Packages of more than seven kilos, even takeaway meals, are delivered to prisoners in Manchester high security jail by drones, according to official inspection reports.
The police and prison service have in effect ceded the airspace above two high-security prisons to organised crime gangs which are able to deliver contraband to jails holding extremely dangerous prisoners including some who have been designated as high-risk category A. That’s according to Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, commenting after his inspectorate’s unannounced visits and reports last autumn on Manchester, and Long Lartin in Worcestershire.
He said: “The safety of staff, prisoners and ultimately that of the public, is seriously compromised by the failure to tackle what has become a threat to national security. The prison service, the police and other security services must urgently confront organised gang activity and reduce the supply of drugs and other illicit items which so clearly undermine every aspect of prison life.”
Inspectors found Manchester so bad that Mr Taylor issued an ‘Urgent Notification for improvement’ to the Secretary of State for Justice, Shabana Mahmood in October. Organised crime gangs were targeting the prison, the HMIP report stated. Large quantities of illicit items were delivered by drone ‘and, in some instances, staff corruption’.
The inspectors found a ‘significant deterioration’ since their last inspection in 2021. Among what the inspectors termed many examples of poor physical security, was a ‘failing’ CCTV system; slow action by HM Prison Service to install more secure cell windows (which were themselves already being breached) to keep out drones; and a failure to replace damaged netting over the exercise yards, another place for drones to land. Inside, inspectors witnessed a lack of order and control on some wings, ‘with officers failing to challenge very poor, antisocial, or even criminal behaviour’, such as vaping, taking drugs or playing loud music.
Windows
As for the installation of those more secure windows, ‘some prisoners had threatened contractors and their families’, the report said. Funding for the cell windows had been approved in 2021, ‘but hardly any had been installed and it had only taken a couple of days for prisoners to find a way of melting the panes, the inspectors noted.
Long Lartin
Meanwhile at Long Lartin outside Evesham, where most prisoners are serving life sentences, some drones were ‘carrying large payloads of illicit items’, typically drugs and mobile phones. Some half of prisoners told the inspectors that it was easy to get drugs and alcohol, ‘an astonishing rate for a category A prison’, the report stated. The threat posed by drones was unsettling the staff and contributing to their low morale, the report added; inspectors ‘found a culture among many staff of negativity, resignation and, to some extent, fear because of the risk of violence’. Drugs (and the debts that prisoners got into, to pay for drugs) were partly behind rising violence, according to the report.
Security
As for site security, a body scanner and search dogs were in use; a dedicated search team made ‘regular and substantial’ finds of drugs (typically cannabis and psychoactive substances), phones, weapons and alcohol. Among the poor infrastructure, inspectors found that some physical security systems were failing.
Not new
As the inspectors pointed out, drone use to supply prisoners is a ‘longstanding problem’; however, at Long Lartin, ‘physical security and counter-measures were not robust enough’; nor had national nor local leaders addressed this. In his annual report for 2023-24, published in September, Mr Taylor wrote that drugs either ‘over the wall’ or ‘through the gate’ were a common cause of violence, bullying and debt. He wrote: “Prisons are a lucrative market for organised crime gangs and restricting the supply through rigorous security measures was still not good enough in many jails.” He noted that Narcotics Anonymous was running meetings in fewer prisons than before the covid pandemic.
Open prison
Meanwhile another report, on HMP Kirkham, an open prison in Lancashire, described how ‘illicit drugs were far too freely available’. Inspectors in September 2024 found a 25 per cent rate of prisoners testing positive for drug use, ‘by far the highest in the open estate. Kirkham was, in fact, in the top third of all adult male prisons in the country and inspectors frequently smelt cannabis around the jail. Although leaders had worked hard to reduce the supply and had found large quantities of illicit items in searches, they had not done enough to reduce the demand.’ Inspectors were surprised that prisoners returning from work in the community were not routinely searched, they added.
About the prisons
HMP Manchester is a category B training prison; while Long Lartin is a high-security prison for category A and B male prisoners. Visit https://hmiprisons.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/.
