PRISON officers have called for more drug free units to be set up in prisons and for wider availability of methadone and counselling programmes.
The 80 delegates at the POA conference were told that the programmes should involve prisoners' families and be co ordinated with local health boards.
Mr Ray Murphy of the POA said it was important to ensure that all prisoners receiving methadone - a heroin substitute - were not using other drugs.
He said ideally the State's 13 prisons would be drug free, but "the drug free regime is only in its infancy stage". However, "a methadone maintenance programme in the larger prisons should be a serious policy option now".
The Minister for Justice Mrs Owen, has said methadone programmes will be introduced in a structured" way. According to the Minister, the drug will be available to prisoners who have been using such programmes for some time before being sent to prison.
"This does not mean that a drug dependent prisoner could simply `sign on' for methadone treatment, say the week before he is sent to prison, in the expectation that he will spend years in custody on maintenance," she told the conference on Thursday. She added that the drug would be distributed under strict supervision including testing to ensure other drugs were not being used.
Yesterday Mr Murphy said there must be a determined effort to ensure such supervision should take place, but the introduction of the programmes should not detract from efforts to keep other drugs out of prisons.
The conference was presented with a survey of prisoners at St Patrick's Institution, carried out in January. The survey showed about 55 per cent of prisoners admitted to having used hard drugs such as heroin before imprisonment. This compares with the 65 per cent continuing usage by male prisoners at Mountjoy, as reported by the Mountjoy Visiting Committee.
Prison management at St Patrick's questioned prisoners there in January, on a voluntary basis and with a guarantee of confidentiality. All 153 prisoners, of whom all but two are aged between 16 and 21, agreed to take part.
The survey showed that 60 per cent said they had used soft drugs such as cannabis, and 55 admitted hard drug usage. In addition, 51 per cent had taken ecstasy and 17 per cent said they had only used other tablets. Only 21 prisoners, or 14 per cent, said they had never used drugs.