12/02/2013 Spotlight

This program contains some strong $:/STARTFEED. Tonight, a place you

can get drugs. It is easier to get heroin in prison than it is outside.

My son could still be alive. reveal a breakdown in prison drug

testing as staff shortages are at home. Are past failures still

We investigate the extent of illicit and prescription drug abuse

in Northern Ireland's prisons. We find out why the system is

struggling to cope with the drug problem behind bars. Northern

Ireland's prison service has been criticised time and again, deemed

as ineffective. It is beset by chronic staff absence. It might

seem hard to believe that drugs get into our prisons, smuggled in by

residents, visitors and staff. But many are there already and

available on prescription. I am going behind bars to find out the

Maghaberry Prison. We have been given a glimpse of life inside

Northern Ireland's high-security prison. Where are you taking us

now? Down to reception. What does that mean in prison terms? This is

where people are processed, their details taken. Governor Patrick

Maguire is in charge of the inmates. The prisoners arrive in from the

vehicles, come along the corridor. Prisoners are processed, they are

seen by various staff, given various measurements, they will be

given clothes. Around half of the prisoners here come in on remand,

but many will not return to the outside world for years, even

decades. This is prison life. These blocks can be a harsh place.

SHOUTING AND SWEARING. Over a quarter of inmates here have drug

habits. On the day we filmed, there had been a drugs find. Today, a

visitor was caught with drugs. That person has been arrested.

Jurisdictions around the world have drug issues. What we are all about

is zero tolerance of drugs. We have a number of methodologies to deal

with the drug issue. But the prison's track record shows

anything but zero tolerance. Patricia Gilmore suffered as a

result. Her son Richard died in 2009 in Magilligan Prison.

first I knew was when the police arrived at the door to tell me that

my son was dead. It was quite a shock. What was that morning like?

The police came and said a suspicious death and that we were

not to go near the prison because we would not get in. I thought

perhaps somebody had killed him or he had got into a fight or had

committed suicide. The liaison officer told me about the drugs. He

had smuggled drugs into prisonand died after taking a toxic cocktail

of pills. It was just three weeks before he was due to be released.

His sister has lost a brother, my grandson has lost a father.

inquest found the defects in the prison system had contributed to

his death and that searches should have been carried out after the

suspected overdose of another inmate. Richard was a known drug

abuser but he had been given his prescription pills in bulk. An

officer had even been aware he was high on drugs prior to his death.

My son would be alive if only they had done certain things, had

checked him. When there was a clear awareness? One of them told me he

was off his head. If somebody is off their head on drugs, what do

you do? You do something about it. At the inquest, it seemed there is

nothing they can do. Drugs get in no matter what. There is nothing

they can do about it. But there must be something they can do.

since Richard's Gilmore's death, basic failings in the supervision

of drug use amongst prisoners has been a feature of several deaths in

our jails. The Prison Ombudsman says that the service has been slow

to put in what could be life-saving changes. I have made it absolutely

clear that we need to givea much higher level of priority to the

whole issue of drugs. We have to look at the supply of drugs into

prison. We have to try and stop them getting into prison. That is

always going to be difficult, but it is important we try.

