Lags ditch Spice... but start brewing hooch
ONE of Britain’s most drugplagued jails is changing its ways – with inmates taking to booze instead.
Holme House prison was among the worst for Spice use, with up to a third of prisoners failing tests for the synthetic “zombie” cannabis.
The figure has fallen to just one in 20 inmates at the Teesside jail.
But a new report suggests the dramatic slide is due to a huge rise in illicit alcohol brewing.
A source said: “Bosses were delighted to see the figure for failed tests going through the floor. But it seems it wasn’t all good news. Inmates had got so fed up losing their privileges for being caught with Spice in their system that they switched to alcohol because it is much less likely to show up in the tests.”
The most common way to make prison hooch is to mix fruit – usually oranges – with sugar and yeast then put it somewhere warm for ten days.
The result is between 4-10 per cent alcohol – like strong beer or weak wine.
It is then usually poured into old five-litre disinfectant or floor polish containers and shared around.
Any bodily trace is said to vanish in 24 hours, unlike Spice which experts say stays in the system up to three months. Cannabis is detectable 30 days after smoking and cocaine can show 90 days later.
The switch to booze emerged in a report on Holme House by Her Majesty’s Prison Inspectorate published this week.
Almost half of inmates told the watchdog it was easy or very easy to get booze. The report praised the drug reduction but added: “In many cases demand had moved to illicitly brewed alcohol.”
One lag complained to the governor he was forced to brew in his cell by fellow cons. Last night the Prison Service said: “Search teams, scanners and sniffer dogs are all being used to crack down on alcohol and drugs.”
Phil Copple, HM Prison and Probation Service director general of prisons, said: “HMP Holme House have taken swift action to improve based on the inspectorate’s recommendations.”