Page 4687 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 19 October 2011
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We have had the debate in the community, we have had the reports, we have seen the submissions and it is time to make a decision. That decision is that we should not have a needle and syringe program at the Alexander Maconochie Centre. Allowing this issue to drag on is distracting everybody from focusing on the myriad other problems at the AMC.
Having researched the issue extensively, I do not believe that an NSP would have any significant reduction in hep C transmission at the ACT’s jail. I also believe an NSP would create safety issues for staff and prisoners and would seriously degrade efforts to rehabilitate prisoners. My conclusion is that any possible benefits of an NSP would be significantly outweighed by the problems it would create.
To prevent prisoners from being released back into the community with the same drug habit that provoked their crimes and to reduce the chance of hep C transmission, the objective must be to prevent drugs from entering jail and provide well-coordinated drug policies that are effectively implemented. Strategies should include detoxification, medical treatment, rehabilitation programs, effective testing for drugs, effective testing for hep C and other blood-borne viruses, thorough searching for drugs, counselling, case management, education programs, good access to primary health care, employment, education and recreational options and effective through-care.
The two questions to be asked are, firstly, whether these activities are currently being conducted effectively at the ACT jail and, secondly, whether an NSP would assist or detract from these strategies required to treat and rehabilitate prisoners and to reduce hep C transmission. With regard to the first question, it is obvious from the Burnet Institute report, which this year evaluated the drug policies and services at the jail, that the strategies in place and the implementation of those strategies have been appallingly bad. For example, Burnet found:
The current governance structure and lack of coordinated leadership in relation to drug policy and services at the AMC appears to be a major barrier to coordinated and complementary harm minimisation practice.
And:
This lack of leadership has, in part, resulted from a lack of clear policy guidance for the AMC as a whole system …
Burnet found that testing for hep C is so ineffective that:
… the current system offers no way to reliably estimate the incidence or prevalence of blood-borne viruses …
And:
… any estimates offered would have to be unreliable.
Worse still, the current testing regime may actually be encouraging prisoners to share needles. Burnet found:
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