Shock Scottish Prison Service figures obtained through Freedom of Information Act show drugs, weapon and mobile phone seizures from Her Majesty's Inverness Porterfield prison rose dramatically during the Covid-19 pandemic
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Seizures of drugs, weapons and mobile phones from Inverness prisoners soared during the pandemic.
A Highland News investigation has uncovered a dramatic rise in illicit items confiscated at Her Majesty’s Prison Inverness during searches from December 2020 to November last year.
The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) defended the shock figures as indicative of success in a drive to detect more contraband.
But opposition MSPs partly blamed lengthy delays in replacing the Victorian-era Porterfield facility with a modern prison.
Potentially deadly forms of street drugs known as “spice” featured prominently among illegal substances recovered.
Exposed razor blades, sharpened items and home-made coshes were among the improvised weaponry found.
During lockdown in 2020, prison visits were restricted in Scotland, with the Scottish Government spending £3 million to give 7600 inmates “unhackable” mobile phones.
The scheme was later criticised for helping facilitate an influx of banned items after many phones were tampered with.
The HN’s Freedom of Information (FOI) request asked SPS for numbers on three illicit categories for each of five years from late 2016 to 2021.
Drugs finds, which also included class A substances and misused painkillers and antidepressants, soared from just 67 in 2015/16 to 370 in 2020/21.
Comparable figures for the three years between were 94, 92 and 136.
For weaponry, the rise in captures tripled to 33. The previous three years brought 17, 44 and 19 finds.
From 2016 to 2020 no more than three or four phones were confiscated at Inverness prison, but the figure for 2020/21 was 68.
An SPS spokesman said: “The findings are a reflection of the amount of time devoted to addressing these issues during lockdown.
“People have been spending longer in cells and staff have been increasing the frequency of searches.
“We have been facing an increasing problem of what’s being called new psychoactive substances. These are very difficult to detect.
“We’ve seen a very major increase in attempts to traffic these materials into all Scottish prisons, not just Inverness.
“We’ve worked very hard with other agencies, including the University of Dundee, to bring in technologies that help us detect these materials.
“Increased statistics aren’t necessarily a sign of an increasing problem. They are perhaps a measure of the success of some techniques being used.”
Plans to replace the ageing Porterfield prison have been delayed for over a decade.
The Conservatives’ Highland MSP Edward Mountain said: “While I’m pleased to see that increased search efforts have been effective, I’m horrified by the huge number of weapons and drugs finding their way into HMP Inverness.
“If the SNP had delivered the new state of the art prison we were promised years ago, then our prison officers would have been better supported to stop the flow of weapons and drugs into the prison.”
Green Party Highland MSP Ariane Burgess expressed concern for prisoner and staff welfare and added: “While I do understand that some of this is related to increased search efforts and proactive work to improve detection, I worry about the mental and physical health impacts on prisoners who have had to spend longer in their cells due to Covid-19.”
Labour’s Highland MSP Rhoda Grant said: “Modern prisons are designed to provide better facilities for prisoners and staff. This enables prisoner behaviour to be better monitored.
“A new building would provide better care for prisoners and cut down the number of opportunities for drug taking and carrying weapons.
“While imprisonment is a punishment it must also be rehabilitation. These activities make rehabilitation more difficult and therefore have a knock on impact on prisoners and their communities after release.
“The Highlands and Islands have been badly let down because of delays in the provision of a new prison and I hope there will be no further delays.”
