Prisoners get high on the warders’ supply

The British prison service is spending £70m a year treating drug addicts when, according to insiders interviewed for a BBC radio investigation, corrupt warders are responsible for the majority of the drugs traffic into jails.

At England's largest prison, Wandsworth, they have tried to put a figure on the amount of drugs being smuggled inside. "A crude estimate on the value of drugs in Wandsworth is about £1m a year," says David Jamieson, the chairman of Wandsworth's independent monitoring board. "What we're talking about is a large-scale business... there are some serious players involved in this."

As for the prison system as a whole, Huseyin Djemil, former head of drug treatment policy at the National Offender Management Service (NOMS), estimates that the trade in heroin - the prisoners' drug of choice - is worth £100m across the country's 140 jails.

He bases this figure on the 40,000 known drug users - half the prison population - using half a gram of drugs a week (as opposed to half a gram a day on the outside). "You're looking at 20kg a week to supply the national market," says Djemil. Annually that works out to over 1,000 kilos of heroin.

Now for the shocking news. That quantity of drugs cannot get into prison through wives and girlfriends visiting inmates. Prison staff are deeply involved. No one in the prison service likes to talk about it - it is the elephant in the room - but prison warders, whether turning a blind eye for monetary reward, or being actively involved, are, in effect, the jail system's biggest drug dealers.

Lord Ramsbotham, the former Chief Inspector of prisons, says the service must tackle staff involvement. "Without the staff these things couldn't get in," he said.

People across the prison establishment share his concern. One former governor claims that although the popular perception is that most drugs are coming in through visitors, there was "more going in by staff than any other way".

The prison service is spending £70m a year treating addicts. Thousands of prisoners are being weaned off drugs. But that impressive work is being blunted by the inability of the service to stop hard drugs getting in.

Hussein Djemil believes the prison service should wait no longer to root out the tiny minority of rogue officers. "I think it's shying away from that final step, a bit like the Met [the Metropolitan Police] did. The Met wanted to confront corruption and they had to go to extraordinary lengths to do it and I think the prison service is now at that crossroads."

One reason why the prison service may have been slow to clean up its act in this regard is that the service has persuaded itself that it is getting on top of drug abuse. Figures show that the number of prisoners testing positive in mandatory drugs tests has been dropping. But critics of these tests says prisoners are adept at cheating the system - as are prisons themselves.

Lord Ramsbotham says that when he was Chief Inspector of prisons, he came across a prisoner who didn't use drugs but who had been tested nine times. "This helped the prison figures because governors are judged on whether or not they have reduced drug-taking," said Lord Ramsbotham. "This is nonsense."
Simon Cox presents 'The Investigation', BBC Radio 4, April 10, 8pm ·