Stop inmates getting drug-soaked letters... photocopy their mail
PRISONERS should have their mail photocopied to stop them receiving letters soaked in drugs, inspectors have said.
Wendy Sinclair-Gieben, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland, yesterday warned that drugs remain a huge problem in prisons across the country.
She was speaking to Holyrood’s criminal justice committee which also heard from the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) that ‘unhackable’ phones given to prisoners had allowed them to buy drugs and organise crimes from their cells.
Miss Sinclair-Gieben warned that prison rules must be revised to reduce the quantity of drugs getting to inmates, and called for mail to be photocopied before inmates get it to stop the drugs reaching them. She said: ‘The novel psychoactive drugs can go on paper. If they can forge a solicitor’s letter on paper, then soak it in drugs, you’ve got a real problem.
‘By changing the rules, we can prevent at least all legal letters coming in by post, and we can actually look at perhaps photocopying prisoner letters.
‘But you are always playing a catch-up game with drugs. It’s a major problem stopping it coming in.’
Meanwhile, the head of the SPS admitted there were ‘vulnerabilities’ around mobile phones which were handed to prisoners during the pandemic.
Teresa Medhurst said she was ‘aware of some of the areas of vulnerability’ in providing prisoners with mobiles to replace in-person visits.
Around 7,600 purportedly tamper-proof personal phones were issued to inmates by the Scottish Government when prison visits were stopped. Miss Medhurst could not say how many phones had been compromised when asked by MSPs.
Stressing that the service was working with Police Scotland to attempt to stop drugs entering prisons, she suggested it was linked to serious organised crime groups ‘infiltrating’ prisons with ‘ever more sophisticated’ methods.
She told the committee: ‘We work with a range of experts and organisations to help us better understand the issue of selling drugs and the problem of drugs in prisons, as well as the measures we need to take in order to minimise those risks.’
Challenged by Tory MSP Jamie Greene about what will happen with the phones given to prisoners ‘knowing that many hundreds or perhaps thousands of them are being broken and used for illicit purposes’, Miss Medhurst said the prison service was looking to introduce additional security measures.
She added: ‘We have security measures, and that’s why we’re able to identify phones that have been tampered with.
‘Where those phones have been tampered with, there are arrangements to ensure that we apply an appropriate degree of punishment and or withdrawal, depending on the circumstances and the nature of the tampering that has occurred.
‘Going forward, what we need to do is ensure that any of those risks can be minimised, and appropriate, additional measures put in place.’
‘Always playing a catch-up game’