Female prison guard charged with smuggling drugs to bikes in Port Phillip Prison

A female prison guard has been charged with smuggling drugs to bikies locked in Melbourne’s Port Phillip Prison.

Many outlaw motorcycle gang figures are housed at Port Phillip Prison.

A female prison officer has been charged with smuggling drugs to bikies locked up in a maximum security Melbourne jail.

The 41-year-old from Croydon is believed to have been arrested at work over allegations she was smuggling drugs into Port Phillip Prison in Melbourne’s western suburbs

She has been charged with trafficking and possession of a drug of dependence after an investigation by officers from the Wyndham criminal investigation unit.

The officer at the centre of the security breach will appear in Werribee Magistrates’ Court in January next year.

It is not publicly known how the drugs were being taken behind the prison’s walls.

Privately run Port Phillip, at Truganina, is the state’s largest maximum security jail with a capacity of well over 1000 inmates.

The Herald Sun revealed last month that prison management had become aware of the issue and reported it to police.

The woman has been charged with trafficking and possession of a drug of dependence. Picture: David Caird

The officer at the centre of the allegation, who is not believed to have been a long-term employee, has since been sacked.

The jail’s operator, G4S, said last month that allegations of criminal behaviour were referred to police and proactively examined by management.

The case of a Port Phillip Prison guard whose face was slashed by an inmate in July remains the subject of a separate police investigation.

A large number of outlaw motorcycle gang figures are housed at Port Phillip, among them members of the Comanchero gang.

Such trafficking cases are rare but corruption is one of the biggest issues confronted by corrections authorities.

Organised criminal syndicates have long sought to bribe or coerce staff to help them control drug trafficking operations behind bars, using them as a connection to their associates on the outside.

In 2012, an officer at maximum security Barwon Prison was charged after a major scandal involving staff and criminals

The officer was jailed for supplying to a drug ring with links to Hells Angels bikie and killer CBD gunman Christopher Wayne Hudson.