INMATES SMUGGLE SPICE WITH CURRY
LAGS in two prisons next door to each other cooked up a saucy way of smuggling drugs – on lorries carrying curries and bangers.
Cons transported spice, mobile phones and other contraband after spotting a loophole in the way hot meals were moved between the jails, which share a single kitchen. Lunches and dinners are prepared in one nick, loaded on to heated trollies and driven for just one minute to the other site.
Cons were caught cheekily taking handsets and drugs alongside the grub.
A source said: “It sounds like a funny plot from Porridge but it is a very serious issue. The governors are deter- mined to stop items of this kind moving around the prison estate.”
The food is prepared at HMP Swaleside on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, taken next door to HMP Standford Hill.
The neighbouring jails are known as the Sheppey Cluster along with a third, HMP Elmley, which has a kitchen of its own. Elmley was not involved in the smuggling racket, which came to light in a report this week from a prison watchdog.
The Independent Monitoring Board said: “The proximity to other prisoners in the cluster through the remote cooking of lunches has led to a problem with the trafficking of drugs and mobile phones via meal lorries.”
PRESSURES
In a recommendation to the Prison Service, the IMB stated that “funds for an in-house cooking facility” should be made available, adding: “We feel it is imperative that Standford Hill has its own kitchen.”
The report also said Standford Hill faced the “same pressures” as other jails in coping with drugs.
The Prison Service confirmed a probe was launched and that it had now stemmed the flow.
A spokesman said it was an “isolated incident” intercepted by staff.
But he did not comment on whether there were plans to give Standford Hill a kitchen of its own.