question is how hard has the Prison Service been trying? What goes on

in Northern Ireland's prison is hidden from public view. But I have

talked to someone who knows it very well. An officer who saw the drug

problem first hand. That former officer agreed to speak to me on

camera, but wanted his identity obscured. He said that inside

anything goes. Prisoners in Maghaberry can get anything. They

are out of their skull. You do not know what they have taken. They

don't know what they have taken. Belfast lawyer we spoke to said a

number of his clients have come into contact with drugs while

imprisoned. He says the problem is severe enough for even hardened

drug dealers to be concerned. client said he had never come into

contact with heroin until he went to Maghaberry. Another client who

was a cocaine dealer asked me to make representations to take him

away from the heroin. He says another of his clients did become

hooked on heroin while on the inside. The scale of the problem

has led this lawyer to one staggering conclusion. It is easier

to get heroin in prison than it is outside. The number of heroin

seizures has been small, but many I spoke to expected the problem to

increase. Time and again, the Prison Service has been criticised

by the Prisons Ombudsman and government inspectors for failing

to keep prisoners safe. They say crucial chances to save lives have

been missed. The regime is based on security not rehabilitation. It is

a service stuck in the past. need to have a whole new generation

of prison officers with a different mindset. That doesn't mean you

throw out discipline and security. There has to be, and even a report

has said it, a cultural change that goes to the root of what people

traditionally have always called a dinosaur mentality. Long-serving

officers are more than familiar with the accusation. I am quite

happy and proud to be a dinosaur. We had a block in the Maze called

Jurassic Park because it was all dinosaurs. We did the job, we were

able to do the job and we did not shy away from doing the job. 30

years later we are still doing the job. Hundreds of older officers

agreed to a golden goodbye to make way for younger, cheaper recruits.

Since last year, prison officers have been leaving in droves. Many

of them were members of the Prison Officers' Association.

relationship between the the Prison Service management and the

Association has been challenging. I do not expect to get to a position

where we agree on everything. But my sense is we do now have a mature

relationship. This is not the first time that someone has tried to

bring change to our prisons. In 2009, Steve Rodford promised reform

but quit after a security breach when his personal details were

found in a prisoner's cell. This is the prisoner assessment unit on

Belfast's Crumlin Road. Until 2011, it housed life-sentence prisoners

coming to the end of their tariff. It meant they could come and go,

mix with the community, get jobs. It was a facility designed to

prepare them for real life. The prisoner assessment unit was closed

in controversy when it was revealed a night custody officer had been in

a relationship with one of the inmates. An investigation was

launched. The officer we spoke to was one of those interviewed in the

investigation. He says he tried to blow the whistle on how a goverenor

at the PAU had once agreed to help a prisoner save up to repay a debt

over drugs. When we got to �200, this would be handed to the

prisoners niece who would pay the drug dealer. So staff were being

instructed by a governor to save money to pay off a drug dealer?

Correct. What was your opinion of that? I told the governor where to

go and said that no member of staff will be taking any truck with that.

But the money was paid and the investigation uncovered more. The

unit was being managed chaotically while staff were working hours to

suit themselves, junior officers were often left in charge of

dangerous prisoners. The report damned a dysfunctional prison unit

but its findings remain heavily blacked out. The former officer we

spoke to said staff were doing their best and management were at

fault. He wants the report to be fully published. What was the point

in printing it? Somebody has something to hide. Eventually two

governors were suspended for bringing the Prison Service into

disrepute. This facility is due to re-open, but there are no plans to

publish the full report. The public may never know why it was closed in

the first place. Just because it is redacted it doesn't mean that you

should have confidence we will learn the lessons from what

happened previously and make sure that the new PAU is fit for purpose

and we learn from mistakes made and acknowledge them. Disorganised

staff and poor management were the legacies of the Prison Service's

troubled past. The jails themselves remain largely unchanged. The

service has been recently criticised for still keeping

prisoners in cell blocks like these for up to 20 hours per day. The

prison governors want to phase them out and know they are poorly

designed, outdated and cramped. These tiny cells are frequently

shared, but can't be consigned to the history books yet. More blocks

just like this currently hold over 400 inmates. The Prison Ombudsman

has lambasted the regime of confinement. If we want to deal

with drugs, we have to deal with the demand. People who are locked

up for long periods may not be well, may have mental health problems,

may have addiction problems, the last way we will prevent them from

looking for drugs is by locking them up. You are locked down, not

out of your cell. It is boredom and the fact you have no meaning beyond

your immediate situation. If you have a mental health condition it

will worsen. If you haven't got one, you are at risk of getting one.

