An Alberta correctional officer says needle hand-out programs, drug policies, and contraband dropped by drones are contributing to dangerous conditions in jail, while temporary absences of prisoners endanger the public.In an interview with Western Standard, Jake Suelzle, vice president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers for the Prairie region, said most Canadians are "extremely naive and blind" to how bad life is in prisons."It's not what the average Canadian thinks it is. It's far more violent. If Canadians understood how easily accessible drugs were due to an incarcerated population, I think their minds will be blown," he said..National rollout of Prison Needle Exchange Program alarms union.Suelzle said federal claims that its new needle exchange programs are successful ignore safety risks, especially to officers. In Boden Institution, 100 km north of Calgary, an officer was pricked by a needle in June during a search of a prisoner. The officer had to go through weeks of medical testing, unsure if he was infected or a health risk to his family."Our [union] position is, although we are not a fan of the drug use inside at all, if we're going to have drug use, have it supervised by healthcare instead of just random needles passed throughout the institution to the population and the threat that that poses," he said..Union urges that inmates not get unsupervised access to needles for drug use."Most correctional officers are still in a state of disbelief that their employer is mandating this on them. I think everybody's waiting to kind of wake up from this and say, 'I can't believe we even had that conversation. Surely it wasn't real.'".Free needles complicate correction officers’ jobs.Suelzle, who is based out of a medium-security institution in Drumheller, Alta., said "snorting and soaking" are the main drug issues in prisons, but free needles are "introducing this problem to a population that doesn't have it."Three pilot projects to implement technology that would stop drones from dropping contraband to prisoners are still far away from a issuing a contract or having a national rollout. In the meantime, Suelzle sees "a free for all for drugs within the federal institutions now.""The floodgates stay wide open within the penitentiaries of drugs and contraband being dropped out of regularity we've never seen," Suezle said."Drones continue to be almost a daily occurrence at most institutions. The value of the drugs coming in is in the [millions] of dollars...We have meth at the same rate that we had cigarettes."Suelzle named BC and Alberta Conservative MPs Frank Caputo, Damien Kurek, Blaine Calkins, Kelly McCauley, and Brad Vis among those who see prisoner issues similarly to him. He said there is at least one assault of a guard daily in a prairie region, and "sometimes several.""Someone is assaulted, they're punched in the face, they're exposed to bodily fluids or whatever and 15 minutes later, they're serving them lunch. There is no accountability for these actions at all. And the inmates know that," he said."The violence we have against correctional officers right now, it's astronomical compared to any point in memorable history within the penitentiary. We're being assaulted at a rate that is unheard of," Suelzle added.On June 14, Kevin Sider escaped from Grande Cache Institution, a medium security federal institution in Alberta. He was captured by RCMP in the area at 3:30 am on June 29.According to Suelzle, Sider was doing work on the prison grounds, but outside the secured perimeter, then got away."Your average correctional officer shakes their head every time these kind of things happen, which is on such a regular basis. They're saying, 'I wish people knew about this. I wish we could tell our story.' But they can't because they're threatened with termination."Not everyone thinks prisoner absences are a large problem. Matthew Yeager, Professor Emeritus of Criminology at Western University in London, Ontario, said the stats of the Corrections and Conditional Release Statistical Overview (2022) suggest minimal impact."There were four escapes in fiscal year 2022, and that trend has fallen substantially since 2012 . Three of those escapees were re-arrested. This number represented 0.03% of the in-custody population; and over the past 10 years, the number of escapees from federal institutions decreased 83.3% from 24 in 2012-13 to 4 in 2021-22," he said."As to the success of those on work release and absences ... from 2012-13 to 2021-22 ... the average successful completion rates for escorted temporary absences was 99.6%, 98.6% for unescorted temporary absences and 94.2% for work releases."Yeager said "lax security is a faux issue, created by guards and unions who wish to increase hiring and pay rates," although he also acknowledged, "In general, escapees tend to lie low so as not to be re-apprended."Suelzle said some prisoners get passes to leave jail that should never be given."Our position is we don't believe medium and maximum security inmates should ever be on non security escorts because the risk to the public is simply too high to gamble with," he said. "It is a time bomb before this happens again or worse with no need for the safety of the public to be gambled with at all."Suelzle recalled how escaped prisoners had a shootout with police in Drumheller in the spring of 2011. Months later a correctional officer took a prisoner out on an escort that had no security conditions applied, only to be taken hostage, strangled, assaulted and dumped in a ditch."We had a discussion a few months ago about 2011, and management told me that it never happened. And, I looked at him and I said, 'I was there. Don't tell me it wasn't [real],'" Suelzle said."I don't want to minimize the impact on the other correctional officer who was strangled and assaulted, was stripped of her clothing and tied up in the back of a van."In response to a query from Western Standard, spokesperson Mia Schewega of the Correctional Services of Canada insisted, "CSC takes escapes very seriously and public safety remains our paramount consideration."The spokesperson said the CSC partners with police to "further deter" attempts to introduce contraband."CSC is aware of the evolving threat posed by drones and continues to respond to this threat with a layered approach which includes the use of security practices, adoption of new technologies, intelligence activities and infrastructure enhancements.This includes the:Procurement and piloting of drone detection technology;Piloting of cell phone detection technologies;Piloting of body scanners;Training of detector dogs to detect electronic devices;Infrastructure enhancements to our facilities."The spokesperson said maximum security inmates are ineligible for temporary absences. Others are eligible after serving one-sixth or six months of their sentence, whichever is greater, a per a commissioner's directive. An absence may be escorted or unescorted, the spokesperson explained."In some cases, the purpose of a temporary absence is to encourage inmates to keep family and community ties. These ties help safely reintegrate inmates into the community as law-abiding citizens. Temporary absences are granted for many reasons including: medical; administrative; community service; family contact; parental responsibility; personal development for rehabilitative purposes; compassionate [reasons]."Suelzle said prisoners are doing time for good reason and the CSC approach owes itself to a philosophy different from guards and much of the public."I believe it's the philosophy that innmate reintegration takes precedent over public safety. And they won't phrase it that way. But in our view, there is no need to gamble with public security in the name of reintegration, I don't believe that any form of a non security escort aids in reintegration. There is no reintegration that happens without handoffs that can't happen with handcuffs or with security measures applied to it," Suelzle said."If these guys are able to complete their sentence and complete their correctional plan with whatever sanctions that looks like, imposed on them by a judge, then I'll say go. But until that's been satisfied, why are we gambling with the safety of the public?"
