Drones could carry escaping prisoners over jail walls, the watchdog’s chief inspector has warned.
The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, admitted the technology was progressing at such a pace that there was a ‘theoretical risk’ of it being used to help inmates break out of prison.
The devices are already bringing vast quantities of drugs, weighing up to 10kg, into establishments as well as zombie-style knives, mobile phones and other weapons.
Up to six in 10 prisoners, at some of the worst offending jails, test positive for drugs while phones can help crime bosses continue ruling over their empires while behind bars.
But it is the prospect of what might leave jails that has been worrying Mr Taylor, including the inmates themselves, the Telegraph reports.
‘What’s scary, and we haven’t reached this stage yet, but, if you look on Google, you’ll be able to see someone being lifted up by a drone,’ the watchdog boss told a release event for his yearly report published on Tuesday.
‘So you know this isn’t ultimately just a risk of what might come in. There is also a danger of what might go out of prisons as well.’
Asked whether this included prisoners escaping jail by these methods, Mr Taylor agreed there was a chance of this and expressed concern over the possibility.
Drones could carry escaping prisoners over jail walls, the watchdog’s chief inspector has warned (pictured: a drone hovering over Guernsey prison)
A sign warning against drone use on a prison wall. The devices are already bringing vast quantities of drugs into jails
Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, pictured in 2023, said technology was progressing at such a pace there was a ‘theoretical risk’ of it being used to help inmates break out
The prisons chief accepted that the service had ‘ceded the airspace above many of our prisons to serious organised crime’ amid this vast flow of contraband.
Inmates are now being offered a wide variety of drugs from steroids to synthetic substances including spice to cocaine.
Particularly rampant is the influx of cannabis, with Mr Taylor reporting that many of the establishments he visits stink of the drug.
He added that these developments were contributing to great instability in prisons across the country, urging senior Government figures to pay greater attention to the problem.
Mr Taylor insisted that rehabilitation of inmates could only be successful if drugs were removed from jails.
In the country’s highest security prisons, including Long Lartin and Manchester, he described frequent contraband drop-offs as tantamount to a ‘threat to national security’.
He found existing methods of prevention, such as CCTV, nets and windows, were insufficient, while less experienced officers at the jails were being bypassed by inmates.
The prisons boss advocated for the introduction of secure windows, efficient nets and more effective inspections at jail gates.
A drone and the bag of drugs it attempted to smuggle into a prison. Up to six in 10 prisoners, at some of the worst offending jails, test positive for drugs
A video grab of a drone attempting to drop a bag into HMP Wandsworth in London
Prisons minister Lord Timpson claimed that Labour had inherited a crisis scenario and outlined plans to establish 14,000 extra prison places.
He also pushed for jails to work more effectively with police to stop the drones and unveiled a £40m spending scheme into prison security.
At least 220 drone deliveries were made to HMP Manchester in 2024 – the highest figure recorded across all prisons in England and Wales.
In the four years to 2023, the number of recorded drone incidents at prisons increased by 770 per cent, with more than 1,000 last year across the prisons estate, according to Ministry of Justice figures.
Organised crime groups (OCGs) operating from within the prison walls can pay ‘gun-for-hire’ drone operators on the outside tens of thousands of pounds for deliveries with such ease it has been compared to ordering a package from Amazon.
Footage abounds online of drones – which are flown by remote control and can be purchased for anything from a few hundred pounds to tens of thousands – flying over prison walls with packages taped to them or hanging from string or rope.
The operators can be hundreds of metres away, thanks to the range of the devices, using live footage from the drone’s camera to fly it into and around the prison.
In one recent video posted online and believed to have been filmed at HMP Manchester, a drone carrying its contraband on a long string is collected from a cell window as a prison officer shining a torch tries, in vain, to stop it.
A t least 220 drone deliveries were made to HMP Manchester (pictured) in 2024
A hole smashed into a window. They are being replaced with Perspex at a cost of £5,000 each, according to Mr Taylor
Some drops are completed in as little as 20 seconds. Sometimes the contraband is dropped into the prison grounds at a pre-arranged site, sometimes it is rolled in grass cuttings or AstroTurf to mix in with overgrown areas of the exercise yard or sports pitches.
At Long Lartin, a Category A prison in Worcestershire, packages have even been disguised as bags of excrement because prisoners unable to visit the toilet during the night have been throwing these out of their cell windows.
Prisoners who work as cleaners will retrieve the smuggled goods so they can be distributed among the population.
In Manchester, four in ten prisoners were testing positive for drug use at the start of 2025. At Long Lartin, more than 50 per cent of inmates said it was ‘easy’ to get drugs.
Windows being smashed by prisoners so they could grab contraband being flown in were replaced with Perspex at a cost of £5,000 each, Mr Taylor told the Mail this year.
A damning report by HM Inspectorate of Prisons this year came despite years of warnings over the danger posed by drones delivering goods to prisons.
Between August and December 2020 one gang carried out more than 20 drone flights into HMP Risley in Warrington, Cheshire, delivering drugs valued up to £1.7 million.
On one occasion, a drone was captured on CCTV flying into the prison with a package suspended underneath, and then a prisoner used a broom handle to guide it into their cell. The drone left and reappeared just 20 minutes later with another package for the same prisoner.
Two of the seven involved in the flights who were jailed in 2023 were inmates at the prison.