That is the reality. All the research I have done has

demonstrated that is the continuing debilitating reality. It is this

that aggravates one of Maghaberry Prison's biggest problems. Inmates'

cravings for prescription pills that come in legitimately through

the front door. Two-thirds of medication like painkillers and

anti- anxiety tablets. It is these drugs, as well as illegal ones,

that are being abused. They are out of it. They are walking about as if

they have been out all night having a skinful and the staff just say,

"Look at him, get him into a cell and out of the road." Because many

drugs are given out weekly, prisoners are hoarding them

increasing the risk of misuse. Worse, pills have become currency

and an underground economy is rife. As a consequence, drugs are being

stolen, traded or bullied from vulnerable inmates. We are about

trying to find a safe environment for prisoners and staff. That will

take more time to achieve. It is an ongoing battle, but we are

determined that we will achieve what we set out to achieve, which

is a safer prison for everyone. That will be an uphill battle. One

way is to watch prisoners taking drugs, but this has been delayed

due to a lack of manpower. Back in 2009, the prison was severely

criticised by inspectors and labelled one of the worst jails in

the UK. Tom McGonigle was on the team that said so. Drugs were often

the currency in the prison so prisoners were bullied and

prisoners traded them. If you think of the fact that communal areas are

not supervised adequately, then that meant there was a greater risk

of bullying and overdosing. inspection team returned last year.

There had been improvements, but they found it hadn't improved

nearly enough in its commitment to stamp out drug abuse. In relation

to substance misuse, it had not changed adequately at all. We went

in in March 2012 and reported in December 2012 and essentially there

was little progress in those areas. Inspectors had welcomed a new

system of testing for drugs at the jail, but nearly one year on, we

have discovered that drugs testing has faced serious difficulties.

Figures obtained by Spotlight show how last year drug-testing fell

from 138 tests in January to just 13 in August. Testing faced more

disruption last winter. It is fair to say that drugs testing,

alongside a number of other things, has been a casualty of staff

shortages. I take that very seriously. I have been working with

the Governor and senior management to look at how we can make sure

that drug-testing is not one of those things that gets cancelled.

Fewer staff meant fewer tests. The Prison Ombudsman says it is a poor

state of affairs for a service supposedly clamping down on a drugs

crisis. I raised it with the Prison Service when I was told and my

reaction to that is that it is not acceptable. If we are serious about

dealing with the problem then the priority we give to making sure

that functions like drugs testing are fully staffed and that is not

the place we go to take stuff when we have a problem somewhere else

and it has to be given the highest priority. It is completely

unacceptable. A key goal of the change programme is to run prisons

on fewer staff. But staff sick leave in prisons here is among the

worst in the civil service. This long-term absence alongside the

exodus of retiring officers has left management struggling to cope.

There will be difficult decisions to be made whenever we are short of

staff or when we perceive we are short of staff. So it is not easy.

That's something we will have to give. We need to be clear that, if

drugs is a priority, then drugs testing has to be part of that

strategy. New recruits and new ideas were supposed to be bringing

change in a service that badly needs it. It seems clear there is

tension between old officers and young counterparts. These are smart

young people, that is fine. Street craft, jail craft, to be able to

look a prisoner in the eye, not down at them. They can come in with

degrees and A-levels and the rest of it. Whenever I came into jail,

you did not open your mouth for the first six weeks. You went in there

and you worked on the wing and listened to what you were being

told. These ones go in and think they know better. Their first day

they are telling you how to do the job. Jail craft, the know-how on

the wings is crucial. That is a craft that also needs to evolve and

there are fears that attempts to modernise won't survive contact

with the old guard let alone prisoners as the head of the Prison

Service told Stormont last year. There is a risk that we train

people at college and they go back and staff say, "Forget what you

learnt, we will show you how it is really done." We have said to them,

you will come under pressure not to do some of the things we are

training you to do. Finlay Spratt is the chairman of the Prison

Officers' Association and rejects the allegation that older staff

will lean on new recruits to abandon training. That statement

was made by somebody who does not know the staff in the Northern

Ireland Prison Service. I would ask Sue McAllister, where is her

evidence to support that? There is no evidence. Quite a lot of her

staff are remaining within the Northern Ireland Prison Service.

Her remark exposed a rift in the service. We needed to make sure

that we supported all of our staff to work in this new way, including

experienced staff and that we recognise that there might be times

when some of the experienced staff found these new ways of working

difficult, challenging or they simply felt unable to be part of

that change. We needed to support new colleagues in resisting

pressure where it happened from some of the more experienced staff.

Having said that, our experience to date of how the new officers have

been received by more experienced staff has been largely positive.

