A copy of the report in question has recently been received by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and by the Prison Service. Both the Department and the Irish Prison Service are committed to keeping up to date with all emerging research in this area and are currently examining the report.
I have previously made my position very clear on this matter in that I not support the introduction of needle exchange in prisons. Any person seeking syringes, needles and fluids under such a scheme would be indicating to the prison authorities that he or she is in possession of, or expects to shortly be in possession of, controlled drugs and proposes consuming them. To supply a prisoner with the requested items in these circumstances would, in effect, be to tell him or her that prison management will facilitate the commission of serious criminal offences in the prison.
Introducing a needle exchange scheme would act as a clear message that the use of intravenous drugs in prisons is tolerated. This is not a message that anyone wishes to send. What hope could any prisoner ever have of breaking their addiction if they were to be facilitated in continuing it? For many prisoners, imprisonment offers them an opportunity to examine their problems and, with the support of prison services, to try and address them. By facilitating rather than challenging drug abuse, the Prison Service would be consciously releasing prisoners back into society as full blown addicts with a habit only capable of being fed by the commission of further serious crime or even degrading acts of prostitution. Further, the logic of supplying clean, safe syringes would, by extension, apply to supplying safe, quality assured heroin as well, so as to avoid overdoses and poisoning. That is not a proposition anyone in this House would support.
Needle exchange schemes would subvert and run contrary to increasing staff vigilance in searching for drugs and preventing them being smuggled into prisons. As far as I am concerned, drug control in prisons would be reduced to a game in which a blind eye approach to successful breaches of the controls would, in time, become the order of the day. The Prison Service is committed to the twin strategies of supply and demand reduction to deal with the issues of drugs in prison, closing off routes of supply and providing support to prisoners to tackle their addictions. The introduction of needle exchange would run contrary to these approaches.
As a criminal justice agency, the Prison Service is actively working to prevent breaches of the criminal law relating to illicit drugs. I, my senior officials and the prison governors are convinced that, over time, the operation of needle exchange programmes in prisons would be a negative influence on the behaviour of prison staff by eroding their commitment to law enforcement. It is simply not possible to have staff fully committed to preventing the possession and distribution of controlled drugs within prisons while simultaneously distributing syringes to prisoners to be used to inject controlled drugs. I am also conscious of the fact that prison staff themselves are totally opposed to needle exchange and, interestingly, independent research has shown that many prisoners are similarly opposed.
It must be pointed out that prison based needle exchange programmes are still the exception rather than the norm worldwide. In the small number of prison systems where they do exist, they are generally based in low security, open centres. Conditions there are far different from those in higher security, closed prisons similar to those Irish prisons where needle sharing is an acknowledged practice among opiate addicted prisoners. Unlike the majority of prisons where needle exchange has been most closely studied, candidate prisons in Ireland are closed, higher security prisons where out of cell time is much more limited. In these circumstances, there would be continuing long periods of time when access to the supply of needles would be limited and needle sharing is likely to persist during these times.
The transmission of blood borne illnesses is something which is of concern to the Prison Service and I. That is why Trinity College's department of community health and general practice was commissioned in 1999 to carry out the first research ever undertaken in Irish prisons to establish the prevalence of HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C in the prisoner population. These research findings were immediately made public. Since that study the Prison Service has made significant strides in harm minimisation measures by way of increasing education and awareness of potential harms and development of the methadone maintenance and other programmes.
I remain committed to pursuing Government policy to end the use of heroin in Irish prisons. It would be a contradiction of this stated Government aim for the Irish Prison Service to tolerate continuing intravenous drug use involving a needle exchange programme. Ending of all heroin use must mean just that.
The Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, in conjunction with the Prison Service, has been working hard to implement the Government's response, as stated in the programme for Government, to deal with this serious issue. Early in the new year we will implement our new strategy of mandatory drug testing, addiction counselling and treatment, increased measures to prevent drug usage and a genuine system of rehabilitation.
The Prison Service remains fully committed — as resources permit — to further developing and expanding appropriate treatment programmes, in conjunction with community and health agencies, to meet the treatment needs of this prisoner group.
