Prisons battling new drug being smuggled in for inmates
Prison officers are fighting to stop the onslaught of a cheap, easily-smuggled prescription drug in NSW jails with the contraband increasingly being secretly passed to criminals by their visitors — including lawyers.
NSW
Don't miss out on the headlines from NSW. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Prison officers are fighting to stop the onslaught of a cheap, easily-smuggled prescription drug in NSW jails with the contraband increasingly being secretly passed to criminals by their visitors — including lawyers.
Pharmaceutical drug buprenorphine, an opioid prescribed to replace heroin, has become the contraband of choice for the state’s prisoners.
The drug — dubbed bupe — comes in lightweight paper-thin strips than can be placed on the tongue, smoked by sparking electrical fittings or even injected with makeshift syringes inmates fashion from pens or toothbrushes.
One strip is worth about $200 in a maximum-security jail.
The popularity of bupe behind bars has been rising over the last five years and has now outstripped amphetamines, cocaine and marijuana.
MORE NEWS:
Karl Stefanovic steps out with new wife and puppy
Sydney home of Hells Angels president raided
Vegan parents’ strict diet caused girl to develop rickets
The Daily Telegraph accompanied elite prison officers on December 17 as they raided maximum security cells — home to 74 prisoners — in the remand section of Silverwater Correction Centre wearing body-worn cameras, the first time the technology has been trialled.
Inmates shouted out “red lights” to alert each other to the raid with the sound of flushing toilets ringing out in the cells as men discarded their drugs.
Prior to the raid the elite officers were told contraband is a “major issue” with intelligence indicating there had been a spike in the use of meth, bupe and mobile phones in the cells that were to be raided.
Intelligence signalled contraband was being hidden in electrical appliances and passed to inmates via legal paper work.
During the raid of pod 13 of G Block two lots of “bupe” were uncovered — one hidden in the seam of a prisoner’s jumper and another in a bed.
The team of 10 elite officers and two highly trained sniffer dogs also unearthed a knife that was made in the jail.
All inmates were strip searched.
Corrective Services NSW Assistance Commission Security and Intelligence Mark Wilson said bupe was a “very common drug for misuse” in prison.
“It is easy to get in, it comes in little strips that way next to nothing, little wafer strips, to it’s very hard to detect but we are intercepting a lot of it at the front gate … it’s the drug of choice at the moment,” he said.
“Other big deals for us are mobile phones and tobacco is still problematic, for a lot of our visitors the penny still hasn’t dropped that just because it’s legal outside doesn’t mean it’s okay to bring it in here.”
Mr Wilson said lawyers were behind some contraband being smuggled to prisoners but visitors, such as friends and family, made up the bulk of the offending.
“There are obviously people in that game (lawyers) who are not abiding by the requirement, the expectations (to behave). They get a little bit more freedom in terms of undertaking the visits they get legal professional privilege where we can’t record their conversations, we can’t read the material but we can search it … they’re not the primary source (of contraband) by any means.”
There have been massive seizures of bupe at prisons in the last two months alone.
In November a 62-year-old woman — who was accompanied by children — was attempting to visit an inmate at maximum-security Lithgow Correctional Centre when she was caught with 137 strips of ‘bupe’.
During the same crackdown on contraband a 21-year-old woman was caught trying to pass 287 bupe strips, hidden in coloured balloons, to an inmate.
Both hauls were worth a combined $80,000.
Meanwhile a blitz on visitors at the Wellington Correctional Complex on December 19 busted a woman with 27 strips of bupe hidden in her bra. Officers also found MDMA tablets, ketamine, meat cleaver and endone tablets on other visitors.
On December 10 a woman was caught in the car park of the Goulburn Correction Complex with 3.8g of heroin hidden inside a balloon in her mouth.
Officers also found a balloon with 3.2g of buprenorphine as well as syringes, tourniquet, knives, tobacco in other visitor’s cars.
On December 2 a woman was caught trying to smuggle 10 bupe strips and tobacco into a jail in Kempsey with the items stuffed in her bra and handbag.
People caught bringing banned items — including prescription drugs — to jails or into their carparks face up to two years behind bars.
Correctives Minister David Elliott said he was “comfortable” that the amount of contraband being smuggled into prisons was overall on the decline.
The cameras are being trialled for nine months across multiple prisons among elite security teams to help them better capture evidence of contraband and deter prisoners making vexatious assault claims against officers.
“People have been smuggling contraband into prison since time in memorial. They’re doing it now with use of things like drones, using visitors to bring it in which is why I spend my life reminding prisoners you will be subject to a two year custodial sentence for introducing contraband but I am comfortable that the level of contraband being smuggled in is on the decline,” he said.
“We’re using technology to find contraband and K9 units. At end of the day I still haven’t seen anything better than a well-trained corrections dog to stop the spread of contraband in prison.”
The nine jails trialling the cameras are across NSW with officers form the Extreme High Security Unit and Security Operation Group as well as Immediate Action Teams which roam across the state’s centres.
“As minister I’m thrilled we can roll this technology out because I just know it makes the job of the officer safe.”
Originally published as Prisons battling new drug being smuggled in for inmates
Splashdown! Day of disaster for Aussies in women’s America’s Cup
The women’s America’s Cup dream of an Australian crew is over after just two days of racing, a disastrous touchdown, a broken start penalty and erratic conditions. How it played out.
Read more
Council awarded more than $600k in compo battle over park, golf club
A Sydney council has secured a legal win against the NSW Government after disputing the amount of compensation it would receive for land forcibly acquired for a major tunnel project.
Read more