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The article is titled “What correctional officers think about harm-reduction services for incarcerated people with drug addictions.” It was originally published on September 15, 2025 and is authored by Louis-Philippe Bleau, Professionnel de recherche à l'Institut universitaire sur les dépendances, Université de Montréal; Christophe Huỳnh, Chercheur d'établissement à l’Institut universitaire sur les dépendances / Research scientist University Institute on Addictions / Professeur associé / Adjunct professor, Université de Montréal; and Jean-Sébastien Fallu, Professeur agrégé, École de psychoéducation, Université de Montréal.

Opioids, including the best known — morphine, heroin and fentanyl — have been gaining popularity over the last few decades. Although officially banned, these painkillers still find their way into prisons either via drones or with visitors. The result is that more and more prisoners are using opioids.
Correctional services have taken several measures to prevent opioids from making their way into prisons. But unfortunately, the war on drugs has so far failed to prevent the production, trafficking and use of opioids.
On the contrary, it looks like the pursuit of a drug-free world has caused far more harm so far than the drugs themselves. The negative consequences of outlawing them are numerous, including high overdose rates and transmission of infections such as HIV and hepatitis C.
I am a doctoral student in psychology at the Université de Montréal under the supervision of Christophe Huỳnh, researcher at the Institut universitaire sur les dépendances (University Institute on Addictions), and Jean-Sébastien Fallu, researcher and associate professor at the School of Psychoeducation, Université de Montréal. My research focuses on how correctional officers perceive and interact with harm-reduction services in prisons.
The response of correctional services
When drug criminalization failed, the Correctional Service of Canada changed its strategy. Rather than advocating total abstinence from drugs among prisoners, it now seeks to reduce the harms associated with drug use.
Harm reduction aims to limit the harmful effects of existing policies and the risks associated with drug use. It is necessarily intended to reduce or stop drug consumption. The idea is rather to support people in a pragmatic and humanistic manner by adapting to their situations and needs.
With this in mind, the government has set up several services that enable prisoners to access treatment, sterile equipment (like syringes), and areas within the prison where they can use drugs safely (for example, supervised injection rooms).
These initiatives aim to reduce the negative consequences of opioid use, including overdoses and the transmission of infections. For example, by exchanging a used syringe for a new sterile one, an inmate avoids sharing contaminated equipment with others, which reduces the risk of transmission.
Why do correctional officers resist?
However, there is a major barrier to implementing these services. Correctional officers, who play a central role in their implementation, are very reluctant to use them.
In fact, in prisons, the success of harm-reduction services depends largely on buy-in by correctional officers, who are on the front lines of their implementation programs.
Rather than simply criticizing officers for their reluctance, we need to understand the origins of their concerns about these often poorly perceived initiatives. Listening to them and actively involving them in the development of protocols and rules for implementation has the potential to not only alleviate their fears, but also strengthen their commitment.
I am seeking to better understand how their attitudes and practices can influence the rehabilitation of prisoners and improve their access to appropriate care. With this in mind, the first objective of my doctoral project is to review the scope of the subject. To document the factors underlying correctional officers’ resistance to harm reduction services, I selected a total of 48 international scientific articles published between 2005 and 2024.
The dual role of correctional officers
Imagine you’re a correctional officer. Your role is both to prohibit and punish drug use. Yet it is also to support services that allow inmates to use drugs. What would you do?
In this context, a majority of the officers interviewed reported experiencing a paradox: they believe that these services directly interfere with their professional duties. Instead of seeing these services as an exception to maintaining order in prison, some perceive them as completely at odds with their mission.
This dual role fuels resistance, particularly due to fears that these initiatives encourage drug use rather than reduce it. For example, some officers believe that providing a space for supervised injection encourages inmates to use more drugs or even try opioids for the first time.
Tension between security and public health
In addition, correctional officers are often reluctant to provide harm reduction services due to concerns about their own safety.
For example, the Needle Exchange Program introduced in Canada in 2018 allows inmates to access sterile needles to limit the transmission of infections. Despite its benefits in terms of reducing transmission risks, this program has provoked strong reactions from correctional unions.
Officers are particularly concerned that the syringes could be used as weapons against them, putting their lives at risk while on the job.
In addition, other officers also mentioned the fear of being exposed to fentanyl, an opioid that is increasingly present in prisons.
Some officers believe that mere contact with this substance could lead to death by overdose. They even go so far as to demand protective equipment to use when intervening in the event of an overdose, when every second is crucial to the individual’s survival.
Misunderstood concepts
Another factor increases correctional officers’ reluctance to provide these services: lack of knowledge and understanding of opioid addiction. Some officers perceive addiction as a moral weakness rather than a medical condition that requires treatment.
The idea that prisons should be places of abstinence rather than spaces for addiction management is still widespread. While some perceive medication for opioid addiction as “free drugs,” others believe that needle exchange programs encourage opioid use.
These unfounded ideas and myths hinder the implementation of harm-reduction services and ultimately harm the people who use these services.
Changing perceptions of addiction
Solutions to some very legitimate concerns, such as safety risks, are in the hands of correctional services. Training on opioid overdoses and better access to protective equipment, such as gloves and masks, would enable officers to respond more effectively and feel safer.
Other issues, such as the perpetuation of myths, stereotypes and prejudices about addiction, which are unfortunately reinforced by the current sociopolitical context, are persistent and not easily resolved. These issues reduce officers’ commitment to the services and cause harm to users.
As the overdose crisis continues to wreak havoc, it’s urgent to rethink prison culture in order to reconcile security and public health. Beyond control and discipline, detention must also be a place of care and prevention. The past has clearly shown us that strictly repressive policies often cause more problems than they solve.
Today, when more services tailored to the needs of prisoners are being put in place, it is important to ask how we can ease and reduce resistance of the correctional staff to the harm-reduction approach.

What correctional officers think about harm-reduction services for incarcerated people with drug addictions

September 15, 2025 • My Project Name

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