According to the New Zealand Department of Corrections the number of prisoners testing positive for drugs as a percentage of the prison population has dropped again since general random drug tests were introduced in 1998.
In the last nine months up to March 2006 15.6% of prisoners tested positive for drugs compared to 15.6% last year; it was 34% in 1998 and 25.5% a year later. New Zealand has a prison population of around 7,500 of which 3,000 are randomly tested each year.
Authorities say that better surveillance - for instance, sniffer dogs, TV cameras and scanners - has been key to the reduction. The number of illegal items - two-thirds of them drug related - that have been confiscated from visitors in the last three years has more than doubled.
Technorati Tags: drugs, prison, new zealand