Syringe Exchange in Prison – A Matter of Human Rights

People do not surrender their human rights when they enter prison.  Instead, they are dependent on the criminal justice system to uphold their human rights — including their right to health. Prison health is public health.

These statements may seem self-evident to some, but the right to adequate health care services is the basis of a new legal case brought against the Canadian federal government.

Syringe exchange programs are a crucial component of a comprehensive strategy to prevent the spread of infectious diseases but the federal correctional service does not permit this life-saving health service in Canada’s federal prisons. To challenge this policy, the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Prisoners with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN), CATIE, the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network (CAAN) and Steven Simons, a former federal prisoner, launched a lawsuit against the Government of Canada today over its failure to protect the health of people in prison through its ongoing refusal to implement clean needle and syringe programs.

Drug use in prisons is a reality. A 2007 survey by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) revealed that 17% of men and 14% of women had injected drugs while in prison. Some prisoners are not ready to partake in treatment, treatment may be unavailable or treatment may not be appropriate.

Despite the fact that drug use and possession is illegal in prison and despite prison systems’ efforts to prevent drugs from entering the prisons, drugs remain widely available. In fact, no prison system in the world has been able to keep drugs completely out. Sharing syringes is a pretty efficient way of sharing blood-born illnesses. People in prison have rates of HIV and Hep C that are at least 10 and 30 times higher than the population as a whole, and much of this infection is occurring because prisoners do not have access to sterile injection equipment.

This legal case challenges the belief that people revoke their rights when they enter a prison. In fact, prisoners retain all the human rights available to the population at large, except those that are necessarily restricted by incarceration. This includes the right to the highest attainable standard of health, a right enshrined in several U.N. Treaties and Conventions. This right encompasses measures such as syringe exchange that have been shown repeatedly to prevent the transmission of diseases.

There’s also sound reasons to think that prison syringe exchange services are good for all of us. These services are available in many parts of the world and evaluations have found that they reduce needle sharing, do not lead to increased drug use or injecting, help reduce drug overdoses, facilitate referrals of users to drug treatment programmes, and have not resulted in needles or syringes being used as weapons against staff. When these services were introduced in Swiss prisons, staff were initially relunctant, but because syringe exchange reduced the likelihood of a needle stick they realized that distribution of sterile injection equipment was in their own interest, and felt safer than before the distribution started.

The vast majority of prisoners eventually return to the community, so illnesses that are acquired in prison do not necessarily stay in prison. This means that when we protect the health of prisoners we protect the health of everyone in our communities. Prisoners are part of our lives too – they are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends and loved ones. While you may not think you know a prisoner, chances are you will – and you will have concern for their health and well being.

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