Woman’s prison drug offence
A FORMER call centre manager caught passing drugs to her then partner while visiting him in prison has joined him behind bars.
Shauna Graham was on a visit to see Shaun Mills at HMP Northumberland when camera operators saw the illegal exchange take place over a table. She passed him two packages containing more than 450 class C tablets, including burprenorphine.
Newcastle Crown Court heard the offence took place at the jail, in Acklington, Northumberland, on March 14 last year.
Elizabeth Muir, prosecuting, said: “She was sitting opposite him and reached into her coat pocket and removed a package which she passed across the table to him.
“He took it and put it in his trouser pocket.”
The court heard Graham has 15 previous convictions, including a similar offence of conveying drugs into prison from 2014, for which she got a suspended sentence.
Neil Bennett, for Graham, said: “The background is a relationship that was regrettable and involved physical and mental abuse.
“She was a team leader at a call centre when the relationship began and had aspirations for a better and settled future. Unfortunately,
such was the nature of the relationship, there was a downward spiral into drug and alcohol abuse, the consequence of which was she lost her job and became isolated from her family.”
Graham, 29, from Peterlee, Durham, pleaded guilty to conveying a banned item into prison and was jailed for six months.