Prisons have become airports for drones

A few months ago, I spoke to a man halfway through a life sentence for murder. We first met 12 years ago when I was a prison officer. We mused on the changes to the prison service over the last decade. He said it wasn’t just the days that had got louder, but the nights too. I presumed he meant the increase in violence, or the sounds of mentally unwell prisoners trapped in their distress, but I was wrong. 

‘No,’ he said. ‘The drones. This place is like an airport for them.’

During my career I found drugs, weapons, illicit phones, a bottle of Jack Daniels and even an iPad inside prison. Contraband certainly isn’t a new problem. But the revelation that there were 1,296 drone incidents at prisons in England and Wales in the ten months to the end of October 2024 is different. Contraband might not be new, but the way it is getting inside prison is.