Prisoners dream up a saucy new way of smuggling drugs into jail

14 June 2023 , 19:20

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Drug-soaked pants are being smuggled into the prison (stock image) (Image: WalesOnline/Rob Browne)

A prison has banned inmates from receiving underwear from loved ones because they are smoking their smalls to get high.

Crooks have been sending in pants soaked in the drug spice which lags then tear into strips so they can puff away on it.

The method releases the mood-changing narcotic, linked to dozens of deaths in UK jails.

A report into the 1,200-capacity HMP High Down, Surrey, said drugs were also getting into the jail in parcels disguised as property transfers to inmates from other prisons.

The jail’s Independent Monitoring Board revealed in an annual report: “Methods to disrupt the flow of illicit items into the establishment have included disallowing the sending in of underwear, photocopying all incoming mail and implementing an authorisation code system for rule 39 letters (privileged correspondence from lawyers).

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The prison has also had an increase in hooch-brewing (AFP via Getty Images)

“During the course of the year, the main methods of entry shifted to passes in visits, drones and throwovers.

“It is also thought that as the availability of drugs has been reduced, the amount of hooch being brewed has increased.”

Synthetic cannabinoids such as spice were implicated in 62 (48%) of 129 non-natural deaths between 2015 and 2020 in English and Welsh prisons, Middlesex University researchers found.

Jeremy Armstrong