Prisons lack resources to fit window grilles to deter drones, MSPs told

Prison bosses have told MSPs they lack the resources to install window grilles at all of Scotland’s jails in a bid to prevent drones being used to take drugs direct to inmates in their cells.

Stephen Coyle, from the Scottish Prison Service, said drones often fly in at night, under the cover of darkness, with inmates flicking their cell lights on and off to guide them.

Holyrood’s Criminal Justice Committee heard how after window grilles were installed at Perth Prison – preventing inmates from reaching a drone outside their cell window – there were “no drone breaches” for six months afterwards.

Asked by Conservative MSP Sharon Dowey why the SPS has not put window grilles “into every single prison”, Mr Coyle, the SPS’s head of operational delivery, told the committee it is down to “resources” and “the cost attached to that”.

His comments came as SPS chief executive Teresa Medhurst told MSPs in a submission that prison bosses have seen “an increase in the use of technology, such as drones”

She said these “have increased the threat due to the level of payload these devices can carry”, saying they often carry “drugs, mobile phones (and accessories), and weapons”.

Grilles have been installed on windows at Saughton Prison in Edinburgh and Glenochil Prison, outside Tullibody in Clackmannanshire, and Mr Coyle told MSPs these establishments had been “particular hotspots” for such activity.

He said: “That is why we had gone to those environments first to tackle what was an obvious problem in those environments.

“But if we had the resource of course we would apply that – and it is a low-tech response, it is a window grille, the occupants of that room can’t access the drone.”

However he stressed the grilles will not “stop drones coming in”, saying packages can still be dropped into prison grounds.

“The capacity of drones and the payload that they can now carry is significantly increasing over time,” Mr Coyle said.

“If these things are not getting into the windows, they can still drop packages into an establishment to be picked up by another method.”

Mr Coyle went on to insist “the grilles are having an impact”, adding the SPS would wish to extend their use from the current three “pilot” sites to the “the full estate if the resource was available”.

But he told the MSPs: “That is not the case at the moment.”

Mr Coyle said intelligence gathered alongside Police Scotland can sometimes give prison staff “an idea when a package might be arriving”.

But speaking about the drones, he said: “The majority of time these fly during the nighttime hours, between 10pm and 3am, and we have no prior knowledge in the majority of cases of what is coming in and when it is coming in.

“We have seen evidence of light switches being used, on and off in a room, to signal a drone coming in. You can see the lights being used as a signal to indicate the window they would expect it to arrive at.”

His comments came as the committee carries out an inquiry into the harm caused by substance misuse in Scotland’s prisons.

Mr Coyle told MSPs the type of drugs used in prison tends to “mirror” that in wider society.

He said: “In terms of the prevalence of drugs in prison, it reflects very much what is the prevalence of drugs in the community.

“Prisons are part of the community, not sat aside from that community, so therefore in terms of the availability and type of drug that is available in prison, it very much mirrors that environment.”