JAILERS IN £2K SCAM TO SNEAK IN PHONES

YOUNG prison officers are being offered up to

£2,000 a time to smuggle phones into jails.

A former officer has told the Daily Star Sunday mobiles can be rented out for anywhere between £400 and £1,000-atime behind bars.

The insider, who worked at the medium-security Category B Hewell Prison, in Redditch, Birmingham, said the world’s smallest phone is now the most in-demand item in British prisons.

The tiny Zanac, inset, is just two inches long by one inch wide and is worth its weight in gold among cons.

It costs around £40 in the shops but can sell for around

£1,000 in prison and is seen as a “must-have” by jailed gangland bosses eager to stay in control of their empires.

Despite its size it can store up to 300 numbers and is easy to hide in prison cells and even inside lags’ body cavities. Mobile phones are banned inside British jails but last year 10,643 of them were found in prisons – up 15% on the previous year.

The former prison officer told us: “Prison officers are always being asked to smuggle phones in.

You can be offered anything up to £2,000. It’s not just phones but drugs as well.

“Prisoners are so manipulative. They will begin by asking a favour and if you are susceptible they will soon offer you a lot of cash.

“But it’s a big risk. Get caught and you will be going to prison yourself.

“Sadly some will do it. Searches of prison officers used to happen once a week or so but now they are very regular.” One officer has just been jailed for 30 months for sneaking

£90,000 of contraband into a jail. Patrick Dadey,

30, admitted to smuggling cannabis, steroids, phones and tobacco into Wandsworth jail. He left them in cereal boxes inside a laundry room to be collected by inmates.