Jails must be Drug Free

02 Aug 2006
Evening Standard

The recent report by the Prison Service anticorruption unit and the Metropolitan Police highlights the number of corrupt prison officers. And it illuminates the problem of drugs in prisons and the role that prison officers play in bringing them in. This has been a problem since I worked in prison department headquarters as an idealistic young graduate nearly 30 years ago. One of the most notorious establishments for this was Holloway women's prison.

The prevalence of drugs in Holloway is particularly tragic. I have visited it as an MP and it is a sad, sordid place. Most women are inside for relatively small-scale crimes: fine defaulters, shoplifting, prostitution, chequebook fraud and the like.The majority of inmates are substance abusers. And there is a struggling detoxification unit. But, bizarrely, it is possible to go into Holloway clean and free of drugs yet come out addicted because of the prevalence of drugs there. Random mandatory drugs testing may even make the problem worse. This is because, while heroin disappears from the bloodstream relatively quickly, cannabis lingers on. So prisoners hoping to evade testing actually have an incentive to take heroin.

Visitors bring drugs in. But it has long been rumoured that prison officers also bring in a constant supply. And they do it, not just for financial gain, but because they reckon the women are easier to control if they are off their heads. While visitors are searched, prison officers are not routinely screened for drugs. I have raised this with Home Office ministers. But the prison authorities seem to prefer to turn a blind eye to the problem. Maybe the new report will force them to examine this issue again.

Men and women who are either on drugs or trying to obtain the money to buy drugs are responsible for much of the criminal activity that we see around us on the streets of London. Currently the prison system is just recycling the problem. So, before the Government builds any more prisons, it might make the effort to ensure that our existing prisons are drug-free zones. This would include: properly resourced detoxification units in all our prisons; support for inmates after detoxification; and, where necessary, physical barriers between prisoners and their visitors. And it would mean an end to the fiction that prison officers are not involved in bringing in drugs. Improving the administration of our prison service and tackling corrupt prison officers are essential if the Home Office is to be made genuinely fit for purpose.




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