Covid Exposed Prison Drug Myths

The drugs crisis inside England and Wales' prisons is no longer a rumour traded on the landings.

Parliament's Justice Committee described a "widespread and recent increase" in availability. It heard that, in inspectorate surveys, around a third of men and a fifth of women said illicit drugs were easy to acquire. Nearly half of people arriving in custody are recorded as having an identified drug need, and a significant number develop drug habits in prison.

The Ministry of Justice response is often framed around the entry gate. In 2023 it announced 83 new X-ray bag scanners to stop smuggling by visitors. Ministers later said prison X-ray body scanners had recorded more than 53,000 positive indications by March 2024. The public narrative is clear: families and friends are treated as the default problem.

Then Covid happened and the story stopped adding up. Social visits across the estate were suspended in March 2020. Yet Ministry of Justice figures, reported by Inside Time, show drugs were still being found at scale: 20,295 drug finds in 2020/21, only a modest fall on the previous year. When the visits hall shut, the supply line did not die. It rerouted.

That matters because the routes that survived Covid are the routes the system still struggles to control. The Justice Committee says social visits and post remain common avenues for drug ingress, but it also sets out how organised crime groups adapt and how new psychoactive substances can evade testing. Drones, in particular, have gone from gimmick to workhorse. Inside Time reported the first official count of drone sightings at prisons: 1,712 incidents in 2024/25, more than four a day. In November 2025, the Ministry of Justice said incidents involving drones at prisons had increased by over 770% between 2019 and 2023.

The Prison Officers' Association has been warning about this. Giving evidence to Parliament in January 2025, POA chair Mark Fairhurst said officers had told their employer for at least five years that drones were a major security risk and that investment in blocking technology was repeatedly ignored. He also pointed to weak recruitment and vetting, low pay and limited training as conditions that make corruption easier to seed and harder to spot.

Corruption is not theoretical. Inside Time has reported prosecutions involving staff bringing drugs into jails, including a May 2025 case in which a prison nurse was jailed for smuggling drugs into the prison where she worked. That is not a family member "causing trouble" at reception. That is the state's own perimeter being breached from the inside.

This is the uncomfortable backdrop to privatisation. A parliamentary answer in January 2025 listed privately managed prisons in England and Wales and their operators: G4S runs Altcourse, Ashfield, Bronzefield, Five Wells and Parc; Serco runs Dovegate, Fosse Way and Thameside; Sodexo runs Doncaster, Forest Bank, Northumberland, Oakwood, Rye Hill and the male and female units at Peterborough.

If the Ministry of Justice wants credibility, it needs to stop leaning on the easiest villain. Some visitors will be exploited, and the Justice Committee lays out how it happens. But Covid exposed the bigger reality: the prison drugs market is multi-route, professionalised and resilient. Fixing it means confronting drones, post, organised crime, and weak points in staffing and vetting, not just scaring families at the gate.

Sources: House of Commons Justice Committee, "Tackling the drugs crisis in our prisons" (published 31 Oct 2025).

Ministry of Justice press release, "New prison X-ray scanners to thwart smuggling" (3 Mar 2023) and parliamentary written answer on prison body scanners (15 Apr 2024).

Ministry of Justice announcement cancelling social prison visits (24 Mar 2020).

Inside Time magazine: "Drug use in prisons unchecked by Covid" (8 Sep 2021);

"Drone incidents at prisons" (30 Jul 2025); and reporting on a prison nurse jailed for smuggling drugs (May 2025). Prison Officers' Association evidence to the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee (14 Jan 2025).

UK Parliament written answer listing privately managed prisons and operators (27 Jan 2025). Ministry of Justice press release on counter-drone challenge (4 Nov 2025).