Minister rejects call for jail needle exchange

The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, today dismissed a call by a fellow minister for clean needles to be given to jailed heroin addicts.

Mr Noel Ahern, who is the minister of state with responsibility for drugs strategy, said in a newspaper interview published this morning he was in favour of needles being given to prisoners to prevent the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C.

Mr Ahern, who is the Taoiseach's brother, also said he would approve specially allocated consumption rooms where addicts could go to inject themselves under supervision.

However, these proposals were dismissed by Mr McDowell, who has ultimate responsibility for prison policy.

"As far as I am concerned, there is no accepted level of drug use in prisons," he said. To condone the use of drugs would "make a nonsense" of the fundamental premise of prison, which is rehabilitation.

"Am I going to say that it is acceptable that there is heroin in prison?" he said. "I can't do that, and I won't do that."

If he were to allow a prisoner to openly use drugs during his sentence, he would be merely releasing a "human time-bomb" back into society once that jail term was served," Mr McDowell said.

He warned the sanctioned use of drugs could also have a corrupting effect on prison officers, as they could find themselves compromised into providing drugs for prisoners.

Mr McDowell said his views were "completely in unity" with prison officers, who believe a policy of tolerance would be a recipe for disaster. He also insisted 98 per cent of the general population would agree with him.

Figures from the National Advisory Committee on Drugs show that upwards of 90 per cent of all intravenous drug users in prisons tested positive for Hepatitis C, which is a potentially fatal liver disease. The research also showed more than half of users shared needles in prison.