B.C. aims to reduce inmate overdose deaths in jail

B.C. is launching a project aimed at reducing the number of overdose deaths by inmates recently released from correctional facilities.

A coroner’s death-review panel last year found about two-thirds of B.C. residents who died of an illegal drug overdose over a 19-month period had recent contact with the criminal justice system.

The panel said that between January 2016 and the end of July 2017, 333 people died within their first month of release from a correctional facility.

The Health Ministry says in a news release that five new community transition teams have been set up in Surrey, Prince George, Kamloops, Nanaimo and Port Coquitlam to help people with opioid-use disorders get treatment.

The teams consist of a social worker and a peer who has used drugs and may also have been incarcerated to work with a person who’s been released to help provide needed support.

Lynne Pelletier of the B.C. Mental Health and Substance Use Services says people in the justice system are some of society’s most vulnerable, yet they’re the hardest to reach in the current overdose emergency.

“Integrating correctional care with community-based care gives us an opportunity not just to prevent overdoses, but also connect to health services and possibly change the trajectory of their lives by addressing some of the social and economic realities that brought them to us in the first place.”

Dr. Nader Sharifi, medical director for Correctional Health Services, says about 40 per cent of people in corrections facilities are getting treatment for opioid-use disorder.

He says people are at a heightened risk when they leave a facility and don’t have access to a physician.

The community transition teams began connecting with their first clients this month. The Provincial Health Services Authority says it hopes to scale up the project next year based on results.