Tara Marie Watson received her PhD from the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies, University of Toronto. She has longstanding interests in drug policy and correctional populations, and research experience related to public health programming for people who use drugs. Posted on December 16, 2014 by Tara Marie Watson Drugs in Canadian prisons: has enforcement worked?
This is the first in a three-part series highlighting the critical need to consider policy and program reform in Canadian federal prisons.
In recent years, the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) has stepped up efforts to keep drugs out of prisons. Nonetheless, the emphasis on in-prison drug detection and enforcement is linked to numerous problems.
For some people, a prison sentence is indeed a valuable opportunity to “get clean” from drugs. However, the idea that prison offers a safe and abstinent setting for everyone rests on flawed assumptions about reduced supply and demand for drugs in prison. In my research, I found that despite substantial funding and increased prison-based enforcement, the goal of “drug-free prisons” is still far out of reach in Canada. Image credit: Broadhead
Image credit: Broadhead
In 2007, CSC launched a Transformation Agenda that includes as one of its five priority areas “eliminating drugs from prison.” The following year, the federal prison system received an investment of $120 million over five years to augment its anti-drug strategy. The funding was to enhance tools to detect, disrupt, and deter drug use inside prisons such as random urine testing, security intelligence officers, drug-detector dogs, and ion scanners. It’s a big, expensive toolkit – and yet there is no clear evidence that these tools have proven effective.
... read more: http://drugpolicy.ca/2014/12/drugs-in-prison/
--------------------
Carl Sagan - "Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people." --- Robert Pirsig - "When one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion." --- Brian Cox - "[One] problem with today’s world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it. The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense."
|