On Point : Recommendations for Prison-Based Needle and Syringe Programs in Canada

[Introduction]: "Prison-based needle and syringe programs (PNSPs) provide sterile injection equipment to prisoners who inject drugs. Like community-based needle and syringe programs, PNSPs have been shown to be very effective in international contexts. Currently, however, Canadian prisons do not offer these programs. Since the early 1990s, a growing body of evidence has established the need for and benefits of PNSPs, and community organizations responding to HIV — as well as a growing number of other expert bodies — have repeatedly recommended their implementation in Canada. After 20 years of discussion and presentation of the public health and human rights case for PNSPs, it was evident there was no reasonable prospect of the federal government agreeing to their implementation within the foreseeable future. Therefore, in September 2012, Steven Simons (a former prisoner), along with the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Prisoners with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN), Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network, and CATIE initiated a constitutional court challenge seeking orders that would compel the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) to make sterile injection equipment available in federal prisons. As the case progresses through the court system, community advocates, academics, infectious disease specialists, and others have been engaged in a variety of research and public educational activities in support of PNSPs, building on the extensive international work of the previous two decades. This report highlights three phases of these activities, each building on the previous one, which consisted of a stakeholder meeting (phase 1), prison site visits in Switzerland (phase 2), and a community-based research project (phase 3). We focus here mainly on the third phase, the primary aim of which was to develop a series of recommendations for PNSP implementation in Canadian federal prisons. The community-based study was led by Dr. Emily van der Meulen from the Department of Criminology at Ryerson University, and the Research Team included Seth Clarke and Annika Ollner from PASAN, Stéphanie Claivaz-Loranger from the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, Krysta Williams from the Native Youth Sexual Health Network, and Dr. Tara Marie Watson, a prison health researcher. The study was generously funded by the Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN) and received approval from the Ryerson University Research Ethics Board."

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