Needles & Pins

ON a chilly night, Anu Singh is explaining the mechanics of "fit packs" comprised of clean syringes, sterile water and clean spoons for mixing heroin.In a jumper and jeans, Singh seems calmly authoritative as she explains how the syringe packs discourage needle-sharing among drug addicts, and so help to contain the spread of HIV-AIDS and hepatitis C.

As she speaks, Singh is sitting on a bus, the windows of which are fortified with security grilles. For this is no ordinary bus, and Singh is no ordinary social worker.
The bus is a needle exchange centre and Singh is a woman who has used a syringe as a lethal weapon: in 1997, she killed her boyfriend, Joe Cinque, by sedating him and injecting him with heroin.
Singh is also the subject of Helen Garner's highly regarded book, Joe Cinque's Consolation. It was this literary bestseller that brought Singh's bizarre crime to national attention.

The book details how Singh, the daughter of two doctors and at the time a law student in Canberra, had planned to kill herself and her devoted boyfriend after throwing a dinner party. Some of the guests had heard rumours of the plan, but no one warned Cinque.

Singh, now 33, is still on parole and has served four years of a 10-year sentence for manslaughter, a sentence that Cinque's parents, Maria and Nino, considered outrageously lenient. (Singh's sentence reflected Justice Ken Crispin's view that she was suffering from diminished responsibility at the time of the killing due to her depression, mental illness and drug abuse.)
Next month, Singh has to again face the ACT's Sentence Administration Board because she allegedly breached her parole order by using marijuana on several occasions. It is a condition of her parole that she be regularly tested for drug use, and that she "totally abstain from illicit substances".
In April 2004, the board revoked her parole because of these drug breaches, and sent her back to prison. After serving a further four months' jail, Singh challenged the parole authority on a technicality and was released last September. However, the board has invoked its power to rehear the original breaches. If it revokes her parole again, Singh will have to serve a further six years' jail.
With the hearing looming, Singh has received legal advice not to talk to the media. Last week, she found herself under enormous pressure over revelations about her current job, which are contained in a documentary-in-progress by film-maker James Ricketson.

Ricketson's documentary depicts Singh at work, handing out syringes and interviewing a reformed drug addict.
Her position is primarily research-based – she says she has worked on the needle-exchange bus just twice in six months. Her job description involves her undertaking a "harm minimisation needs analysis of young injecting drug users", mostly by interviewing addicts or reformed drug users. Singh says Collie her boss knows she is a convicted killer, though her co-workers do not.
Neither do many members of Singh's extended family, who flew in from around the world last week for a traditional Indian wedding.

Ricketson's documentary is titled Atonement, and it implies that Singh sees her job as a form of expiation: having killed her innocent young lover with hard drugs, she is now seeking to save young lives blighted by hard drugs.
But Maria Cinque, whose grief at her son's killing is still raw and deep, says she is "shocked" that Singh is working with young drug addicts: "It is wrong . . . not her. She kills my son with heroin and now she is supplying other people with things to use drugs.

"What is she talking about? Does she want other people to do the same? I am shocked that they let her do this because of what she done with it. I understand that if you use drugs it is better to use clean needles . . . but not her. People do a lot of terrible things when they are on drugs."

There also seems to be a lack of information about what happens inside the centres in relation to the number of needles distributed, the clients, the type of drugs they are using. They aren't accountable enough, and this case highlights this.

John Ryan, chief executive officer of Anex, a national association for prevention and harm-reduction programs, says that having former drug abusers working in harm-minimisation programs is "not common but is valued", particularly if the former abusers warn others not to take the path they did.
He says people often forget that "it is drug use that is the problem, rather than the needles". He was reluctant to comment on Singh's case, saying that it was up to parole authorities to decide whether her employment was appropriate.

The ACT's Sentence Administration Board says its proceedings are confidential.
In his film, Ricketson explores the question of whether someone who has committed a shocking crime can or should be redeemed in the eyes of the community once they have served their sentence.

Ricketson believes there are serious flaws in Joe Cinque's Consolation that contribute to a portrait of Singh as the "Indian Darth Vader".
Singh admits in the documentary that "I had access to all the privileges money can buy."
She is living at home with her parents, Paddy and Surinder, and concedes in the film that "I've got no one to blame but myself" for breaching parole by smoking marijuana.
Her father, Paddy, fumes that she has been "insulting" her family by smoking the drug.
In the documentary, it is conspicuous that Singh doesn't talk directly about the details of Cinque's murder.

Singh tells Ricketson about carrying around this "terrible burden and terrible guilt all the time. Even going to jail for 10 years wouldn't erase that for me."
The film also shows her reading an internet poll that asks readers whether Singh is "pure evil" or "just disturbed".
"Just disturbed," answers her mother, Surinder, in a voice at once sad and small.