Drones Now Smuggling Drugs
This post is also available in: 
עברית (Hebrew)
Something strange is hapening at the Walton prison in England. It appears that a drone has crashed into the prison’s fence which raised concerns that this was an attempt to smuggle drugs inside it. A report on the matter reveals that there were nine attempts to use drones to infiltrate prisons in England and Wales in the first five months of this year compared to four attempts in the whole of last year.
In recent years several prisons in England have had to deal with quite a fre attempts to smuggle drugs inside. Prison bosses said that the drugs are passed by friends and relatives visiting their loved ones by throwing them inside tennis balls into the open court or even inside hidden in the carcasses of dead pigeons. These events are so common that a staff had to be hired to clear the drugs that failed to reached their destination from the prison’s rooftops.
Both illicit drugs and so-called legal highs sell for vast amounts behind bars and are seen as the prevalent reason for assaults between prisoners. Prison employees are trying to counter these creative ways of smuggling and need to be even more creative than the smugglers in order to thwart the attempts. The involvement of drones may be rare for the time being, but the staff is staying alert to new threats to security.
Recently, then, concerns have been raised due to the possible use of drones to parachute drugs and even smuggle weapons inside prisons. In fact, only several months ago a package the size and weight of a gun was parachuted into a maximum security prison during a secret inspection, without any of the guards realizing.
According to analysts, drone use is an “emerging threat” which will increase as UAV technology becomes cheaper and easier to use. Prisons are highly breached when it comes to drones entering it as long as there is an open space in it, such as grounds or courts. There are, however, already those who began acting to counter this threat, although this issue has only just begun. A prison service spokesperson said that new legislation is being introduced to “further strengthen our powers, making it illegal to land a drone in prison or to use a drone to drop in psychoactive substances.”
