Vol. 454 No. 2
7 Mr. M. McDowell asked the Minister for Justice if she will respond to recent reservations expressed by the Governor of Mountjoy Jail about the use or extension of the methadone maintenance programme in the jail; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [10416/95]
The Deputy may be referring to a recent newspaper article which attributed to the Governor of Mountjoy Prison certain views about the introduction of a methadone maintenance programme. My policy in regard to methadone maintenance is developed in consultation with all relevant interests, including, in particular, medical interests and is implemented by those interests. Any decisions taken will be based on such consultations.
I am anxious to introduce a methadone-based treatment programme for short term prisoners who have been part of such a programme prior to committal. Appropriate arrangements are being finalised to enable this to be done in the medical care unit of Mountjoy, probably from the end of the current year.
The policy in relation to long term prisoners and also for those short term prisoners who have a drug dependency problem but who are not on methadone maintenance, is to provide humane detoxification and I am currently preparing the necessary plans to advance this proposal.
Will the Minister accept that Mountjoy Prison is awash with drugs and that there is not a prison in Ireland that is drug-free or which it is practical to make drug-free because of the physical arrangements? Will she indicate what she intends to do to prevent people who go into Mountjoy drug-free from coming out with a drug habit?
There are far too many drugs in our prisons. The use of the term "awash with drugs" is obviously good for catching a headline.
It is true.
One should be careful about using an emotive term such as that. Drugs are being brought into Mountjoy Prison and other prisons. I will outline some of the steps I have taken since coming into office to deal with this matter, one of which was the cause of some hilarity when I announced it, but sometimes very simple practical measures will cut down on the availability of drugs in prison.
They are brought in through the doors, not by other means.
Obviously the Deputy knows little about this matter. One of the main ways in which drugs became available in Cork prison was by being hurled over the walls from a neighbouring industrial estate. I provided resources to put a net on top of the wall and also to erect a more secure fence around the indusrial estate to ensure that access point is cut off.
Workers are at present finishing the building of a search room in Mountjoy. Unfortunately, a number of visitors bring drugs into the prison. To introduce a system whereby visitors are denied access to prisoners would be inhumane — we may have reached the stage where such a step is necessary — and very often visitors help prisoners to rehabilitate. We have introduced a special search room whereby after each visit prisoners are individually searched fully — I use that word very carefully — to ensure they have not had access to drugs during the visit. Prisoners going out on remand or attending court will also be searched upon return.
I am not a fool; I believe it is not very easy to fully ensure that drugs are not brought into prisons. The fact that a person can carry £500,000 worth of ecstacy in a bag in their pocket gives an idea of the scale of the problem, but I am determined to do what I can to deal with it. A number of steps have been taken such as raising barriers in the visiting room, installing closed circuit television cameras and preparing a separate room in prison for prisoners who are known to receive drugs. Those prisoners are denied visits for some time and when they resume they take place in a very closed secure area where there is a glass barrier between them and their visitors. This is not a matter on which I have given up. I have taken steps since coming to office and will continue to take steps to resolve the problem.
The Minister could transfer Jake from Rosslare to Mountjoy.
Jake belongs to the Customs, not the Garda.
Will the Minister accept she is only tinkering with the problem and that, in line with international experience, what is required is a properly secured drug detention centre where addicts can be treated and to which courts can remand addicts?
I thank the Deputy for reminding me of that matter. Another part of my proposals is to provide a detoxification unit and preparations are currently under way to make such a unit available. We are also looking for space for a drug-free unit so that prisoners who are drug-free when they come into prison or become drug-free while in prison will be able to serve their sentences in a very secure unit where they will not have easy access to drugs. I am adopting a multi-faceted approach to cut down on the amount of drugs brought into prisons. Mountjoy is the prison to which all prisoners are remanded and therefore there are hundreds of movements in and out of that prison every day. Despite the difficulties involved, the prison officers do a mighty job in trying to cut down on the amount of drugs being brought into the prison.
I recently received the Mountjoy Prison report, a matter which Deputy Byrne raised on an Adjournment debate. A number of the issues proposed by the prison visiting committee are already in train; some measures were implemented by my predecessor, Deputy Geoghegan-Quinn, and I have implemented others since coming into office. As these methods are applied, I hope there will be a reduction in the amount of drugs in prisons.
The Minister mentioned a search room. Will she clarify her statement on the thorough searching of prisoners? Does she mean strip-searching?
Yes, body searching.
For all prisoners?
Wherever drugs might be available.
Does the Minister believe that a detoxification unit would be adequate for the scale of the problem that exists? Is she aware that at a recent prison officers' conference it was stated that up to 50 per cent of the inmates of Mountjoy are offenders who are addicted to drugs? In the light of her plans for future capital building programmes, rather than talking about a detoxification unit will the Minister consider, as has been suggested by me and Deputy O'Donoghue, the building of a secure residential detoxification centre, indeed a whole jail, for that category of offender?
Drugs are brought into prison by visitors as well as prisoners who are out for court cases and so on, by secreting them, all over their bodies and inside their bodies. Any search that is effective in ensuring that drugs in very small packets — a very small packet of drugs can be a very large amount of substance for addicts — are not brought into prison must include physical body searches. There is a system in prisons where prisoners can wear their own clothes; they got that right some years ago.
