WARNING FOR JAILS OVER ‘ONE STRIKE’ DRUG PLAN

INMATES at an open prison at the centre of a row over heroin abuse yesterday voiced support for the Government’s tough new "one strike and you’re out" policy - but warned that it would lead to more hard drug use.

Henry McLeish, the Scottish home affairs minister, has ordered that any open prison inmate who tests positive for drugs should be sent back to a high security jail for at least three months before they can reapply for the privilege of an open jail.

He acted after a report by Clive Fairweather, the chief inspector of prisons, revealed that an unusually high proportion of inmates at Noranside open prison, near Forfar, were testing positive for heroin.

Last year, 14 per cent of the prisoners at Noranside tested positive for drugs and 54 of out of 88 of the positive tests showed heroin abuse - 61 per cent compared to 44 per cent in other prisons. Castle Huntly open prison also shows high levels of positive drug tests.

Until now prisoners who test positive have been given a second chance but this crackdown will mean a single positive test will send an inmate straight back to a closed jail, for three months in the case of cannabis and six months in the case of heroin.

Yesterday, most inmates at Noranside backed the new policy but Tony Blacklock, 23, from Largs, serving three and a half years for assault to severe injury, warned that the "one strike" proposal would drive soft drug users onto heroin.

"Cannabis is in your system for 28 days but heroin is only there for two days. It’s easier to get rid of.

"The jail system will be creating junkies and that is a fact. I know guys who have come in without a habit and left with one. This system will make things worse."

Jimmy Dow, 39, serving three years for drug offences, said he was clean of drugs but for those who used them in Noranside, heroin was top of the wish list. "It’s what I would expect, it isn’t in the system for as long. Everyone would like to take them if they could get away with it but it isn’t a risk I am prepared to take."

The Noranside governor, Alastair MacDonald, defended his jail, saying the drug problem was not serious and that most inmates at the jail had battled long and hard to get off drugs.

He conceded it was possible heroin abuse might increase.

"Heroin use is on the increase outside prison but it does not necessarily follow that we are driving people to heroin with the introduction of mandatory drug testing and the one strike policy. A lot of this is dictated by drug dealers rather than what is claimed by prisoners."
(Marijuananews note: It is not clear how the dealers determine what people will buy, but the suppression of cannabis supplies by law enforcement, or through the testing of prisoners and/or employees, assuming that there is a difference, will obviously influence choices.

Also, cannabis is often used to help people get off hard drugs, and suppressing its use by whatever means will have the indirect effect of increasing hard drug use.)

At a press conference in Edinburgh, Mr Fairweather agreed there was no hard evidence that mandatory drug testing drove prisoners to take heroin, despite the prisoners’ claims. Most drug abuse at open prisons occurred while the prisoner was away from the jail on home leave.

"It did begin to cross my mind that individuals going on home leave from an open prison, faced with a choice of taking cannabis or heroin, perhaps believe cannabis lingers in the system longer and is a greater risk to their freedom than heroin."