Drone delivers goods to UK prisoner

  • 17/05/2016
In CCTV footage, the bag attached to a drone hovers close to the prison window (Noel Titheradge / Twitter)
In CCTV footage, the bag attached to a drone hovers close to the prison window (Noel Titheradge / Twitter)

Inmates in the UK are becoming more inventive in getting contraband, using drones to have banned goods delivered.

Video given to BBC shows a black bag attached to a drone hovering next to a prison window. An inmate uses a makeshift device to try and hook it in to secure the payload.

 

More than 2000 banned items, including drugs and phones, were literally thrown over UK prison walls last year. That's more than doubled since 2013, when 797 items were recorded.

A freedom of information request also showed 730 knives and blades were found in prisons in the second half of 2015.

Contraband thrown over the walls has been hidden inside tennis balls, drink cartons and even dead birds sent flying by tennis racquets.

 

The UK's Ministry of Justice says it "must do more" to crack down on the problem.

"It's not a fluke, people plan, they know the best parts of a wall to throw things over," John Attard of the Prison Governors' Association says.

"We're talking about thousands of pounds worth of contraband, but the criminals that are throwing them over are prepared to lose [part of] that to get some through."

One of the more popular methods is to attach lines to items which are then thrown over the wall and pulled through holes in netting, one anonymous former inmate told the BBC.

"If you go to any prison, walk the circumference of that prison, I guarantee you, you will see things hanging in the wires, there will be a parcel of phones hanging in the razor wire.

"How are you supposed to control it? You can't stop it. There's no way of stopping it if everyone's doing it," he says.

Recent changes to legislation have made throwing things over prison walls punishable by up to two years in jail.

Newshub.