NCJ Number
150257
Journal
Key to Commonwealth Corrections Issue: 28 Dated: (Summer 1994) Pages: 17-20
Editor(s)
T Garner
Date Published
1994
Length
4 pages
Annotation
A symposium on forensic issues in substance abuse, convened by the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Law in August 1993, addressed potential prison administration responses to the inmate drug problem.
Abstract
The focus of the symposium presentation was on how drugs get into the supposedly controlled prison environment and the effects of drugs on inmate health and rehabilitation. Drug trafficking was seen as a way of acquiring status, wealth, and power, while drug use was viewed as a way of rebelling against the prison system. It was determined that prison administrators have three basic options in responding to the inmate drug problem: (1) stop or reduce the supply of drugs to inmates; (2) reduce the demand for drugs in prisons; and (3) minimize the harm of drug abuse in prisons. Any response should consider intrusiveness, humane containment, rehabilitation, effectiveness, cost, social, and political issues.