behind bars are also a reflection of who is left out: Black people, Indigenous people, people with mental health and drug issues.
A needle exchange program can’t fix that. But it should be read as the start of a change in our prisons, one that doesn’t punish drug users for needing drugs. It is a change needed outside the prison walls and well within them.

Vicky Mochama
Toronto Star
May 16, 2018