Prisoners are not the only ones who should be subjected to random drug testing, United Bermuda Party Senator Leonard Santucci said yesterday.

The Senate passed the Prisons Amendment Act 2002, which will allow Prison Officers to get random urine samples and breath samples, while inmates who refuse face sanctions and loss of parole.

Prisoners will be forced to attend training, educational or rehabilitation programmes. It also retitles the Prison Department as the Department of Corrections.

According to Sen. Santucci, Prison Officers should also have to give urine samples, as doing so would strengthen the Government's efforts to combat drugs getting behind jail walls.

"The aim is keeping it from the prisoner, but it needs to be kept out of the prison," he said. "We're going from looking within the cell, to looking within the body."

"My difficulty is not with the intent of the act," said Sen. Santucci. "There are drugs in prison and we ought to be concerned because this means that there is some form of inappropriate activity in jail."

He said that the Government should lead by example, and implied that MPs needed to be willing to participate in random drug-testing as well, as they have not been doing.

Kim Swan interjected and said: "Many of Government's members in other places have said that they should not be subjected to drug-testing."

A claim that Government Senate Leader David Burch, refuted.

Sen. Santucci also voiced his concern of a hostile environment being created if Prison Officers are mandated to take urine samples from inmates and said: "Prison officers should not be required to do something that they didn't have to before."