Thank you. That's a very complex and wide question.
I would make just a couple of quick comments. As you've heard from testimony before, a large percentage of our inmates come with substance abuse, difficulties close to 80%, and I think you've seen testimony where in some cases 50% are directly related to the crime at hand. The difficulty with our offenders is that many of those addiction properties don't stop at the time of sentence. They've often in their past exhibited a drug-seeking type of behaviour. Their desire continues.
It's a rationalization as to why we adopted the three-prong approach to get to the ability to manage and control this type of substance-abusing behaviour. Our programs do work. I''m very proud of the programs that we have. Again, we have lots of research that shows the effectiveness. You've heard my comments. You've reiterated some of the comments I brought forward about the success of the programs.
In some ways, inmates still have the desire. You're right, it is an expectation that you will not be engaged in drug activity, and the reinforcing behaviour or the behaviour modification that goes on is continuously emphasized from all the different levels of intensity through to the community. We prefer the approach that looks at harm reduction from the elements that, from our perspective, are shown to work as well. We have a higher rate of HIV prevalence, seven to ten times higher inside our institutions than what we have in the community. Similarly, with hepatitis C, it's 30 times higher inside our institutions. So the utilization of prophylactics was mentioned, dental dams for women offenders, the utilization of education programs, the utilization of bleach in the event that somebody does get the utilitization of a needle....
It's important to remember as well that while some offenders are participating in substance abuse, not all are. So all the efforts that we take are a cumulative approach to manage substance abuse activity.