Crossing over to a new culture hasn't been easy for the Prison

Service. I have come to Bristol to hear about the transformations that

other prison services have undergone and why that matters to

Northern Ireland. Prisons in the rest of the British Isles have been

on a rail journey in the last 20 years, moving away from a culture

of punishment and towards rehabilitation. That is a journey

that Northern Ireland prisons say they want to follow. I have come

here to meet someone who has investigated drugs in prisons for

decades. Someone who advised the Northern Ireland Prison Service on

dealing with substance abuse. Dr Anthoney Hewitt found that the

service was slow to put his recommendations, such as keeping

track, into practice. I was disappointed, we all were, how long

it took to even consider some of them and how some of them were

diverted into sub committees or other planning groups when they

could have been implemented relatively easy and quickly.

Prison Service has changed in Great Britain in his time and so has the

way it deals with complex issues like drug abuse. There has

definitely been a change in the 30 years I have been working in

prisons. Between what you might call the ex-military model of

prison officer that I was working with in the Eighties to the sort of

officer you have now. It is a much more complex job and more demanding.

That hasn't necessarily been an easy process to go from one to the

other. Sometimes that has meant changing personnel, not just

personalities. Change has been introduced. Back at Maghaberry

Prison, authorities say they are making improvements trying to

increase time outside cells. The service says it can make the system

work with fewer staff and they claim it is to the benefit of the

inmates. I have been allowed in in open association time. As you can

see, there are not a lot of staff about. That is the way the Prison

Service wants to move to. It is a new culture. Certain prisoners can

now move more freely around the complex and the Governor tells me

the most modern blocks offer a better regime for the inmates.

People tend to integrate well. If everyone finds their own level. I'm

a great believer that we can change the culture, we can change

behaviours through good architecture. This design of this

house block will allow all of that to flourish. That is why I am

optimistic about the future. Some that we spoke to were also getting

used to a new regime of openness. More prisoners out of cells with

fewer staff is an idea dismissed by the Prison Officers' Association.

The chairman has a stark warning. think the drug problem will get

worse within prisons and we will end up with more attacks on

prisoners on prisoners. And more attacks on staff because as the

prisoners get high on drugs, staff will pay the penalty. That is the

result of this wonderful reform that they talk about and also the

fact of cutting the staffing levels at the minute. Critics say staffing

levels cannot remain as high as they once did. There is no reason

whatsoever that safe administration of drugs and at the same time, safe

monitoring of drugs and their use, if that comes down to searching

cells, can be carried out. I'm at a loss to be able to even contemplate

why, with the levels of staffing we have in our prison system, we

cannot carry out safe, secure, appropriate regimes. After many

failures, the Prison Service no longer runs medicine inside the

jails. It is now handled by the South Eastern Health Trust and they

have promised to clamp down on inmates' access to prescription

drugs. Where they are already getting medication from their GP

and where we can verify that case, we will do so and they will get

their medication. There are times when we can't do that. Not all

prisoners tell us the truth. In the past, many prisoners have been over

prescribed. There have also been serious problems with some

prisoners needing drugs and not getting them. Solicitor Matt

Higgins says that despite recent changes, he is still writing on his

clients' behalf complaining of this problem. I wrote on each occasion

and on each occasion sometime later I got a letter from the trust

saying your request will be dealt with within 28 days. The holding

letter I get from the trust just shows that it is not being dealt

with urgently. It is extremely disappointing given their recurring

promises and the repeated problems that come to light. Yet the trust

maintains it can't rush proper medical assessment of inmates.

have in place robust arrangements to ensure individuals are not

prescribed medication just because they ask for it or just because the

solicitor says they require it. you satisfied that is happening

timely enough? Absolutely. Despite the setbacks, the Prison Service

maintains reform is working. It says new facilities like this have

different ways of working with prisoners and it is positive. Some

inmates agree. This is great. You can come over here, walk around as

free. A bit of freedom is good for you and relaxing. Yet the shadow of

drug abuse still lingers. While filming, we saw this. The notice

warned of bad drugs in circulation. It asked inmates to hand them over

or flush them away. Spotlight has learnt it went up following the

death of another inmate just weeks before Christmas. The ombudsman is