Poking holes in prison needle program

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This article was published 20/10/2023 (690 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A needle exchange program is reportedly set to roll out at Stony Mountain Institution, but the correctional officers’ union argues a safer option would be a safe-injection site similar to those in at least two other federal prisons.

“Instead of giving inmates needles to take into their cells and potentially poke me… A safe injection site would be the answer in the prison,” said Justin Kelsch, head of the Stony Mountain branch of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers.

“We see more institutions getting prison needle exchanges. We haven’t got a date yet for ours but (it’s) tentative.”

Given since mid-day Wednesday to comment, Correctional Services Canada would not confirm or deny whether it plans to soon bring a needle exchange program to Manitoba’s only federal prison, whether it has heard the union’s concerns with such a program or whether an overdose prevention site has been considered.

The federal corrections department began rolling out needle exchange programs in nine prisons across the country in June 2018. They are meant to help prevent inmates from sharing needles used for illicit drugs and hamper the spread of infectious, blood-borne diseases.

Kelsch said although the concept of an overdose prevention site idea feels incompatible with his role as a corrections officer (to prevent drugs from entering and being sold in prison), it is the lesser of two evils.

“We didn’t want this anyway, but it was the best option.”

Illicit drugs remain illegal, but federal inmates using the overdose prevention sites in prisons are allowed to possess single-use amounts inside in the space.

An inmate’s participation in the needle exchange program, which requires meeting with health services staff to discuss harm reduction and substance use, is subject to the approval of prison officials to determine if there are any security concerns, according to Correctional Services Canada. The inmates must sign a contract about the rules.

In the past, CSC has said the program is subject to safeguards to ensure the inmates’ needle kits are stored safely and accounted for, and all inmates must present the kits to corrections officers, if asked, as is required for other authorized sharp objects (such as EpiPens, insulin needles or craft tools).

The local union president, however, thinks the exchange program could be abused in Stony Mountain.

“I’ve never seen so (many) drugs come into the institution,” Kelsch said Wednesday.

Kelsch said although he would rather see federal corrections take harder action to prevent illicit substances from making it into the prison in the first place, he believes a supervised site — from which inmates could not remove needles — would be the safer of two options for staff and inmates.

The federal prison authority opened an overdose prevention service in June 2019 at Drumheller Institution (Alberta), with the goal of preventing fatal and non-fatal overdoses within the prison, hampering the spread of disease and helping refer inmates to other health programming.

A similar site opened in July at Springhill Institution (Nova Scotia).

CSC has said inmates aren’t disciplined for using the service, but are subject to discipline or criminal charges if caught with drugs outside of the site.

Kelsch said Corrections officers don’t get sufficient training to watch for the signs of drug overdoses, and are limited in how they could respond if inmates have access to needles in their cells under the exchange program.

An overdose prevention site would be overseen by trained nurses during daylight hours.

“Us officers, we just respond with the techniques we know. We don’t know if he’s just knocked out or what drug he’s on, so we’d (use opioid-overdose reversing drug) Narcan him and start doing chest compression,” Kelsch said.

He said access to needles in overdose prevention sites would be controlled, with used devices disposed of by health-care staff, helping to ease union concerns a needle could be used to stab staff.

University of Winnipeg criminal justice Prof. Michael Weinrath, who researches Canadian prisons and jails, said harm reduction falls between the corrections authority’s efforts to address drug supply, by stopping the substances from making it inside, and demand in prisons, by giving inmates access to treatment and supports.

“(It’s) the notion that, ‘OK, we have drugs coming in, we can’t stop them all, we have treatment programs, but not everybody’s going to be in a treatment program,’” Weinrath said.

He said the idea is often critiqued in the community, as well as in the institutions, as giving up on curbing illicit drug supply and use.

“For people on the more conservative side, that’s a concern, but on the other hand, the reality is you can’t stop all the drugs coming in.”

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca