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. In the past, drugs and phones were smuggled in through visits, packages thrown over the walls or occasionally staff corruption. But it’s no longer necessary to make that much effort to get contraband inside prison. Drones can fly directly up to the cell window of a prisoner waiting patiently to receive his or her order.
The chair of the Justice Committee, Andy Slaughter, has rightly drawn attention to the rise in drone incidents in prison, saying these should ‘set alarm bells ringing’. There are plenty of alarm bells ringing in prisons as it is. Research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats showed that there are 74 assaults every day in prisons in England and Wales. Mr Slaughter continued, ‘We wouldn’t be having these increases in incidents if the prison service was on top of it. It’s particularly galling that organised crime and whoever is operating the drones are effectively steps ahead.’
Steps ahead? If only. The people operating the drones are years ahead, centuries ahead in fact. Over a quarter of prisoners in England and Wales live in Victorian era prison accommodation. These prisons are so old that the cell doorways are low because humans were shorter when they were built. These prisons weren’t constructed with safety cages attached to the windows. In modern prisons, these cages make it much harder for prisoners to access drones hovering outside. It is a simple design that could help staff tackle a complicated problem. But some of the prisons I worked in are so old they are in fact Grade 2 listed, and such moderations are not permitted. And so the incessant buzzing of the drones grows ever louder.
Many prison officers working in England and Wales today will have seen drone drops in action. They will have heard that distinctive humming noise, seen the flashing lights and rotating propellers, and had little choice but to watch as an arm appears from a cell window and collects the goods. I say ‘little choice’, because their options for intervention are limited. English prison officers carry batons, not firearms. They carry anti-ligature knives, not lassoes to tackle low-flying aircraft. There aren’t enough prison officers to open cell doors, never mind stand guard outside cell windows. The number of officers on duty is even fewer at night, which is of course when the drones come. Drones don’t make drops when everyone is out and about. They come when the prisoners are locked in their cells and the majority of the staff have gone home.
I have worked night shifts with as few as three operational officers on duty in a prison housing over 900 men. At night, prisons are effectively in lockdown. Staffing is drastically reduced. Officers are only permitted to unlock a cell door if there is an endangerment to life. A fight, a fire or a medical emergency. Sadly, there are many of those.
The prisoner I spoke with described his prison as ‘an airport for drones.’ Flights booked, goods ordered and delivered with an efficiency rarely seen in the prison system. Rarely in airports either actually. Though some prisons have helicopter wire to disrupt low flying aircraft, many do not. Though some prisons have netting stretching across exercise yards, many do not. Though some prisons have CCTV facing external walls, many do not.
Contraband is not going to go away. But neither are drones. I find myself feeling strangely nostalgic for the days when pigeons were caught, gutted and stuffed with drugs then thrown over the walls onto an exercise yard. At least the package couldn’t fly away from you when you got near it. It’s a complicated problem, but I’m not sure the ringing of yet more alarm bells is what we need. You probably wouldn’t hear them over the noise of the drones anyway.
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