Page 3086 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 24 September 2014
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It is also outlined as an objection that injecting equipment can be easily traded for clean equipment or that it will become a commodity. We have tried to deal with that in terms of the model that we are presenting to staff. We acknowledge that the model itself is not perfect from a management of blood-borne virus perspective because of the constraints provided within the correctional setting, but we also acknowledge that needles, and home-made needles, are used in the jail from time to time. The approach that we are trying to use is that this equipment will be cleaner than the equipment that is currently being used, despite the best efforts of custodial officers to ensure that contraband is not being used or available within the jail. We know from the health of inmates survey that is done through the AMC that there is a high level of injecting drug users within that population, and within that there is a very high level of those that on the outside understand and use a needle and syringe exchange program.
So, when you look at it across the population health of a community, we do not condone the use of illicit drugs. We have education put in place to ensure that people understand the harmful effects of using illicit drugs, particularly in regard to an injecting drug user and the sharing of that injecting drug-using equipment, and thereby the community has accepted the need for needle and syringe exchange programs to be available as another strategy for dealing with the needs of an injecting drug-using community, and in order to protect the general community from potential transmission of, in the case of hepatitis C, a very, very nasty illness. The community accepts that.
When people are placed in a correctional setting, often with the same needs and desires that they have in the community, we form a view that part of that strategy that is tolerated in the community is no longer acceptable and we put controls around that—i.e., we do not allow for that harm minimisation, the very sensible measure that is available in the community, to be implemented in a correctional setting. The arguments often used are that it puts the health and safety of custodial officers at risk.
I would argue, and many do, that their job is a risky job at all times. These are highly trained people who deal with a very difficult group of the population who are in custody, some for very long periods, but it does not deal with the issue that the needles are available in the jail now, they are being used. As much as we do not like to admit it, and we do everything we can to stop it, this equipment is there, it is being used, and we know that in-custody transmissions of hepatitis C are occurring. We know that from the screening we do on entry and the screening we do while people are in the facility.
Mr Wall accuses me of putting my head in the sand. I argue that the same is occurring to those who oppose it. The head in the sand that what is currently going on and being dealt with is missing one of the strategies that we know works, and it works in the community, and with the right controls on it can work in a correctional setting. That is very clearly established from the evidence. In terms of some of the concerns that prison officers have put to me—they have said that there will be a prevalence of needles within the correctional setting—it is simply not true.
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