Drugs including ice are readily available and "coming through the front door" of South Australian prisons, a coronial inquest into a fatal overdose at a jail has heard.
South Australian coroner Mark Johns has been investigating the death of Wyatt William Azaparti, who died from a methadone overdose at Port Augusta Prison in April, 2016.
He was serving a six-year sentence for offences including serious criminal trespass, theft and assault — but shortly before his death, he was granted permission to appeal against his convictions.
In his findings, Mr Johns ruled that Mr Azaparti, who was 45, died after accessing another inmate's methadone through "diversion", where a prisoner who is medically prescribed a drug regurgitates it and sells it to another inmate.
Mr Johns said that Mr Azaparti — who had used illicit drugs — had resorted to obtaining methadone by unauthorised means because he had been denied access to the prison's drug substitution program.
The coroner was unable to draw any conclusions about the source of the methadone Mr Azaparti consumed.
He said a container found in his cell that was used for the regurgitated methadone was not seized by police, for "reasons that have not been explained".
"It appears that in due course, it was thrown out as rubbish by the prison staff," Mr Johns said.
"As a consequence, an opportunity to identify the source of the methadone was lost."
Drug policy changed before and after death
The inquest heard that at the time of his death, Mr Azaparti was not one of the eight inmates at the prison who was medically prescribed methadone.
Mr Johns said evidence showed that methadone substitution was "no longer in vogue within the prison system".
"[That's] due to the availability of other illicit substances such as ice and buprenorphine," he said.
Mr Johns said the Port Augusta Prison's clinical services coordinator had told the court that those "are drugs which are coming through the front door".
A police officer had earlier told the inquest that visitors and family members of inmates were being pressured to commit offences to bring the drug into prison and that prison staff had been committing crimes by bringing drugs in.
The inquest had also heard that just months before Mr Azaparti's death, a policy requiring corrections officers to supervise prisoners after they took their prescribed dosage of methadone was scrapped because it was "a drain on their resources".
After Mr Azaparti died, inmates were observed for 10 minutes after they had taken their prescribed dosage of methadone.
Mr Johns made no recommendations relating to the case.
