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| Canadian Officers Say Correctional Services Not Serious About Drugs in Prison |
| By Canadian Press |
| Published: 06/27/2003 |
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Canada's prison officers say Ottawa isn't serious about stemming the flow of drugs into penitentiaries, noting that high-tech scanners at some of the toughest prisons are rarely used because of budget concerns. But a Corrections Department official says officers are responsible for the safety and security of the 51 federal prisons, adding that sounding the alarm about equipment breakdowns is part of their job. 'If they're saying ion scanners are not working for weeks or people are not trained on them, they have an obligation or a duty to bring that forward to management,' says Michele Pilon-Santilli, spokeswoman for Correctional Services of Canada. Drugs have long been considered a major problem in Canada's prisons, with 80 per cent of inmates having some sort of substance abuse problem when they enter the system. Part of the plan to stem the flow of smuggled drugs was the purchase of ion scanners beginning in 2000. An officers' union survey within the last month found some prisons use the drug detection devices sparingly and that the scanners, which are also used at airports and border checkpoints, can sit idle for weeks or even months. One machine at the special handling unit in Quebec, the country's super-maximum security facility, has never been used, while another at the maximum-security Edmonton Institution is rarely used unless a person is targeted via intelligence, says a union executive. 'This goes to credibility,' says Kevin Grabowsky, prairie president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers. Pilon-Santilli says an internal report completed in mid-June found all prisons except healing lodges had operational scanners. She rejects union allegations that budget concerns affect how often drug scanners are used. The union review noted that prisons, which use the machines all the time, have higher rates of drug busts, pointing to medium-security Bowden Institution in Alberta and Stony Mountain in Manitoba. The review was done after Corrections Commissioner Lucie McClung told a parliamentary committee in early June that every visitor to a federal institution is subjected to some non-intrusive search for drugs. The union representing 6,000 officers has been locked in contract negotiations for more than a year, but national president Sylvain Martel says the complaint about drugs is no pressure tactic. Martel says inmates caught with drugs within prison walls face minimal disciplinary measures. Pilon-Santilli says Corrections has other methods to halt drugs from getting into prisons, including random urine tests and the use of drug dogs to sniff out narcotics. |
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