Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) drugs of each type and (b) other items were confiscated from visitors to each prison in each year since 2010.

We have a range of security measures and searching techniques to prevent smuggling into prisons and to detect items of contraband including drugs. We have legislated to make smuggling New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) into prison illegal, use specially trained dogs to detect illicit drugs and will evaluate the use of Body Scanners to reveal drugs concealed within the body.

We refer all visitors to prisons found in possession of drugs to the police. We also use closed visits, where the prisoner and visitor are prevented from physical contact, to deal with visitors and prisoners who smuggle or are suspected of conveying drugs through visits.

The table below shows the number and type of drugs confiscated from visitors in each prison for the period 01 October 2015 to 31 December 2015. Prior to 01 October 2015 the Incident Reporting System (IRS) did not specifically record who possessed the drugs found.

Number of incidents where drugs were found in visitor's possession, October to December 2015, by establishment and drug type

(1) Number of incidents where each drug type were found.

(2) Where establishment is not listed, no confiscations were reported in the period

Data Sources and Quality
These figures have been drawn from the NOMS Incident Reporting System. Care is taken when processing and analysing the returns but the detail collected is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system.