Guard who supplied drugs given six years

12 April 2012

A CROWN court security officer has been jailed for six years for supplying defendants in his cells with drugs and mobile phones which they could later sell in prison.

Daniel Birkett, 30, would provide the prisoners with cannabis, cocaine and pay-as-you-go phones, which they would hide in their clothes or internally before returning to HMP Wandsworth.

Birkett received up to £150 a time for these exchanges at Blackfriars crown court holding cells. Inner London crown court heard that mobile phones are a "vital commodity" in prisons and change hands for up to £500. Inmates use them to keep up criminality behind bars and potentially to intimidate witnesses.

Drugs can be sold in prison for three times their street value.

Birkett, who worked for security firm Serco, was caught last December after another security officer found wraps of drugs in a defendant's waistband. A further search revealed two hollowed batteries concealed in his body containing 10 more wraps of drugs. All the security staff's lockers were searched and drugs and a large tub of Vaseline were found in Birkett's locker, as well as two mobile phones.

Birkett, who admitted charges of conspiracy to supply Class A and B drugs and to convey a list B article (the phones), claimed that he was "frightened of the prisoners" and that they had threatened to hurt his family if he told police or refused to co-operate.

However, Judge Roger Chapple said Birkett, of North Woolwich, had entered the conspiracy "wilfully and for financial gain".

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