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Published Date: 25 November 2006
Exclusive
By Tom Mullen
HOME-brewing kits, heroin and cannabis have been seized from prisoners in Armley Jail.
The drugs and booze were among the haul found at the prison between January and October this year.
Home Office figures have revealed that there were 195 drug finds and 20 stashes of alcohol uncovered in that time.
Smuggling over prison walls is now
so serious that wire mesh fencing has been rigged up above the prisoners' exercise yards to stop drugs being thrown over in tennis balls and even dead birds.
But drugs and home brewing kits are still being smuggled in during visiting times with friends and relatives.
Inmates have been found with home-brewing kits made from plastic squash bottles which together with heat from water pipes, starts the fermentation process.
Crafty
Prisoners' daily rations of fruit and veg are mixed with sugar and yeast from bread to make booze which is then hidden around the prison.
A spokesman for the prison said: "These are very ingenious people, and they are very good at hiding things. There are thousands of hiding places in a 150 year-old Victorian prison.
"The prisoners hide alcohol in ordinary squash bottles – it's only when you look very carefully that you realise it's actually fermenting. Drugs found ranged from cannabis and amphetamines through to crack cocaine and heroin."
The spokesman said: "We do have a continuing drive to remedy the situation, and we work in co-operation with the police outside the prison. We have halved the number of drugs findings over the last two and a half years."
He added: "Unfortunately, drugs are a part of prison life."
Around 80 percent of prisoners test positive for drugs when they first arrive and regular random testing is carried out, the prison said.
Police and prison chiefs announced a clampdown on drug smuggling at Armley Jail earlier this year.
Five visitors have already been convicted and sentenced for possession with intent to supply drugs to inmates.
Last February, two women visitors aged 20 and 28 were given 18 month jail sentences for attempting to supply heroin to the prison.





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