Drugs in Prisons

The Hon. J.S. LEE (16:06): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Correctional Services a question about drugs in prisons.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.S. LEE: Recent media reports have suggested that there has been a decrease in the amount of contraband entering our prisons, yet statistics released earlier this year for the financial years 2014-15 and 2015-16 show that there is an increase in the rate of positive result drug tests despite, in some cases, a decrease of drug tests in most prisons.

For example, Adelaide Pre-release Centre, Adelaide Women's Prison, Port Augusta Prison, Port Lincoln Prison and Yatala Labour Prison all increased in the number of prisoners who tested positive to drugs between 2014-15 and 2015-16. Yatala Labour Prison increased from 89 prisoners being tested positive in 2014-15 to a total of 128 in 2015-16. My questions to the minister are:

1. If less contraband is getting into our prisons, where are the drugs that are being detected coming from?

2. With a total of five South Australian prisons detecting more prisoners with drugs in their system, how does the minister intend to address this problem?

3. What measures will the government put in place to ensure a better detection of drugs in prisons and ensure that they will not enter the prison system?

The Hon. P. MALINAUSKAS (Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (16:08): I thank the honourable member for her questions. This government takes very seriously the issue of contraband in prisons generally, which is why we have undertaken a number of efforts to improve upon the capacity of the department and the front-line officers to prevent contraband coming into prisons. Presently, the government is engaged in a number of media stories regarding contraband and what the government is doing about it. Maybe I will enlighten the honourable member about some of the initiatives that the government has undertaken.

The first thing is that we have invested in, in essence, a doubling in the size of the dog squad, or PAD dogs, that serve as an incredibly useful tool and resource when it comes to the detection of drugs within the prison system. That in itself speaks to some of the statistics that the Hon. Ms Lee refers to. Sometimes statistics—and I am sure the honourable member appreciates this—can be deceiving. What Corrections has been able to do rather successfully is to use intelligence-based methodology to inform them about how they go about using the resources they have available in terms of how best to hone them.

For instance, if they have intelligence that informs them that there might be a particular prisoner or a particular cohort of prisoners within a particular facility that are engaging in possessing contraband or using drugs, that enables them to focus their efforts and resources to detect drugs within that particular sector and, lo and behold, in percentage terms or in terms of the raw number of people being caught, it can increase. It is worth noting that during the life of this government there has been a very substantial increase, in real terms, in the number of tests and the level of scrutiny that is being applied to prisoners when it comes to trying to detect drugs within the prison system.

The government has also invested in a number of scanning systems that occur at the front end of the prison system to see if we can use those technologies to prevent contraband coming in. For instance, we have put in place an ion scan testing of visitors who attend prisoners at some facilities, in conjunction with other efforts like random searching and detection inside prisons, and also testing prisoners and administering appropriate sanctions for illicit drug use. So, the government and the department are putting in place a number of strategies to tackle the issue of contraband.

It is really important to understand that, essentially, no prison globally, or when you look at international experience, is able to completely remove contraband from its facilities. If that had occurred somewhere internationally, I would expect to know about it and then seek to implement similar policies in South Australia. I was rather naive about this, I think it's fair to say, upon initially taking up this responsibility. I sought to understand what the causes of contraband coming into the prison system were and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could eradicate contraband.' However, under any objective analysis, once one applies a bit of thought to this one would realise the extraordinary difficulty of completely removing contraband.

I am advised that one way that contraband or the level of contraband could be reduced within South Australian correctional facilities would be to, essentially, ban all visits. Any interaction that occurs between prisoners and visitors or, indeed, prisoners and correctional services staff, could be minimised by essentially stopping all time out of cell; that is, having prisoners in their cells 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year. That would facilitate a reduction in contraband but that is not a policy that would stand the state in good stead when it comes to our objective of trying to reduce the rate of reoffending. Having people in cells 24 hours a day is contrary to their interests and our interests around rehabilitating them.

This is a difficult policy area and it is one that we are putting a lot of effort into. Technology continues to provide ways and mechanisms to improve the reduction of contraband within the prison system. They are the sort of policies that we seek to employ and also providing the department with the policies and the resources that they need to be able to get the job done, and that has resulted in some positive key performance indicators when it comes to contraband within our prison system.