Letter of the week: Prison staff deserve praise for trying to tackle 'impossible' drugs problem
I DON'T understand your headline of "New jail among worst in league of drugs find" in last week's WLH&P.
You clearly state only Barlinnie and Saughton have higher drugs finds. Surely instead of trying to put Addiewell, and its staff, down you should be praising them and the systems in place that have prevented all those drugs being introduced to the prison.
It's pretty clear to me that the actual headline should have read, "New jail among best in league of drugs finds", no?
And before you ask, no, I don't work at Addiewell but I do work at one of the public-sector jails in Scotland.
Yes, we all know that drugs are rife in prisons, it's a fact of life.
Do you think that just because drug-taking criminals are locked up inside they won't still take drugs?
No sooner than staff stop one way of prisoners getting drugs in and they find a different way of doing it. Trying to stop drugs in prisons is impossible.
Maybe if you could lock (inmates] up 24 hours a day, stop all contact with family and friends and stopped them having any access to the outside world then, yes, you possibly could stop drugs getting in, but there are too many namby pamby do-gooders out there that would stop that from happening.
So while we are still part of the stupid part of European laws called the Court of Human Rights (which should only apply to law-abiding humans), please try to lay off staff for trying to do a good job.
Maybe a pat on the back wouldn't go amiss from the press from time to time.
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Sunday 05 February 2012
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