HMP Forest Bank tops drugs seizure list for third year

HMP Forest Bank in Salford is privately operated

A privately run prison had the highest number of drugs seizures from inmates in England and Wales for the third year running.

HMP Forest Bank in Salford also topped the list for mobile phone seizures.

Across England and Wales, drug seizures were up 23% and mobile phone confiscations rose by 15.2%, according to new Ministry of Justice figures.

A Prison Service spokesman said the increase was a result of better intelligence and improved security.

A spokesman for Sodexo, which runs Forest Bank, said the figures "reflect the hard work and diligence of our staff in preventing illicit items getting into the prison and in detecting such items when they do".

The firm will continue to take steps to "disrupt the supply of drugs into the prison", he added.

Staff at Forest Bank detected 537 packages of drugs in the year ending March 2018, according to the figures, up 10.7% on the previous year.

Psychoactive drugs - which includes synthetic cannabis drugs like Spice - were the most commonly recovered contraband, representing 203 of the seizures at the jail.

Decisive action

A further 140 of the recorded confiscations were cannabis.

Meanwhile, a total of 498 banned mobile phones were recovered last year, an increase of three on the previous year.

The jail opened in 2000 and was home to an average of 1,443 prisoners last year.

The Prison Service spokesman said the latest figures showed contraband was being prevented from reaching prisons.

"We are taking decisive action to bolster security, including training 300 prison dogs in drugs detection, investing £7m in new measures such as airport-security style scanners, digital categorisation tool and phone-blocking technology," he said.