Ottawa vows crackdown on child drug mules in prison

ABBOTSFORD, B.C. - Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day says he's already working to ensure children aren't used as unwitting mules to sneak illicit drugs into federal prisons.

Day wrote last fall to the head of the Correctional Service of Canada, asking that the drug search policy be updated so babies and young children visiting inmates could not be used "to traffic narcotics," his aide Melissa Leclerc said today.

She was reacting to a news conference here by the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers, at which a guard from Matsqui Institution said he was threatened with discipline for calling the children's ministry about a baby whose stroller had tested positive for cocaine particles last November.

Terry Leger, who is also the Matsqui union president, told reporters that for the safety of the child, he felt obligated to alert the children's helpline to the fact the test done when the baby visited Nov. 11 indicated close contact with drugs.

"The concern right from the get-go was this child's safety," said Leger. "I think we have an onus to protect children."

But when the ministry contacted Matsqui for more information, Leger was called in by his supervisors and threatened with an investigation for allegedly breaching the inmates' privacy, he said.

Leger said he felt intimidated and discouraged from doing what he is obligated to do under the law - report any suspected abuse of a child.

"If some people see what I am going through, it might be a deterrent," said Leger, who has been a correctional officer for eight years.

Terry Robertson, the union's regional president, said there have been instances both in B.C. and nationally where children have been discovered to be carrying drugs into the prisons for inmate use.

And Robertson said with the increasing number of organized gangs inside B.C. correctional facilities, the illicit drug trade among inmates is booming.

"The current gang crisis on the streets of Greater Vancouver is part of the same war for control of the prison drug trade," Robertson said. "Federal penitentiaries are awash in drugs because the people who bring drugs to our inmates have little fear of arrest."

He said an increasing strategy is the use of children to smuggle the drugs in. And Robertson said some institutions, including maximum security Kent prison, do not even test children with a special drug detecting ion machine because they don't want to scare them.

Leger recounted another case at medium security Matsqui in which visitor logs showed another woman, who twice arrived with a baby, tested positive eight times between March and July of last year for cocaine, methamphetamines, heroin, and THC.

Despite the positive hits, she was allowed to continue with her visit on three of those occasions.

"Clothing on the woman's baby tested positive for cocaine and meth residues. Police were not called to investigate on any of these occasions," Leger said.

In both cases, he was alerted to the findings of the tests by other correctional officers and did not deal with the visitors himself.

But Leger said he has since encountered another two occasions in which babies or small children have tested positive for drug residue.

Robertson said the correctional service needs a clear, consistent policy denying anyone who tests positive for drugs access to the institutions. And he said staff wanting to report to the ministry for children should be supported, not accused of violating an inmate's rights.

"Rules and procedures change from institution to institution, even from manager to manager," Robertson said.

The ion machine analyses small cotton swabs done randomly of visitors' clothing. If they test positive for narcotics, they are usually sent away without being allowed to visit, but are not automatically searched.

The correctional service's B.C. spokesman, Dave Lefebvre, said he was unable to comment on the union's allegations. He referred all calls to Leclerc, who issued a short e-mail response to the issues raised.

She said Day's letter to Keith Coulter, commissioner of the Correctional Service of Canada, said the minister wanted to make sure the search policy "clearly supports the overarching priority of deterring drug trafficking into penal institutions."

"Our government is determined to ensure that penitentiaries are drug free," Day's statement said. "Keeping drugs out of our institutions is vital for the safety of our correctional officers and for the rehabilitation of offenders."

The Vancouver Sun revealed earlier this month that escalating gang conflicts inside B.C. prisons over the drug trade has led to violent inmate-on-inmate attacks and security concerns for prison guards.

In Quebec last October, a woman and six-week-old baby visiting a well-known gang member in prison were sniffed out by a narcotics dog. Police were called and found 32 grams of heroin on the infant.

kbolan@png.canwest.com