The newest annual report by the Prison Service shows that there were over 21,000 drug seizures in UK prisons in the year 2024 – one for every four prisoners.
That is an extraordinary number, considering that large amounts of drugs are likely to remain undetected. It is also an increase of 44% compared to the year before.
My own estimate from my experience in prison is that at least one-third to half of all prisoners take Spice or other illegal substances regularly, depending on the condition of the prison.
To try to explain why drugs are such a massive problem isn’t rocket science.
UK prisons are dilapidated, vermin-infested, overcrowded, underfunded and understaffed. The food is awful, unhealthy and not nearly enough; two men have to share a cell too small for one person, have to use the toilet in front of their cellmate without even a screen.
Education, work and gym are constantly cancelled due to staff shortages.
Rehabilitation is impossible as prisons are barely managing the most basic regime of providing food, medicines and the occasional shower.
Rather than having a structured day of work, education, exercise and support groups, prisoners are wasting away behind cell doors with nothing to do.
No wonder they are turning to drugs.
During my three years in prison, 5 out of my 7 different cell mates were taking Spice daily.
It is easy to smuggle in – all you need is a piece of paper that is drenched with the chemical and then smoked using the battery of a vape pen – and dead cheap. Although in prison it is sold for a fortune, leading to huge problems resulting from debt. One of my cellmates was spending £50 every single day on Spice, meaning he’d spend all the money that he would need to resettle after release and that would reduce the risk of him reoffending.
Ambulances constantly have to be called to prisons out of fear that a Spice-head is having a stroke or a heart attack. It is a nasty drug; very harmful and dangerous. Prisoners become either completely zombified or very aggressive. They get this flaky grey skin and look like they’ve been poisoned – you can immediately tell.
Enforcement with the threat of punishment doesn’t work
Trying to control the problem with force simply doesn’t work. You whack one mole and immediately another one comes up elsewhere.
In one of the prisons I was in they started photocopying every single letter that came in. The result was that inmates had to wait weeks for their letters to arrive, as they were piling up in the mailroom. Coloured drawings sent by their children were now in grainy black and white.
And in the meantime we had one of the largest Spice outbreaks ever – the measure was a failure.
The solution
The solution is firstly to look at why there is this massive demand and how it can be reduced.
There will always be demand for drugs in prison, but the main reason so many prisoners take them is because prison offers no support, no hope, no structure and no purpose.
There is no question that in a structured, well- working regime, in which prisoners have something meaningful to do – such as work, education, mental health- and addiction support, someone to talk to, as well as regular exercise – the demand for Spice and other drugs would decrease drastically. It would also decrease in prisons that are less decrepit, less overcrowded, provide better food and offer more time out of cell and more fresh air.
Actually having enough to eat would mean that prisoner wouldn’t need to make extra money in order to pay for food (I had to spend around £35 per week to have enough to eat; on prison wages of £18 weekly).
The second problem is the supply side.
Drones have made it very easy to smuggle drugs in. Organised criminals will always try to operate in prisons and make money.
But once the demand has been reduced and prisons have returned to a meaningful regime with adequate staffing levels, controlling and policing the drug trade within prisons will be much easier to do and be much more effective.
In the current system, drug use is quietly tolerated as long as it doesn’t lead to violence, for the simple reason that the resources aren’t there to do something about it.
The failed war on drugs
The drug problem in prisons and lack of workable solutions mirrors the drug problem in wider society.
For ideological reasons, we have waged a war against drugs for over 40 years despite overwhelming evidence that it doesn’t work and is making drug cartels and drug gangs more powerful, whilst harming millions of vulnerable drug users.
If we would have legalised drugs 40 years ago, we would have saved millions of lives and more than a trillion dollars.
Because in most cases it’s not the heroin that kills – it’s the consequences of prohibition: criminality (cartels and gangs), dirty needles, not knowing what’s inside the drugs, needing to sell drugs in order to afford them, ending inside prison, and so forth.
Money spent on a functioning prison system is money saved
As always, many will point to the costs of reforming the prison system from the ground up.
The truth is that nothing is more expensive than the current system, and investing into a better system would save enormous amounts in the long run.
The prison population would shrink, with fewer problems inside prisons that cost money, and reoffending would reduce, saving much of the £18 billion we currently spend a year on people who reoffend.
Even more importantly, it would lead to a better society for all of us.
Note: The image is taken from the following article in the Inside Time:
https://insidetime.org/comment/the-truth-about-spice/
Words without waffle 
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