Bid to combat prison drugs unveiled

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Justice Secretary Jack Straw will unveil a report on the Prison Service's success - or failure - in combating the smuggling of cannabis, cocaine, heroin and other substances.

The inquiry, conducted by a former top policeman, will also include a set of recommendations on how prisons should strangle the drug supply behind bars.

The report is by the former president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and chief constable of West Mercia, David Blakey.

It comes just three weeks after an official Government report warned that drug-free prisons were not a realistic possibility, and raised the prospect of handing out clean needles to prisoners to inject heroin.

The Ministry of Justice had attempted to keep the report by independent auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers secret for months.

It disclosed that a drug addict costs the taxpayer more than £800,000 over his or her lifetime.

The authors of last month's report said: "The creation of drug-free prisons is an expensive option and was not considered to be practical in the current resource climate."

They highlighted the failings of mandatory drug tests, which have frequently been hailed by ministers as a success in reducing inmates' drug use.

"Staff and prisoners generally felt that mandatory drug testing should not be used to monitor the behaviour of individuals since it was open to manipulation (with clean urine often being used as a currency), and other problems such as recreational users of cannabis moving to opiate use to avoid detection," the report said.