SA Prison Boss Responds To Triple M Caller About Serious Drug Problem

We’ve spoken recently about Ben Cousins, about how jail might help him a lot to get off the drugs and help him to stop making the mistakes he’s been making.

We had an anonymous caller speak to us, telling us about how that’s not the case:

“I spent a couple of years inside and I saw it first hand on how they got it in. There was one young fella, his mum used to come and visit him, and in the visiting room, his mum would give him one large passionate kiss and pop it in his mouth and he’d swallow it.”

“Visitors don’t get strip searched, they get patted down and things like that, so they can have things hidden in all sorts of places. The checks aren’t that stringent for the visitors. The criminals are. So what happens is the prisoners swallow it, and go back to the cell and regurgitate it later on or wait for a few days and are on notice until it comes out.”

Roo: "What percentage of people inside would take drugs? 50 percent?"

"More than that. It’s not a nice place. Anything you want. Absolutely anything."

Ditts: "You would know where to go and who to speak to, to get something?"

“You’d know the certain people that are running what they’re running, but you put yourself at severe risk by making contact with those sorts of people because once you’re in with them, you’re tied to them and you can’t really get away.

Ditts: "Roo, you and I have spoken to different prison guards in recent time, who have told us that they’ll have easier access to this stuff on the inside, then they do outside."

Roo: "And this isn’t just SA."

Ditts: "When we get our minister on right now, we’re not pointing the finger here at our system here. But obviously the local systems are what we’re interested in."

Have a listen to what the minister has to say about drugs in the prison system:

“Virtually impossible to stop… We’d be deluding ourselves if we said this isn’t still an ongoing problem”