Harm Reduction in Prisons: Restraints within the Prisoners’ Rights Discourse

A growing gap exists between the availability of harm reduction initiatives in mainstream society and those offered in correctional institutions. The quality of current risk-reducing measures in penitentiaries and the absence of more ambitious programs have led prisoners’ rights advocates to seek relief through litigation, often unsuccessfully. The author deconstructs these cases and traces litigants’ lack of success to two factors, which he contends condition harm reduction litigation in the prison context. While the law is clear that inmates retain their civil rights behind bars, the author concludes that the generic legal channels through which inmates must litigate their rights and a widespread conception of health that centres on treatment rather than prevention impede efforts to import harm reduction initiatives into penitentiaries. Although past prison litigation reveals great strides to providing inmates with the same rights and protections as members of the general population, challenges to the availability of harm reduction initiatives fit uneasily within the established pattern of prisoners’ rights litigation. In order to accommodate harm reduction claims, the prisoners’ rights discourse would need to be reconceptualized at the stakeholder and judicial levels.