Steward Richmond, 32, from Birdsall Gardens, Armley, hid illegal class C heroin substitutes in five letters and sent them to inmates at New Hall prison in Wakefield over three-months, Leeds Crown Court heard.

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Drug addict and alcoholic Richmond, who has a string of previous crimes to his name, had pleaded guilty at a hearing last month to five charges of conveying a 'List A' article into a prison.

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Jonathan Devlin, prosecuting, told the court that between June and October 2008, Richmond sent a number of letters to prisoners at the women-only New Hall prison.

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Each envelope was found to contain a small amount of heroin substitute.

The prison value of each dose was £5 but the tablets would be sold on the street for £1 each.

The court heard the envelopes were examined after prison officers became suspicious.

Cigarette papers containing the drugs were found in each envelope.
The court was told Richmond was identified following handwriting and fingerprint tests on the envelopes.

At police interview, Richmond had initially denied the allegations, claiming he had written the letters for someone else and did not know the drugs were in the envelopes.

However, he later admitted attempting the unsophisticated ruse.
Mark McKone, mitigating, said Richmond had sent the drugs out of "misguided loyalty" to a girlfriend.

He said his client had a long history of drug and alcohol abuse but was working hard to overcome his problems.

Sentencing Richmond to two-and-a- half years in jail, 15 months for the drug smuggling and the same for other unrelated charges, Judge Rodney Grant told him: "Anyone who imports or seeks to import drugs into a prison must recognise that (a prison sentence] will inevitably follow.

"You did not just do it once, you did it five times over a period of three months. The matters are too numerous and too serious to avoid jail."

Richmond was also convicted, alongside fellow addict Jean Shackleton, 34, of shoplifting and threatening a shopkeeper in an unrelated crime.
The court heard the pair had tried to steal beer cans from an unnamed store and when confronted by the female shopkeeper, they had assaulted her. Richmond also produced a knife.

The judge handed Bramley mother-of-four Shackleton a suspended 12-month jail sentence for her role in the shop assault.

He also put her on a supervision order and told her to attend six months of drugs rehabilitation.