Urine sampling made tamper-proof
New facility is tipped to improve system after ex-prison officers were jailed for faking tests
The Correctional Services Department has set up a facility to collect urine samples from prisoners and inmates released from drug addiction treatment centres and rehabilitation centres.
The move follows the sentencing of two former prison officers to three months' jail last year for falsifying urine samples to conceal the real relapse rate among drug addicts.
The department's Urine Specimen Collection Centre, which begins operations next Tuesday, is intended to protect frontline correctional services staff from false accusations and ensure the impartiality of urine specimen collection procedures, said a departmental official.
The two officers sentenced last year have appealed, saying that urine-swapping is a common practice and is ordered by senior officers, who deny the allegation.
Tang Ping-ming, the department's assistant commissioner of rehabilitation, said it would be impossible to swap urine samples as the centre would use bottles with security labels and tamper-proof lids.
"In that case [that began in 2009], the two accused officers dumped the bottles containing genuine urine samples and submitted their own urine samples. But bottles cannot now be discarded, because every bottle has a unique code number," he said, adding that the bottle lids are attached with a ring around the bottleneck to make them tamper-proof.