Drug addict asks judge to ‘lock me up’ Court told she wants to escape heroin ‘normality’
AN addict tried to smuggle a package of crack cocaine, heroin and pills to a prisoner in order to clear a drug debt.
Caroline Ogilvie, 52, tried to take the prohibited items into HMP Buckley Hall during a visit with a prisoner at the jail.
She this week asked a judge to send her immediately to custody as time in prison has helped her to change her life, a court heard.
Prosecutor John Savage told Minshull Street Crown Court that Ogilvie managed to get through security at the prison when she visited on April 9, 2019.
She spent a full two hours with the inmate sitting at a table.
“At the end of the visit, she stood up to leave and moved her hand towards her groin as she embraced ( the prisoner),” Mr Savage said.
Noticing something suspicious, prison officers took the inmate away. He was searched and was found to have a package containing drugs in his underwear.
The package contained four wraps of crack cocaine of 97 percent purity, ten wraps of diamorphine, two vials of testosterone, trembolone tablets, oxandrolone tablets and a
SIM card for a mobile phone.
Ogilvie was arrested and interviewed, but made no comment.
The defendant, from Rochdale, pleaded guilty to eight counts of conveying listed articles including cocaine, diamorphine and a SIM card for a mobile phone.
Tim Ashmole, defending, said Ogilvie is due to start a thinking skills programme in prison in the spring.
He said: “The defendant has asked that she is sent to custody immediately.
“For the first time in many years she actually feels she is stabilising and doesn’t want to go back to the normality of her life taking heroin as soon as she wakes up.”
Speaking over videolink from custody at HMP Styal, Ogilvie told the judge that her life had been difficult having spent her early years in the care system and later struggling with a heroin addiction.
“I started being a working girl to make my money to get my drugs and I stayed on that path not knowing how to get myself back to where I was and live a normal life,” she said.
The court heard that Ogilvie owed money to a drug dealer and carried out the offence to pay off the debt.
Jailing her for two years, Judge Maurice Greene said: “From what I have heard you have had an extremely difficult background.
“You were again a drug addict.
“You had, as many drug addicts do, built up drug debts and you were pressured to do this, as many in your situation are. As a result of that pressure, you succumbed and tried to convey these items into prison.”