A spate of drug overdoses reported at a Melbourne women's prison may be a bitter pill for Corrections Victoria, but anyone who has spent time in jail would be far more sanguine about the news.

However shocking the law-abiding public may find jail overdoses, the attitude of most prisoners would be that it's a consequence of a lifestyle choice and no more than that, with the result that they almost unthinkingly risk their lives every day - and by its failure to allow needle exchange programs, the Victorian Government could be considered complicit in this.

Drugs Credit:Jason South

That little is done is scandalous. Research shows that 50 per cent of prisoners have a history of injecting drug use and about half of these continue to inject while in prison. If further evidence of the problem is needed, consider the fact that, in 2007, 35 per cent of prisoners tested positive to hepatitis C antibodies - 40 times higher than in the general population.

Even more unsavoury than the attitudes of prisoners are the lengths drug users inside prison walls will go to get high. Heroin, amphetamines, marijuana, small quantities of ecstasy and, more rarely, LSD are mostly smuggled into prisons by visitors. Drug-sniffing dog teams circulate between prisons so drug couriers hide dope in body cavities - vaginas or backsides.