Drones are being used to smuggle items into prisoners at HMP Perth.
The emerging problem was highlighted during a recent meeting of Perth and Kinross Council’s Housing and Social Wellbeing Committee on Wednesday, November 27.
Local councillors were told police officers are working with partners to tackle issues with drugs, drones, phones and other items being sneaked in to inmates.
Cllr Bob Brawn became aware of “great concern about the use of drones to bring contrabands into prisons” after watching a recent news report when he was in London. At Wednesday’s council committee meeting, the Conservative councillor asked if it was a problem in Scottish prisons too and specifically in HMP Perth.
The Blairgowrie and Glens councillor added: “The big fear is that it won’t just be drugs, cigarettes or whatever but it could be a gun going in. My question was, is that a problem we have at Perth? And what could we do to stop that?”
He referred to a cutting edge defence system being used in Guernsey, called Sky Fence, which can detect drones coming into prison.
Inspector Stephen Gray told the committee: “We work with the partners within the prison service to pro-actively target anybody who’s trying to bring in items to the prison. We do see similar issues in Perth as we do across the country which is to be expected because people who are within Perth aren’t just from our area, they come from across the country and have links to various areas.
“There are issues with drugs, drones, phones, all sorts. And we do have an officer within our community team in Perth dedicated to working closely with the prisons. Throughout the year, they run initiatives alongside partner agencies.
“One day last week we had plain clothes [officers] in the prison waiting searching people and detecting crime within the prison and the next day we had a more overt police operation where we were out in uniform.
“We’re willing to work with partners to look at any new technology we can which will deter criminals.”
Cllr Brawn probed further to ask if “drones were now more of a problem”.
Insp Gray responded: “It’s becoming more of a problem in respect of it’s a new technology. However, we don’t see it happening all of the time and we do work with partners to combat new technologies.”