Army veterans and airport-style scanners to boost prison security

MILITARY veterans will be encouraged to join the prison service to improve discipline, a newly appointed justice minister has said.

Rory Stewart will also investigate the possibility of installing airport-style body scanners to stop illegal drug smuggling at the worst performing prisons.

Mr Stewart was moved to the Ministry of Justice from his previous role at the Department for International Development during Theresa May’s reshuffle last month, and he is now in charge of prison operations and reform.

The Government’s handling of the prisons estate has faced intense scrutiny in recent weeks after failings were exposed at HMP Liverpool.

HM Inspectorate of Prisons condemned the jail for having the worst conditions inspectors had seen, highlighting problems with rats, drugs and “decrepit” facilities. Mr Stewart told the Sunday Express that he wanted to get “back to basics” to improve prisons and that recruiting more former services personnel could help.

“I support encouraging more exarmy personnel to join the prison service,” he said. “I think they’ve got fantastic ethos and self-discipline.” The Government is aiming to recruit an additional 2,500 prison officers by the end of 2018.

Mr Stewart said he wanted to crack down on drug use among prisoners by taking the simple step of fixing broken windows to stop drones being used to smuggle contraband. “In Liverpool, the prisoners have smashed all the windows,” he said. “They claim it’s because they want fresh air but when you get smashed windows you get drug use going up.

“There are a lot of people interested in technology, doing a lot of wonderful work on what you can do to jam a drone, to fire a light at a drone to disable its optical system. I’m going to start by trying to fix the windows because the drone’s no good if you can’t stick your hand out of the window. Really it’s about getting back to basics.”

Mr Stewart added: “If it was easy to keep drugs out of prison we wouldn’t have so many drugs in prison, but some prisons do better than others.

“I want to learn from the high security sector. At Belmarsh they have new types of technology so I’m interested in the type of scanners which you get in an airport which can see if somebody’s put drugs inside their body. We’ve got to be searching every human coming in – the prisoner, the family visitor, the staff.”