‘Vaper’ dies of electric shock in jail cell

A PRISONER was electrocuted while trying to smoke drugs from a vape device plugged into a mains socket in his cell.

A post mortem later found that armed raider Grant Alam, 28, had a Spice-type drug in his system.

A former cellmate told an official inquiry into his death that since the smoking ban, inmates would regularly attach vape machines to wires in mains sockets to create a flame to smoke psychoactive substances.

The ex- convict told officials that cell-bound smokers would sometimes receive a mild electric shock or a burn while using the crudely rigged devices, ‘but nothing more serious’.

Details have only now emerged after the publication of a report into his death – in February 2019 – by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman.

Prison records showed that in the weeks before Alam’s death, an electrician was twice called to reset the electrics in his cell at HMP Garth in Leyland, near Preston.

On one occasion, it was found that he had put metal blades in the plug socket and these were removed.

Alam had also been caught with illicit home-brewed alcohol and a distilling kit in his cell.

Inspectors who visited HMP Garth in 2019 found that 60 per cent of inmates said drugs were easy to obtain, 30 per cent tested positive for drugs and over a quarter said they had developed a drug habit at the jail. The report noted the prison had taken steps to tackle the problems.

There were warnings when the smoking ban was introduced in English prisons that it could lead to dangers of electrocution.

A 2017 inspection of HMP Channings Wood, in Devon, which had banned smoking the previous year, found that prisoners were cutting the flexes of their kettles to provide sparks to light illicit roll-ups.

Alam, from Bolton, was jailed in 2015 for ten-and-a-half years for aggravated burglary. He had been part of a gang brandishing hammers that burst into a home threatening to kill a family while demanding money.