Meth user Benjamin Jade Arnold jailed for trying to get drugs into prison

The career criminal’s ‘poorly executed’ plan to smuggle drugs into jail came undone, when jailhouse phone recordings captured his every move.

Benjamin Jade Arnold, 40, pleaded guilty on January 30 in Rockhampton District Court to one count of supplying a dangerous drug in prison.

A career criminal whose face is now covered in tattoos preyed upon a young woman, convincing her to bring him a commercial quantity of drugs while he was behind bars.

And it wasn’t the first time Benjamin Jade Arnold had arranged for a “significantly younger” woman to bring him drugs in jail

The 40-year-old pleaded guilty on January 30 in Rockhampton District Court to one count of supplying a dangerous drug in prison.

Judge Jeff Clarke said Arnold’s crime was “poorly executed” because his “many calls” from inside Capricornia Correctional Centre were recorded, revealing the extensive efforts he went to in organising 90 strips of buprenorphine, with a total weight of 22.798 grams.

“You set up a way of having drugs delivered to a woman with very limited criminal history (one entry on her record),” he said.

“You provided her with instructions about how she was to receive the drugs and how to bring them into you, then pass them to you on a contact visit at the prison.

“You paid her $1000... and also arranged a movement of other money between other bank accounts.”

Crown prosecutor Maryam Yousufzai said the woman was intercepted on July 23, 2021, when she arrived at the Etna Creek facility to visit Arnold and the drugs were hidden in her bra.

She said Arnold’s 13-page criminal record included a conviction from Mackay District Court on May 5, 2105, for the same offence.

Benjamin Jade Arnold, 40, pleaded guilty on January 30 in Rockhampton District Court to one count of supplying a dangerous drug in prison.

Ms Yousufzai said Arnold also had a conviction for publishing handwritten instructions on how to produce methamphetamines, which he told police he had written down while in prison.

“It seems clear to me that those penalties simply failed to either rehabilitate you or deter you and the chances of reform appear to me to be lost,” Judge Clarke said.

Defence barrister Jordan Ahlstrand said Arnold ran away from his childhood home due to alcohol abuse and domestic violence.

Mr Ahlstrand said his client drank alcohol excessively from age 16 to 25, started smoking marijuana when he was 12 and progressed to meth when he was in his 20s.

Judge Clarke sentenced Arnold to 20 months’ jail with immediate parole eligibility. The sentence is to be served cumulative with a three-year jail term he was given in December 2020 for domestic violence-type offences.