Irish Penal Reform Trust

International News

"Police station prisoners to be handed free needles" by Gareth Edwards, Edinburgh Evening News

14th January 2005

Prisoners are to be given free needles by police after it emerged that two-thirds of drug addicts taken into custody in the city are infected with hepatitis C or HIV.

Press Release from the Lothian and Borders Police: "Needle Exchange Scheme: New initiative to reduce health risks to police staff and reduce harm to drug users"

14th January 2005

Lothian and Borders Police in Scotland are piloting a needle exchange scheme for prisoners in a bid to reduce health risks to police staff and reduce harm to drug users.

"Majority of prisoners take drugs in jail" by Rhiannon Edward, The Scotsman

30th December 2004

More than half of Scotland's prisoners have taken drugs while they were in jail, a survey said yesterday. Three-quarters also claimed mandatory drug testing had made no difference to their use.

"Drug-taking on high behind bars" - BBC News

29th December 2004

Despite mandatory testing being introduced in 1994 across Scottish jails some 76% claimed it had not affected their drug intake.

"Why Some Politicians Need Their Prisons to Stay Full" by Brent Staples, New York Times

27th December 2004

The mandatory sentencing fad that swept the United States beginning in the 1970's has had dramatic consequences - most of them bad.

"Judges' verdict on terror laws provokes constitutional crisis" by Clare Dyer, Michael White and Alan Travis, The Guardian

17th December 2004

Lord Scott described the regime under which suspects can be detained indefinitely on the say-so of the home secretary with no right to know the grounds for detention as "the stuff of nightmares, associated with France before and during the revolution, with Soviet Russia in the Stalinist era, and now associated, as a result of section 23 of the 2001 Act, with the United Kingdom".

"Law lords back terror detainees" by Mark Oliver and Sarah Left, The Guardian

16th December 2004

Detaining foreigners without trial under emergency anti-terror powers breaks European human rights legislation, law lords ruled today.

Harm reduction in prisons: a 'rights based analysis' by Thomas Kerr, et al, Critical Public Health, Vol. 14, No. 4, 1-16, 2004

15th December 2004

Available evidence indicates that most harm-reduction programmes can be implemented within prisons without compromising security or increasing illicit drug use.

"Methadone in prison to launch in Bali" by Irene Lorete, Asian Harm Reduction Network - Indonesia

9th December 2004

Last week, a training on methadone substitution - for both hospital and prison setting - began in Bali.

"Wasted lives of the young let down by jail system" by Nick Davies, The Guardian

8th December 2004

Concluding his investigation into mentally disordered prisoners, Nick Davies looks at the number of children in prisons which cannot deal with their mental health problems.

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