When a criminal is sent off to a federal penitentiary -- locked up behind bars, monitored by cameras and roving guards, and with all visitors purportedly patted down for contraband -- coming out the other end as a drug addict is a far cry from rehabilitation.

But it happens far too often.

Our prisons, in fact, are rife with drug addicts, those who arrived with an dependence on opiates, and those who join the fraternity from the inside.

Blame poor body searches, blame rogue guards, blame complicit lawyers. Blame whatever.

But there is no shortage of supply.

While inmates have demanded clean needles many times before, only to be turned away because of the risk of them becoming weapons against corrections officers, a former Warkworth inmate, as well as four AIDS prevention advocacy groups, are now taking Ottawa to court for repeatedly giving them the bum's rush.

The case should be rejected.

It is bad enough that inmates who arrive at prison gates with pre-existing opiate addictions -- to heroin, cocaine, and narcotic pain pills -- are given daily doses of methadone to take off the edge, but to acquiesce to their demand for clean needles would be both idiotic and counter-productive.

Toughness is what is needed. When the rate of HIV and hepatitis C infections are upwards of 30 times higher in prisons, the problem is not solved by handing out clean hypes as if prisons were Vancouver's Eastside and every cell was a safe-injection site.

The problem is solved by thorough searches of everyone, including guards and lawyers, the regular tossing of cells for illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia, and random drug tests of all inmates.

Don't get us started on "privacy rights." The privacy rights of criminals should end the moment the judge pronounces their sentence.

While it is not pretty to witness, even the most benevolent substance-abuse counsellor will concede that cold turkey works.

While it is not pretty to witness, even the most benevolent substance-abuse counsellor will concede that cold turkey works.

It will not be fun. It will not be painless. And it will definitely enrage hug-a-thug liberals.

But what better place for a supervised intervention into the crippling effects of these criminals' narcotic dependence than behind the walls of a prison?

After all, it is not as if they can walk out.