One of the new facilities that has been completed in Mountjoy is a laundry which will cut down on the need to send clothes out to be laundered. Every article of clothing which is washed by a prisoner's relative must be searched when it is brought back. I do not have to spell out how easy it is to hide a small packet of heroin or other dangerous drug substance in seams and pockets of clothes.
I am making a start of course. I do not believe that one small detoxification unit will be adequate to cater for the number of drug abusers who, sadly, end up in our prisons, but I intend to start that process, with a number of other mechanisms, to try to reduce the level of drug abuse in prisons and to give prisoners, particularly those serving long sentences, an opportunity to leave prison clean.
The Minister probably knows that I am a hardline advocate of the use of the a methadone maintenance programme to treat drug abusers. I do not believe the Minister fully understands or appreciates the complex nature of drug addiction as she said that a methadone programme will only be available to short term prisoners who were already on such a programme before entering prison. Will she agree that about 80 per cent of the crime on the streets of Dublin is committed by drug addicts who ultimately end up in Mountjoy Prison? Will she also agree that her humane detoxification programme is useless in so far as detoxification treatment will not cure an addict who will have a natural desire to demand illict heroin and Mountjoy Prison is awash with it? Unless the Minister is determined to allow short and long term prisoners who are drug abusers regardless of whether they were on detoxification methadone maintenance programmes in the community, access to an integrated detoxification programme in the prison system, she will fail. Does she not consider that in the prison system legislators have an obligation to rehabilitate drug addicts hooked on illicit drugs and that the best way forward is to ensure that when they are reintegrated into society they are on a methadone maintenance programme and will not need to steal from — or mug — tourists visiting this country?
The Deputy's question is overlong.
My objective is to ensure that offenders who enter prison drug free will not leave it as drug addicts and that on entering prison criminals on drugs — a captive group — will be given every treatment available to try to break their habit. As I said, I am anxious to introduce immediately a methadone maintenance programme for prisoners because those who were already on one prior to entering prison would lose the benefit gained from such treatment if there was no programme in prison. People who deal with drug addicts and drug abusers advise that it is better for such people to participate in a detoxification programme for a period of time rather than to develop a dependency on a substance like methadone.
That is not proven internationally. That treatment is a failure.
We will argue about that on another occasion. My immediate response will be to provide methadone treatment for drug abuse offenders entering prison who are already on that treatment, subsequently extend it and provide a detoxification unit to break prisoners' substance dependency. I bow to the Deputy's superior knowledge of some treatment methods. I am working on putting in place a drug treatment system which previously did not exist in Mountjoy Prison. I am sure I can deliver on providing methadone treatment for prisoners who were on such treatment before entering prison and set up a detoxification unit to ensure that prisoners who are drug abusers can avail of methadone or detoxification treatment.
Did I understand the Minister correctly, that it is her intention to provide a room in Mountjoy Prison in which all prisoners returning from the courts will be strip searched and that there will be a pattern of internal and external body searching to prevent the importation of drugs into the prison? Will body searches apply to all prisoners or only to those suspected of carrying drugs? If they applied to all prisoners it would quickly result in chaos. What is the sense of having such a strict regime for prisoners returning from the courts to Mountjoy Prison when, because of existing arrangements, it is possible to have bodily contact with visitors?
In those circumstances will she agree that all the measures she intends to introduce effectively amount only to a drop in the ocean in terms of responding to the urgency of the problem? Will she agree it is not sufficient to say she is making a start? This House should be told that within two years there will be as effective an end as possible to the drugs problem in our prisons. Will she agree to set a deadline by which she will ensure there will no longer be illegal drugs in our prison system?
I thought I had made it clear that prisoners will be searched following visits. Searches will not be carried out on all prisoners in Mountjoy Prison every time they move around or outside the prison. Prison officers will carry out searches on the basis of prisoners suspected of carrying drugs and, spot checks so that prisoners will realise they could be searched at any time.
Will internal body searches be carried out on a spot check basis?
Body searches are already carried out in prisons. The Deputy either wants drugs taken out of our prison system or not. His shock horror in trying to imply that there is something unusual about internal bodily searches of prisoners who might be carrying drugs does not do him justice. He must know that such searches are carried out.
I know that.
He must also know it is a necessary prerequisite if we want to stop illegal drugs getting into our prisons. I am determined to do all I can to ensure that. I am not over selling my proposals on the basis that prisons the world over have a drug problem — the problem is not only in Ireland — I am determined to introduce methods that will reduce as far as possible the availability of drugs in prison and provide humane treatment for criminals who are drug abusers on entering prison. As Deputy Byrne said, about 50 per cent of alleged offenders who end up in our courts and subsequently in our prisons are drug abusers and, unfortunateley, the drug problem is brought into the prison system. I will set a target on this issue. By the time the term of office of this Government ends, and it must end by November 1997, there will be major changes in our prison system and the prison visitors' committee will not have to submit the type of report it presented in 1994.
Will the Minister indicate if prisoners using drugs are diagnosed as addicts on entering prison and, if not, has she any proposals to introduce such a screening system?
When prisoners are committed to Mountjoy or other prisons their details are taken in the office when they checked in. They are asked if they are talking any substances, etc., and medical examinations are carried out to identify drug addicts. Even when prisoners are known to be drug addicts and there is good prison management to segregate drug peddlers from other prisoners, there are problems as prisoners must be kept in prison. Proper facilities are not at present in place to give drug abusers adequate treatment and I am seeking to remedy that.
