A senior blood-borne diseases researcher, Associate Professor Mark Stoové, says Australia’s first prison needle and syringe program flagged for trial in an ACT jail is most likely doomed because of the influence of a union and its members.
In a piece for the Medical Journal of Australia published on Monday, Stoové criticised the Community and Public Sector Union’s resistance to a proposal by the ACT government to trial a needle and syringe program in the Alexander Maconochie Centre, a maximum security prison.
The program was first put forward by the ACT government in 2012 as a way of reducing the spread of blood-borne diseases, especially hepatitis C, within the prison.
But a backlash from correction officers and the union led the government to say in April that the program would not go ahead without majority backing from staff.
“Given the Community and Public Sector Union’s historical resistance to prison needle and syringe programs, this requirement may doom any prospect of an Alexander Maconochie Centre prison needle exchange program trial,” Stoové wrote.
“[Union] resistance nationally has mostly centred on workplace health and safety concerns and encouraging drug use in custody. These concerns are not supported by over 20 years of prisoner needle exchange program operations in 13 countries.”
Denying prisoners who inject drugs access to sterile injecting equipment was also a breach of human rights, Stoové wrote, with international law stating that prisoners should have the same right to healthcare as the rest of the community.
Stoové told Guardian Australia that there were no reported incidents internationally of a prisoner using a needle acquired through a syringe program to threaten staff.
Such programs had also proven to be cost-effective, he said, because they prevented disease spread.
“The major stumbling block to the program in Australia is the union, who are in longstanding opposition to it and the threat of industrial action looms large for any government who wants to consider it,” Stoové said.
“If we can have a mature debate around drugs in prisons and harm reduction, then let’s at least trial a prison needle and syringe program in the ACT, and have it properly evaluated, so we can see where it leads.”
In its position statement on health and the criminal justice system, the Australian Medical Association says it too supports prison needle exchange programs, especially given prisoners health needs are greater than that of the general population.
However the regional secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, Vince McDevitt, said it was unfair to say the union was not willing to consider the prison needle exchange program, and that a working group had been formed with stakeholders from the union, the Department of Justice and the government to see how such a program might be run.
The working group would put forward a prison needle and syringe program proposal for union members to vote “yes” or “no” to within the next 12 months, McDevitt said.
“We would encourage Stoové to make a constructive submission to the working party, and help us to identify a potential model with underpinning procedures and policies to address the concerns of custodial officers,” he said.
“What we see time and again from people like Stoové is an irrational belief that somehow, custodial officers and their union have got their collective heads in the sand, and if we would just look at evidence, we would have an epiphany and it would all be roses.”
But no one had provided a reasonable model to the union about how a needle and syringe program would be run or monitored, McDevitt said, adding that it was not unreasonable for correctional staff to want information about how such a program would be carried out.
“Is it a vending machine with needles in it?” he asked.
“Is it needles for all? Is it an injecting room? How do staff undertake observations of prisoners who use the program? Who is responsible for their behaviour on the drugs? Our staff are routinely assaulted and work in a dangerous, high-pressure environment.
“It’s no small thing to say: ‘You’re just ignorant and you should just let needles in’, even though we don’t have a model for how that might work.”
