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Prison's daily battle to beat drug smuggling
Wellingborough Prison officers have revealed the daily battle they are up against to beat drug smuggling.
Crack cocaine, heroin, steroids and cannabis were all found among a massive bundle of contraband items thrown into Wellingborough Prison last week.
The bundle also included items that raise the bargaining rights of prisoners among their peers, such as DVDs, a mobile phone, sim cards and a charger.
It is a weekly occurrence that prison officers are fighting against to prevent drugs from reaching the cells.
This time, it was intercepted by prison officers – something that is happening increasingly as they begin to win the war against drugs in prisons.
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And this is the reason officers are so incensed at comments made last week by Judge Richard Bray sitting at Northampton Crown Court when he said: "It has to be said that the local prisons are now awash with drugs."
One ex-prison officer who left Wellingborough after becoming fed-up with this sort of criticism decided to reveal the latest success in intercepting drugs by handing over these pictures.
He said: "Officers have stopped these drugs going into prison just by doing their jobs well."
Prison governor Mike Keating confirmed the "throw over" and congratulated the officer who intercepted the drugs. He said: "This was a massive throw-over. Our drug testing figures at Wellingborough Prison are improving.
"Positive tests have gone down, which demonstrates that we are robustly tackling the issues."
The drugs were recovered when the bundle was caught up in razorwire at the top of the prison fence.
Officers climbed up and confiscated the contents, which included heroin, crack cocaine, DVDs and a mobile phone.
The prison officer said: "We get a lot of stick in the national press who say prisons are awash with drugs, but they're not.
"Thankfully, an officer saw this being thrown over last Sunday and risked his life to climb up and get it down.
"All the drugs in that throw-over will now not get inside Wellingborough Prison."
It is just one of an estimated three packages each week that friends of inmates try to throw over the walls.
Throw-overs are one of the most common ways to smuggle drugs and other luxury items into prisons. People walking past the jail throw parcels over the fence to be picked up at pre-arranged points by prisoners.
Wellingborough Prison is often seen as an easy target because of its urban location.
The prison officer said: "You can see in the pictures that the cannabis is even weighed to order.
"I'd say there are about three attempts to throw things over every week, but a lot of them never get to the prisoners."
The latest throw-over contained DVDs and an alarming amount of steroids and body-building drugs including testosterone, nandrolone, Sustanon and Oxymetholone.
The prison officer who showed the pictures to the Evening Telegraph said: "Some of the prisoners have DVD players so the discs are quite valuable in prison.
"And there are a lot of bodybuilding drugs in there because you can imagine the men in there like to be as big as possible."
In February, 2007, the prison was branded a 'public disgrace' after an officer was caught smuggling 5,000 of drugs behind bars.
But one year later, in February 2008, the prison claimed the situation had vastly improved – with a well-used voluntary drug testing wing, frequent testing of opiate users and the introduction of four sniffer-dogs.
National executive officer of the Prison Officers Association Pete Chapple said: "In most prisons it's quite easy to throw things over the fence because of the lack of staff.
"The Prison Service as a whole is 1,000 officers down and so there are simply less people to patrol the perimeter. As an association we are concerned if drugs get into our prisons because the more drugs there are, the more potential there is for violence."
For more stories on drugs in prisons click here: http://www.northantset.co.uk/news/Judge-says-prison-awash-with.4590720.jp
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