news, crime, prison, contraband, seizures, drugs, smuggling

Custodial staff seized 25 mobile phones and 45 phone-related items such as chargers, as well as 276 makeshift shivs, weapons and other assorted contraband during searches inside Canberra’s jail across the 2020-21 financial year. During a reporting period marked by the most significant riot in the jail’s 13-year history, the number of planned and random searches of detainees and locations within the jail fell from 4234 to 3862, with a total of 587 contraband items located. This compared with 644 items located in the previous reporting year. The volume and types of drugs smuggled in was not recorded, although admissions by prisoners in court statements suggested a prevalence of methamphetamine, opioids and cannabis. The peak time for seizures was in December last year, when around 100 various items were found after around 400 location searches within the prison. Three drug detection dogs have been operating on rotation at the jail and the arrival of a fourth, trained specifically in phone detection, together with a canine team supervisor in mid-2021, was expected to give a significant boost to this capability. In budget estimates two months ago, Corrective Services commissioner Ray Johnson said he had hoped to have a new body scanner in place by the end of the 2021-22 financial year, “if not sooner”. Numbers of detainees held within the Alexander Maconochie Centre are not provided on a regular basis and vary throughout the year depending on court throughput. In June 2021 there were 377 detainees held at the prison, a huge drop from the 452 held 12 months previously. Sentenced prisoners are still mixed with those held on remand, which is in breach of the legislation. Around one-third of these detainees were prisoners held on remand, or yet to be sentenced. Of those, just over a third identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders. While those full-time (sentenced) prisoners serving less than two years or between two to five years had declined, the latest reporting period saw a huge jump in those serving 20-plus years for very serious offences. There are now 21 prisoners serving 20-plus years in the prison, almost…