Shocking footage of people throwing packages - believed to be filled with drugs - into HMP Bristol has been secretly recorded from a garden.
BBC Inside Out West will show the convert recordings during a special documentary this evening.
It is believed the parcel contained drugs or other illegal contraband.
During tonight's show, one ex-convict says: “Anything that you really need can be ordered in on demand. Spice, tobacco, heroin, crack, ecstasy, MDMA, cocaine, you get it thrown over the wall.”
The prison is based in a built-up area where residents say ‘throw-overs’ are common and they have found packages in their gardens stuffed with drugs and mobile phones.
On two occasions, the secret cameras captured people running up and lobbing packages over the prison wall.
The impact of contraband reaching the prison – which has been judged ‘unfit for purpose’ in a recent inspection – is shocking according to Eleanor Ager, Chair of the prison’s Independent Monitoring Board.
She said: “We can smell drugs on some of the wings, we’ve smelt it as we’ve walked down the stairs. We have seen prisoners under the influence of drugs, we’ve seen prisoners out of control, in a really bad way.”
In the programme, BBC Inside Out West journalist Seb Choudhury confronts the Secretary of State for Justice with the footage.
Robert Buckland, the Secretary of State for Justice says: “It is always deeply disturbing to see people resorting to that sort of criminality.
"The good news is that in one of those incidents the item was found and seized."
He added: “The fact that you are focusing on it, the fact that we are talking openly about it I think is good, I think that it is positive I think the public needs to know this but I’ll say this about where we are.
!We are now increasing staffing levels so for example in Bristol staffing levels have gone up by over a third in the last couple of years.”
BBC Inside Out West airs tonight at 7.30pm. It will be available on iPlayer afterwards.
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