Drug Summit Justice Theme photo click

Justice Action (JA) attended the 2024 Drug Summit aimed at improving the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities affected by drugs and alcohol. The drug summit, held from December 4-5 in Sydney brought together 450 people including health experts, service providers, law enforcement and people with lived experience around five drug related  themes.

NSW Premier Chris Minns spoke about “hope” in his opening statement but expectations were low. JA shared the lift with him on the way out, and spoke of the current hopelessness and helplessness in prison causing drug use. When JA raised the prospect of external counselling and education through the computer tablets in cells, Minns responded “that’s a good idea”.

Professor Dan Howard, the Commissioner of the Ice Inquiry, spoke of his frustration at the poor reception of his Report. The Mayor of Portland, Oregon spoke of their failure where decriminalisation of drugs had been adopted and then rejected after poor preparation of treatment services.

JA attended the Safety and Justice Theme. Twenty issues were gleaned from earlier sessions from which five were to be selected.  Only two of the twenty were prison based despite its accepted importance.

JA criticised the proposed “Increase of alcohol treatment and supportive services in remand, custody and post custodial settings” as “naive” as it didn’t acknowledge that only “external” services were effective as they had no conflict of interest with security and trust, were efficient as already funded and existing for people upon release.

The proposed “Trial a needle and syringe exchange program in custodial settings” was objected to by the prison officers’ representative who said it was a safety issue for them. JA responded that harm minimisation benefited them as a desperate and sick prison population made them unsafe, and only one attack world-wide had happened over 30 years ago. Prison hep C infection is thirty times the rate in the community, costs $80,000 per person to treat, and then gets reinfected on reentry. The Ice Inquiry R.97 said the same.

Drug Use

Drug use is a pervasive and unspoken issue in Australia’s corrective services, with up to 80% of prisoners engaged in substance use. Despite the growing prevalence of drugs such as buprenorphine or “bupe” in prison, there is minimal concern regarding the negative impacts of drug use on prisoners’ mental health, rehabilitation, and morale. Furthermore, there is no practical intervention by governments, and rehabilitation programs such as counselling  are ineffectual and misplaced.

Widespread drug use within prisons presents a serious public health and safety concern. Drugs like buprenorphine control prison environments by taking advantage of an open culture of substance use, poor prison conditions, and prisoners’ sense of hopelessness. Efforts focused on targeting supply will not yield results. Instead, it is critical to lessen the demand by providing prisoners with personal development opportunities and rehabilitation incentives.

Access to drugs

With the advent of stricter security measures, drugs continue to infiltrate prisons through various channels, such as via drones, guards, prisoners, and visitors. Some prisoners smuggle drugs into prisons by concealing them within their bodies, a practice documented in a recent Daily Telegraph article published October 2024, which reported an instance of a drug mule being intentionally arrested in order to smuggle drug-filled balloons into a correctional centre. Corrupt  officers turning a blind eye, actively assisting or bringing drugs in for money or to coerce sexual favours from vulnerable women, form a quasi-monopoly. The hierarchical relations between correctional officers and prison entrants enables the ease of drug entry into correctional facilities. Nobody has an interest in stopping it: not the users, not the traffickers, and not the management. Drugs make quiet – and full jails.

Reasons for use

Long periods of confinement in cells and the lack of meaningful activities leaves prisoners experiencing boredom, helplessness, and despair. With limited outlets for coping, many turn to substances to manage their stress, escape isolation, or ease withdrawal symptoms, thus making it highly likely to develop a drug addiction. Additionally, if a prisoner comes in with an already developed drug habit, there is no immediate support for withdrawal symptoms. The lack of medical support and high quality counselling exacerbates the problem and the addiction remains.

