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| Corrections Canada implementing "Safer Tattooing Initiative" |
| By Halifax Live |
| Published: 01/31/2005 |
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Despite the firm opposition of The Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, federal prison officials will implement a program which will deliver tattoo services to inmates. The program called "Safer Tattooing Practices Initiative" will be set up in 6 federal correctional facilities and will be in service for 1 year at which time evaluations will be performed to ascertain its effectiveness. The program is touted as "an additional harm reduction measure to minimize the negative consequences associated with illicit tattooing practices" within the prison population. The prison system's director general of health services, Dr. Françoise Bouchard stated that because 40 percent of inmates already receive tattoos from other inmates during their incarceration, there is an increased possibility of contracting and spreading communicable diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis A, B, and C not only throughout the facilities but back into the community once an inmate's sentence has been completed. The 'Safer Tattooing Practices Initiative' will involve installing sterile tattoo parlours within the prison population and maintained by specially trained inmates. In implementing the program Corrections Canada refers to the federal Corrections and Conditional Release Act which states "the provision of essential health care and reasonable access to non-essential health care that will contribute to an inmate's rehabilitation and reintegration to the community." The Union of Canadian Correctional Officers oppose the plan calling the initiative a "misguided response to increasing rates of infectious disease" and "poses unacceptable risks to security for its members, inmates and the community at large." The union maintains that such a program will contribute to an increased availability of weapons for use against staff members and other prisoners as the result of poor supervision - the initiative will provide one part-time Corrections Canada-employed supervisor for maximum-security institutions and no supervision at all for medium and minimum-security prisons. |
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