Inmate tried to smuggle cannabis into Leicester Prison using dental floss  

An inmate tried to smuggle drugs into Leicester Prison using a line of dental floss - which he attempted to throw from his cell window over the prison wall.

Richard Henderson (25) weighted the line with objects including a bar of soap, an orange and two small mirrors.

He made four attempts while accomplice John Robinson (44) waited on the other side, poised to attach a supply of cannabis and a mobile phone.

If the plot had gone to plan, Henderson would then have hauled the contraband up into his high-rise cell.

However, the botched attempts were caught on a security camera.

During a hearing at Leicester Crown Court, Recorder William Edis described the failed smuggling attempt as "an organised conspiracy".

He said: "Henderson occupied a cell near the wall, where he thought drugs could be thrown over, attached to lines.

"He put an arm through a grille and made repeated attempts to throw a line over the wall, but the authorities had rumbled the plan. Robinson was on the outside. He was an addict, who had a drug debt and his dealer offered him drugs in payment for taking part."

Henderson was on remand at HMP Leicester for attempting to smuggle cannabis to an inmate he was visiting at Lincoln Prison - for which he later received a sentence of 30 months, along with an extra eight months for perverting the course of justice.

At Leicester Crown Court last week, he and Robinson both pleaded guilty to conspiracy to smuggle a class B drug into Leicester's Welford Road prison, on July 2.

Henderson, of no fixed address, was jailed for 27 months.

Robinson, of St Saviours Road, Spinney Hills, Leicester, who played a "lesser role," was jailed for four months.

The botched attempts were filmed for 15 minutes, as the "weights" on the end fell off and Henderson failed to swing the floss far enough to reach 20 metres to his right, to get it over the prison wall.

Robinson was arrested as he waited outside, in Nelson Mandela Park, where he was seen discarding an object near bins.

Jonathan Eley, prosecuting, said: "The object was a sock and inside was 29.5 grams of cannabis, with a street value of £260, and a mobile phone."

Both men told police they expected the drug not to be real cannabis, but a substance called Mamba - a synthetic form of cannabis.

Mamba was formerly known as a "legal high", but it was made illegal in the UK and categorised as a class B drug on February 26 last year. Recorder Edis told the defendants that whether or not they knew it was cannabis, they knew it was still illegal to have in prison.

Richard Holloway, representing Robinson, said he was given the items by someone else who had used him as "a patsy".

http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk 21/04/2014