Airborne security threat to prisons from drug-smuggling drones

Organised criminals are using drones in their attempts to smuggle drugs, mobile phones and dangerous contraband into Australia’s prisons.

Exclusive: Organised criminals are increasingly using drones in attempts to smuggle drugs, dangerous contraband and mobile phones into jails sparking major security concerns and fuelling black-market operations on the inside.

Prisons in NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland have discovered drones with contraband flying around and over their razor wire-topped walls prompting new laws banning their use near prison facilities, and the introduction of anti-drone technology.

In the past five years there have been almost 70 drones sighted flying around NSW prisons. Last year, four Queensland high security prisons went into lockdown after drones were seen flying overhead.

Recent advances in drone technology have meant the easy-to-buy and easy-to-fly unmanned aerial vehicles are causing massive airborne security issues for prisons.

But the extent of the problem remains unknown with many drones suspected of running multiple flights before they are even detected.

CCTV captured a drone that appears to be dumping contraband in a NSW prison. Picture: Supplied

In the US and the UK police have discovered the drones are being used for organised drug runs and weapon drops to prisons by crime gangs. In Maryland in the US, two men were found attempting to fly in a handgun, porn and drugs into a prison.

In NSW more than 60 drones were recorded as discovered or sighted between January 2014 and December 2018, an average of 20 each year.

Last year the number jumped to 35 drones in one year.

So far this year there have already been nine sightings according to NSW Corrective Services.

NSW authorities have seized two drones while they were attempting to drop contraband into Lithgow jail and to the Goulburn Correctional Centre.

In October 2017, prison staff seized a drone dropping more than 400 steroid capsules into Lithgow Correctional Centre.

Organised criminals are using drones to smuggle contraband into prisons. Picture: Gary Ramage

In November that year staff seized a broken drone, mobile phone and tobacco on a roof of an external industries area at Goulburn Correctional Centre.

A spokeswoman for NSW Corrective Services said “delivering contraband via a drone into a correctional centre has a high likelihood of failure, due to existing electronic-security detection systems, CCTV, sterile perimeter zones, staff vigilance and close supervision of inmates.”

She said that NSW Corrective Services is investigating new technologies and developing strategies to prevent contraband from entering the prison system.

NSW Corrective Services is also trialling drone-detection technology, which gathers intelligence about the location of a device and the number of times it has been flown near a correctional centre.

Prisons are also a looking at signal-blocking drone guns which have been used by Queensland Police during the Commonwealth Games.

Victoria and NSW have in the past year introduced laws to banning drones from flying at or below above a prison or youth-justice centre or from flying near the perimeter of a prison if they are being flown in a manner that is likely to threaten the security. A drone believed to be used in an attempt to smuggle drugs into The Ravenhall Remand Centre in Victoria was discovered in 2014.

Western Australian prisons are reportedly installing anti-drone technology to try and stop drugs being air-dropped into its prisons.

In Tasmania, a drone carrying drugs, mobile phones and SIM cards crashed landed at Risdon Prison in 2016.

In Queensland last year two people were caught trying to smuggle drugs and mobile into a prison using a drone.