The North East’s jails are awash with drugs, illicit booze and contraband phones – and some prison dealers are reportedly making up to £10,000 a week, The Northern Echo understands.

Yesterday, we revealed that a prisoner hid in an industrial bin and was wheeled out with the rubbish as part of an audacious plot to smuggle drugs into Stockton’s Holme House prison.

That plot may have been foiled by prison officers – but where that smuggling attempt failed, many more have succeeded.

An Echo investigation found prohibited items like drugs, phones and alcohol were found in our region’s prisons more than 20,500 times in just five years.

EXCLUSIVE: Prisoner wheeled out with rubbish in drug smuggling plot

As the black market thrives behind bars, serious drug dealers are reportedly raking in thousands a week from exploiting the addictions of their fellow prisoners.

And inmates are employing a variety of brazen methods to make, smuggle in and distribute banned items, one prisoner told us.

He would make £40 for every litre of prison ‘hooch’ he made and sold from his cell, while others allegedly profited from selling 10-minute phone calls for £50 and flogging ancient mobile phones for up to £2,000.

Our source said he had witnessed many attempts to bring contraband into the prison, from packages being left at the perimeter to drones dropping off drugs.

He, and others, would go to great lengths to conceal their activities, from swallowing packages to coating the entrance of their cells with chilli powder to deter sniffer dogs.

The Northern Echo: Inside a prison

Enhanced security, body scanners and more searches have contributed to a significant fall in the number of illegal items found in North East prisons in recent years.

However, since 2017-18, officers at jails in our region have uncovered alcohol on more than 2,000 occasions; phones, charges and SIM cards around 4,400 times and weapons around 2,500 times.

The most significant proportion of prison finds relate to drugs, with substances found nearly 7,300 times and drug equipment discovered on more than 1,500 occasions.

Echo analysis of MoJ figures reveals nearly two-thirds of the drugs found were psychoactive substances, with notorious synthetic drug Spice likely to be among the substances seized.

And where there’s drugs, experts say, violence follows.

Over the course of a decade, an average of 22 assaults every week have been recorded in prisons across the North East and North Yorkshire.

Read more: Thousands of prison attacks as violence rises behind bars

Robert Preece, communications manager at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the number of recorded confiscations do not “tell the full story” of the extent of drug abuse behind bars.

He added: “Drugs are a scourge in prisons – where there is drug abuse, there is also debt and violence.

“Ministers have spent millions on tightening security, but the best way to reduce the supply of drugs and mobile phones into prisons is to reduce the demand for them in the first place.”

He said staff time should be spent making sure people get out of their cells and are occupied with work, education, training and exercise.

A spokeswoman for the Prison Service said £100 million had been invested in airport-style security systems in jails across the country.

She said more than 20,000 attempts to smuggle contraband into prison had been foiled as a result.

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