Seven prisoners hospitalised after taking drugs thrown over wall

Offenders are purposely getting themselves sent to prison in order to smuggle in drugs, according to prison staff.

The practice is one of a number of increasingly inventive ways of getting drugs into prison, a problem which has started to increase again after falling off during the pandemic.

“They’re ingenious. They have loads of good ideas unfortunately,” said one delegate at the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) annual conference this week.

Caron McCaffrey, director general of the Irish Prison Service (IPS), conceded the problem was getting worse.

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“What we’re seeing regrettably, is an increase in the number of drugs within our prisons,” she said, pointing to an incident earlier this week in Cloverhill Prison in Dublin where counterfeit benzodiazepines were thrown over the wall into the exercise area before being taken by prisoners.

The batch left seven prisoners requiring hospital treatment, including one who required intubation and remains severely ill.

Mr McCaffrey said the IPS was examining the use of internal X-ray machines to scan new prisoners and those returning from temporary release. The IPS is in consultation with the Environmental Protection Agency on the matter.

Prison sources said the IPS already possessed machines capable of X-raying prisoners but that they cannot be used due to legislation regarding radiation.

Officials believe a huge number of prisoners are bringing drugs into jails with them on admission. Ms McCaffrey pointed to research from a neighbouring jurisdiction showing 40 per cent of newly admitted prisoners had concealed drugs internally.

Arrested

Many inmates are ingesting drugs, getting themselves arrested or picked up on bench warrants and then declining to take up bail in the District Court, according to several prison officers.

Once in the general prison population, they pass the drugs and distribute them before taking up bail. A similar trend is occurring with prisoners returning from temporary release. In many cases, this prisoners are doing this under threat from other inmates or to repay drug debts.

This practice all but ceased during the pandemic, when new prison admissions had to quarantine for 10-14 days before admission to the general population. However, it has now increased.

It is mitigated somewhat by keeping new prisoners in isolated and monitored admission cells for the first 24 hours of imprisonment. However, many of these cells were not available due to overcrowding, staff said.

Other new methods of getting drugs in include filling a copper pipe with tablets and throwing it over the wall. The pipe is weighted at one end, meaning it falls through the mesh covering prison exercise yards.

This is in addition to the use of tennis balls which are filled with drugs and set alight before being thrown over. The ball burns through the mesh and falls into the yard, before waiting prisoners extinguish it and retrieve the drugs.

Many prisoners bringing in drugs or retrieving them in the yard are doing so under duress from other inmates. This problem was exacerbated by overcrowding, which allowed bullies to “thrive”, the POA has said.