Thank you very much for the kind invitation to the John Howard Society to appear on this issue, which is very important to us.
The John Howard Society is a community-based charity whose mission is to support effective, just, and humane responses to the causes and the consequences of crime. We have about 65 front-line offices across the country that provide support in terms of reintegration support and also crime prevention activities. Many of those we serve are battling alcohol and drug addiction, so this is an important issue for us.
I'll focus my remarks on, as you suggest, drugs and alcohol in the prisons. We have a rights-based approach to dealing with all policy matters in prisons. That is, essentially those who are sentenced to custody retain rights, except for those implicated in the carrying out of the actual sentence. They retain rights to health care and a variety of other services that would otherwise be available to citizens. If there is any further hardship that's imposed on an inmate in the course of the carrying out of the sentence, then those are protected by section 7 charter rights, and you have to proceed in accordance with fundamental principles of justice.
We agree that the situation of drugs in prison is serious. It creates violence, it spreads disease, and it can lead to further crime. We agree that efforts should be made to reduce the amount of illicit drugs in the institutions.
I would also point out that we fully endorse the paper that was done by Michael Jackson and Graham Stewart, called A Flawed Compass, which comments on the government's road map for corrections policy. Chapter 6 of that report deals specifically with drug issues. If you haven't had a chance to read it, I would commend it to the committee.
We believe you need to have a balanced approach in any sets of policies dealing with drug issues. Interdiction, which is on the supply reduction side, is of course important, but we would urge a broader approach to the issue of drugs in prison. We believe that to be humane and effective you really need to include treatment and harm reduction efforts in the strategy for dealing with drugs and alcohol in prisons. Such a strategy should be based on what works, the evidence of what works, and an assessment of some of the things that have already been tried. For example, I think we should look at the effectiveness of the existing interdiction measures. I think it's also important to look at the costs of the interdiction measures in terms of family visits and the importance of those family visits in terms of supporting reintegration in the long run.
I think it's important to look at the benefits of treatment for those with addictions and at the need for harm reduction measures within the prisons to ensure that the needs of inmates suffering from the disease of addiction are addressed and to curb the spread of disease.
Interdicting drugs into the prison is a very important aspiration, but it will be highly unlikely that you will be 100% successful in stopping the flow of drugs into prisons. What you will be doing is reducing the supply without necessarily reducing the demand, if you're only concentrating on the interdiction side, which will lead to perhaps greater inmate unrest and more violence in the prisons. So I think we need to be careful about how this is being approached.
Moreover, I think when you're looking at the interdiction side, it is very important to look at the inaccuracy of ion scanners and sniffer dogs. This needs to be recognized. The literature is pretty clear that ion scanners produce a significant number of false positives. Similarly, some studies show that 75% of the people identified by the dogs were later found not to be carrying drugs, so that also indicates a high number of false positives, and there is a huge variation in the ability of dogs to be successful at sniffing drugs. It's an important technique, but I think the accuracy of it really needs to be checked.
The other thing I would raise with you, and it has been raised to me by many family members of inmates, is that there is a huge price to be paid for visitors into the prisons because of the interdiction measures.
A small percentage of the inmates are actually involved in drugs, but the interdiction measures and the screening measures apply to all inmates and to all of their visitors. CSC did a study of seizures during 2001 and 2006 and found that only about 20% of the drug seizures took place in the visits area, so there are other ways in which the drugs are going through.
The visitors suffer a terrible stigma from false positives and the notion that they may be a possible drug user or drug carrier. This is very intimidating for them. Many of them have signalled that it would affect their willingness to continue to visit inmates in prisons.
Some visitors also are intimidated by the dogs or embarrassed by the intrusive nature of the dogs' behaviour. Inmates have filed a grievance about perceived inappropriate handling of dogs vis-à-vis female visitors. I think that needs to be looked at.
I would re-emphasize that maintaining contact with family and community members is extremely important for successful reintegration and for community safety in the long run. I think we need to take very seriously the issue of whether the interdiction measures are offset to some extent by the negative consequences for the visitors.
On treatment, the Supreme Court of Canada decision last week in Canada v. PHS Community Services Society, which dealt with Insite, recognized addiction as a disease that needed to be treated and where harm reduction needed to be applied. It found the minister's exercise of discretion in limiting access to medical assistance and harm reduction to have violated section 7 rights with respect to “fundamental principles of justice”.
Given that the illness of addiction denies the addict the capacity to exercise free choice about drug use, treatment really is necessary to bring the offender to the position where they can exercise free choice about drug use. Therefore, treatment for addiction cannot reasonably be withheld on the basis that it is the addicted offender's choice to use the drugs.
We are enormously pleased with the government's national anti-drug strategy in that it takes a balanced approach to dealing with addiction and drug issues. It includes enforcement as well as treatment and prevention, all of which I think are very important in dealing effectively with drug issues.
In the last version, resources were allocated for the treatment of youth in custody, and we urge that the renewal of the national anti-drug strategy for 2012 include resources to test effective treatment for both youth and adult offenders, treatment that begins in custody and continues into the community as part of a reintegration strategy. Many John Howard Society affiliates might be able to assist with that type of programming.
I would also like to talk a bit about harm reduction. There is little doubt that addiction leads to significant harms within the custodial setting. Those suffering from the illness have no legitimate access to the substances to which they are addicted, nor do they have any safe means to administer drugs. The resulting injury to the addict and the spread of infectious diseases like hepatitis C and the presence of other drug- and alcohol-related illnesses may well constitute a public health issue and should be addressed.
With respect to crowding, there has been a recent increase in the number of inmates within the penitentiaries. Since March 2010, it's estimated that between 800 and 1,000 inmates have been added to the institutions of the Correctional Service of Canada, which is basically the equivalent of two full institutions.
The increasing crowding in the prison systems across the country will exacerbate harms resulting from drug and alcohol addiction, both directly and indirectly. In a direct sense, the increase in double-bunking and the dense population will facilitate the spread of disease. The American Public Health Association calls for 60 square feet per occupant in a single cell, which is single occupancy, essentially, of CSC space, and 75 square feet per occupant in a prison dormitory.
Indirectly, crowded prisons lead to more violence, more pressure on guards, more lockdowns and tighter security, and less access to rehabilitative programs, health care, etc. In such circumstances, the demand for drug and alcohol actually increases in the prisons.
We have a number of recommendations for the committee's consideration.