Buprenorphine is widely prescribed in the community as a treatment for opioid dependency; however, it has become easily accessible amongst the prison population. Many prisoners who are introduced to buprenorphine while incarcerated become addicted. Buprenorphine is also treated as currency. Existing drug addiction programs within prisons inadequately address prisoner drug addiction. These programs, which focus on group discussions, often lack structured procedures for intervention and fail to provide real incentive for change. Additionally, participation in these programs is restricted to prisoners with a previous history of substance abuse, neglecting the fact that all prisoners become exposed to drugs once inside the system.

Review Commission of Inquiry into ‘Ice’

The 2018 Special Commission of Inquiry into the Drug ‘Ice’, led by commissioner Professor Dan Howard SC, addressed the widespread use of ice in NSW, including use in prisons, and recommended strategies to combat this problem.

The report revealed that ice was easily accessible and widely used in NSW prisons, and highlighted the role correctional facilities play in driving inmate drug use. The Justice Health 2015 Network Patient Health Survey found that 11.4% of men and 2.7% of women reported they had first injected drugs in a correctional centre or juvenile justice centre (see clause 20.121 on page 875). This percentage is likely to have increased in recent years. No statistical evidence is presented about the percentage of new prisoners who use drugs for the first time (in their life) in prison; however, witness evidence is recorded of individuals who have gone to jail ‘clean’ and been released as addicts (see clause 20.120 on page 875). This is consistent with the witness testimony of multiple discharged individuals.

The report also noted evidence from witnesses that buprenorphine was the drug of choice for individuals in custody, as is easily obtainable by prescription and distributed. Further evidence was also included about individuals who were previously using amphetamine-type stimulants switching to buprenorphine during incarceration (see clause 20.111 on page 874).

Correctional services acknowledged the prevalence of drug consumption among prisoners, and that at the time of the report, there had been no definitive strategy to reduce the prevalence and harms associated with amphetamine-type stimulants in prisons (see page 879). Taking into account these findings, the Commission issued several recommendations. These include:

89.  NSW Government commission a review into the supply and availability of drugs in correctional centres and current efforts to prohibit supply in prisons, thereafter an annual review will be conducted on the availability and use of illicit substances in correctional centres

91.  Justice Health and Correctional Services develop an alcohol and other drugs (AOD) evidence-based strategy to broadly reduce harm and reflect best practices for treatment

93.  All people in custody who need AOD treatment receive it

106.  NSW government establish a coronial drug death review team to analyse drug-related deaths and make recommendations concerning matters of public health and safety.

Recommendations by the Special Commission to increase research, review current programs, and develop new strategies would provide the NSW Government with a better understanding of the role of drugs in prison. However, the research should not be done by those wishing to conceal the problem. Prisoners who don’t use drugs talk of being continually targeted for drug testing. Prisoner organisations and those with lived experience should be engaged in the research.

The recommendations take a passive approach to the issue, choosing modes of action that analyse the impact of drug use in prisons rather than addressing demand and tackling the problem at its source.

Proposal

To effectively address the issue of drug use in prisons, focus should be shifted from targeting the supply of illicit drugs to reducing demand. This can be achieved by providing prisoners with real opportunities for personal development and incentives.

Firstly, the use of the existing tablet computers in cells with access to selected outside services would allow prisoners to use their time effectively, providing mental health support, art, vocational and education programs while mitigating the feelings of isolation and despair that drive drug use. The ever-present passive TV screen in every cell should, as a human right and rational act become active, to Flick the Switch on to positive input in the isolation of the prison cell.

Secondly, offering prisoners the opportunity to earn early release based on their personal progress and engagement with rehabilitation programs would create a positive incentive for change. Enabling people to return to the community earlier is the ultimate way to bring hope into the lives of people feeling hopeless and helpless, thus reducing drug use. According to the Community Justice Coalition’s Recidivism: The Way Forward report p.35, such initiatives not only encourage personal growth, but also foster better integration into society upon release.

Lastly, harm minimisation in prisons with clean needles and syringes are essential, much more so than in the general community. That absence is a disgrace to governments and should be legally challenged.