7 April
Recently staff at Christchurch Women’s Prison succeeded in apprehending a prisoner's visitor who was attempting to bring drugs into the prison.
“Great work by site staff and the Operational Intelligence Unit, including some selected prisoner phone monitoring, gave us valuable information about the possibility of a visitor bringing the contraband into the prison at a Tikanga graduation,” says acting Prison Manager Richard Shuker.
“We had a Prison checkpoint in operation that day, with the Drug Dog Team on-hand to help with the searches. When the identified person arrived, we took them aside to an interview room and spoke with them.
“It appears as though this visitor was pressured by her sister to try and smuggle in a large quantity of cannabis, which she was unable to obtain. However, a subsequent search of her property found a point bag containing methamphetamine in her purse along with several hundred dollars in cash.
“This is a very good outcome for us but the downside was that the prisoner and visitor were trying to use the graduation of a very useful programme to try and get drugs into prison. No thought was given that it could have jeopardised the programme and the chance for other prisoners to gain from it.”
Mr Shuker says prisoners can exert all kinds of pressure on their partners, family and friends to bring drugs into the prison for them.
“Drugs have such a stronghold on some prisoners that they will blackmail friends and family or threaten them with violence, so we want to encourage every single person to speak up if they are being pressured by a prisoner to bring drugs inside. Ring 0800 JAIL SAFE and we will help you stop it from happening and work with Police to keep you safe.
“If you do it once and somehow manage to get past our staff, you will then be seen by prisoners as a reliable mule and expected to do it again and again. It’s just not worth the risk even if the prisoner says they’re desperate and it will only be just the once.”
The woman was detained until the Police arrived to arrest her and collect the evidence; prison management also issued her with a 12-month ban.
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