More than one in seven prisoners at Victorian Era jail were found to have drugs in their system when checked randomly. According to the jail’s Independent Monitoring Board, IMB the illegal drug market behind the walls of Pentonville Prison in north London lie behind many of the gang, debt and violence issues throughout the prison.
Random drug tests in the jail showed 15% of the inmates had illegal drugs in the system at any point of time during 2010-11 with one in the five being prescribed methadone maintenance. The board also arose some doubts over the effectiveness of the policy of using methadone in treating drug dependance and in reducing re offending. It also reported that the number of drug users coming on to the prison are increasing. The jail authorities are hugely demanding resource to curb this situation.
The prison authorities are very serious about the use of illicit drugs in prisons and the problems caused due to them. They are working hard to keep these things out of prison using a range of security measures to reduce drug supply, including working closely with police forces and carrying out random mandatory drug tests.
However, the authorities are worrying about the uncontrollable crowd in the London prisons, where an average prisoner stays for an average of 10 weeks and it is becoming difficult for them to educate and rehabilitate the prisoners at a large scale.