Jails strive to keep contraband out
Documents detail flow of drugs into one of Canada’s most advanced jails
EDMONTON It should be almost impossible to smuggle drugs into the Edmonton Remand Centre.
There is no open-air exercise yard at the state-of-the-art provincial jail, where somebody with a strong arm or a drone could loft an illicit package.
The centre does not allow visits — visitors meet their loved ones through off-site video terminals — ruling out in-person hand-offs.
Drugs stowed inside a body cavity should be detected by a newly installed body scanner, through which all inmates entering the facility must pass.
Even inmates taking suboxone or methadone as part of opioid maintenance therapy must spend 30 minutes in a locked tank, to prevent them from regurgitating the substances for sale on the black market.
But drugs are still finding a way inside.
Provincial jails, which house defendants awaiting trial and inmates serving sentences shorter than two years, have been struggling to respond to the opioid crisis. Between January 2016 and Oct. 1, 2018, there were 224 overdoses in Alberta provincial jails, according to Alberta Health Services.
After a chaotic July weekend during which eight inmates overdosed at the Edmonton Remand Centre, Postmedia requested over a year’s worth of drug seizure reports from the facility under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act.
Alberta Justice and Solicitor General released 134 pages of documents outlining nearly 100 drug seizures between January 2017 and the end of July.
Many details were redacted for privacy reasons. But the reports provide a clearer sense of what drugs are finding their way into the facility, and how often.
With 1,952 beds, the Edmonton Remand Centre is the largest correctional facility in the country. It is also one of the most advanced — featuring 1,500 security cameras, 55 video arraignment courts connected to courthouses around Alberta and an open-concept model aimed at connecting inmates with services.
Its design was a major departure from the old remand centre in downtown Edmonton, aimed in part at stemming the inflow of contraband.
Scott Conrad, a correctional officer at the Calgary Remand Centre and chairman of the AUPE Local 003, said officers at the Edmonton remand are intercepting more drugs than they did in the past.
“It’s still not 100 per cent,” he said. “We use the body scanner, we use drug detection dogs. But it’s the age-old thing — where there’s a will there’s a way, and these inmates have 24 hours a day to think about how they’re going to bring it in.”
A string of overdoses in July put the issue in the spotlight. On July 13, staff found an inmate unresponsive in his cell. Medical staff administered naloxone and epinephrine — used to reverse overdoses — but were unable to save him.
Over the next two days, seven other inmates suffered apparent overdoses, prompting a lockdown as staff combed the facility for drugs. The records obtained by Postmedia show jail staff made seven drug seizures in the wake of the overdoses.
On July 13, they made two seizures of substances containing fentanyl and carfentanil. Inmates were charged under the Correctional Institution Regulation and police were contacted.
Over the following week, officers found an unknown white powdery substance, prescription morphine, a synthetic opiate, heroin, and another package of fentanyl. Details about where the drugs were found, the quantity or how they were smuggled in were redacted.
Overall, opioids were not the most common type of drug seized during the period covered by the records. Marijuana was the biggest culprit in terms of total seizures with 23, followed by amphetamines (21), a variety of prescription drugs (9), then opioids (8). Officers couldn’t identify the drug in 25 cases.
Tobacco, suboxone, and the potent cannabis concentrate know as shatter were also among the drugs seized.
HOW THEY GET IN
Conrad said there are three main ways drugs get in: through the mail, within an inmate’s body, and in some cases, with staff. “Mail’s the big way,” he said. A few months ago, Conrad stopped a package at the Calgary remand designed to look like disclosure from a law firm. Such documents are privileged, but Conrad felt a bulge about the size of a CD inside. Because CDs aren’t allowed in cells, he had authority to open the package.
“It contained $10,000, jailhouse value, of nicotine patches,” he said.
Conrad said the yellow capsules that house toys inside Kinder Surprises are the most popular vessel for smuggling items inside a body cavity.
To find objects hidden on or inside a person, officials installed a body scanner at the remand centre last December.
New inmates, transfers and inmates suspected of having contraband must pass through the scanner, but staff and third-party contractors are not required to do so. Staff conducted 21,025 scans during the first half of 2018, roughy five per cent of which turned up contraband.
A spokesperson said the results have been “promising ” so far and that there are plans to buy another scanner for the Calgary Remand Centre.
Staff and correctional officers have sometimes smuggled in drugs, Conrad said. He couldn’t point to specific cases but estimated that across the province, an Alberta correctional officer is implicated in smuggling once every five years.
“We’re very good at catching those before they get out of hand, and usually what happens is those people quit long before they ’re terminated,” he said.
“It does happen every once in a while, but it’s not an ongoing concern for us.”
IS THERE A BETTER WAY?
Others say simply stopping the flow of drugs into prisons isn’t the right approach.
Sandra Ka Hon Chu, director of research and advocacy at the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, said more harm reduction programs are needed inside prisons and jails — including improving access to opiate substitution therapy and training inmates to use naloxone.
More broadly, Chu has been advocating for the decriminalization of small amounts of drugs for personal use.
She also supported a move by Correctional Service Canada to introduce safe needle programs at two facilities in eastern Canada. The agency plans to roll out similar programs at federal correctional facilities across the country next year in hopes of reducing infectious disease rates.
The Alberta Liberal party has also called for drug decriminalization, as well as a public inquiry into drug-related deaths in provincial correctional facilities.
Liberal Leader David Khan said many people in remand ran into trouble with the law because of mental health and substance abuse issues. He said a stay in lockup shouldn’t make those problems worse.
“Most of these Albertans are going to be released into the general population at some point,” he said. “And if we’ve just criminalized their addictions and they ’ve either died or their addictions have gotten worse in jail, we’re just setting ourselves up for more problems in the future.”
We use the body scanner, we use drug detection dogs. But it’s the age-old thing — where there’s a will there’s a way.