Western Standard - Prison guards speak out against overdose prevention sites in federal prisons

00:00:00.000 James Bloomfield, Prairie's regional president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers,

00:00:05.380 views the rollout and use of overdose prevention sites in federal prisons as ridiculous.

00:00:11.000 As correctional officers, our overall view is that there is no place within the federal

00:00:15.120 correctional facility. This is ridiculous. To put drug use within a federal institution is

00:00:21.480 pretty crazy, said Bloomfield. Union of Canadian Correctional Officers supports the use of

00:00:26.540 overdose prevention sites only because overdose prevention sites are better for correctional

00:00:31.780 officers than the current prison needle exchange programs. We are supportive of the overdose

00:00:37.620 prevention union as a union and as correctional officers only because the opposite choice,

00:00:43.880 that is the prison needle exchange program, which is essentially handing inmates needles and they go

00:00:49.000 and use them in their cells, said Bloomfield. The overdose prevention site nurses do not provide

00:00:55.000 the illegal drug, just the instruments to shoot the dope into the body. Illegal drugs still need to

00:01:00.840 be smuggled into the prison for the inmate to have access to them. According to Bloomfield,

00:01:05.600 the biggest problem is drones with drone drops happening every day within the system. We're

00:01:11.760 dying for drone protection. The service has been lacking in this probably for years since drones

00:01:17.840 became available. We knew that they were being used to drop drugs into yards and into our prison

00:01:23.120 settings all over the place. That's a normal thing for us, said Bloomfield. We get constant drug drops

00:01:29.280 inside our prisons, left, right, and center. Cell phones are the other problem as inmates hide them

00:01:36.420 and use them to coordinate drone drug drops. We have an unbelievable amount of cell phones that are

00:01:41.760 inside. The inmates have access to them from throwing them over the fences or getting them dropped by

00:01:47.940 drones as well, said Bloomfield. It creates a very clear communication path for setting up how to

00:01:52.960 drop all that stuff into our prisons. They don't even need to compromise a staff member anymore.

00:01:59.680 Bloomfield said that the drugs are so free-flowing in prison, it's easier to get them than it is on

00:02:05.240 the street. Bloomfield blames the Correctional Service of Canada for doing nothing about stopping

00:02:10.440 the drone drops and the use of illegal cell phones within the prison walls. They've been doing truly

00:02:17.200 nothing about it. It is a growing problem for several years now, said Bloomfield. We even have

00:02:22.840 some minor drone equipment that we're using that is going off like crazy and hitting a lot of the

00:02:28.200 activity, but we're still missing a lot of the activity. We don't even have every single site or

00:02:34.780 prison covered. At this point, our technology doesn't cover the entire area or all of our needs at

00:02:40.940 all. The government has no true plan that would indicate any true change coming for drone protection

00:02:46.180 or cell phone protection. As correctional officers, their job is to keep drugs out of the jails and now

00:02:53.380 inmates are allowed to shoot up drugs right in front of them. You just trained to try and keep drugs out

00:02:59.880 of jail and now you're telling them you have to allow this and the inmate does the drugs in front of

00:03:05.100 you. It's a moral issue for every correctional officer, said Bloomfield. Another big issue that

00:03:10.840 Bloomfield sees with the overdose prevention sites and the prison needle exchange programs is when an

00:03:16.300 inmate goes to the parole board, it is not in their prison file because of privacy concerns. They're not

00:03:23.220 allowed to report that they're on the program because of privacy complaints. The actual parole board will not

00:03:29.260 have the knowledge of this inmate who's using drugs or has a needle to use drugs and his stuff.

00:03:35.100 said Bloomfield. I will literally take him out of his cell where he could have done drugs that

00:03:40.840 morning when we gave him a needle under the prison needle exchange program. You can walk into the

00:03:47.140 parole office and not tell them that he's a drug addict. According to Bloomfield, the Correctional Service

00:03:51.860 of Canada does not track recidivism rates of prisoners using the overdose prevention sites or prison

00:03:57.940 needle exchange programs, which means they go back out into the community with no way to track if they have

00:04:03.700 a higher chance of going back into the prison system because they are drug addicts. It just makes it

00:04:10.100 even worse because now we're putting people back into the community who have not been detoxed and who

00:04:16.440 may still be full addicts running around our communities, said Bloomfield. Correctional Service

00:04:21.180 of Canada is putting overdose prevention sites in federal prisons after a successful trial at the

00:04:26.540 Drumheller Institution in Alberta. I'm Christopher Olcorn reporting for the Western State.

Western Standard - June 06, 2022

Prison guards speak out against overdose prevention sites in federal prisons

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