Jeffrey Archer: The results and consequences of the drug problem in our jails

From a speech given by the writer and peer to the Howard League for Penal Reform

During my incarceration, I received over 10,000 letters, cards and messages, and, following the publication of my first diary, which detailed the drug abuse I observed in Belmarsh, not one person who wrote to me has suggested that I had over-estimated the drug problem. However, I came across one anomaly that I feel could be rectified immediately.

If a prisoner is caught taking drugs, he is rightly put on report and punished by the governor. This punishment can range from a fine - no pay for a month and loss of all canteen privileges - to the most feared reprisal if you are in an open prison, of being re-categorised and returned to closed conditions.

Because there are no specific guidelines for governors, they often draw no official distinction between a prisoner who smokes marijuana at the weekend, and one caught injecting himself daily with heroin. Indeed, before entering prison, I might also have considered "taking drugs" as a crime that should not have distinctions. This I now recognise as naive, given the relative social damage inflicted by the two drugs, and it might even be pragmatically sensible in prison given the need to bear down on drug abuse by prisoners, were it not for the unintended consequences.

What I wasn't aware of until being locked up, is that when you smoke marijuana, traces of the substance remain in your blood stream for 28 days, whereas should you take heroin, it is possible by drinking vast amounts of water - and there is a wash basin and lavatory in every cell - to flush all traces of the drug from your body within 24 hours.

Result and consequence: in the long hours of boredom spent in your cell, especially at weekends when you're locked up for periods of 22 hours a day, some marijuana smokers turn to heroin as an alternative, only because the chances of showing positive at an MDT (Mandatory Drug Test) are so much smaller than if you have a few puffs of marijuana. This results in a small percentage, but a large number, of inmates who enter prison as social marijuana smokers, and come out as heroin addicts.