Star comment: Fightback on drones is too slow
The rise of the drones has seen crooks unlock the criminal potential of this new technology more quickly than the law – and the authorities have now grasped the dangers they pose.
At Britain’s jails, they have more or less literally been flying above the law. How the prisoners must have laughed at the way they have got one over the authorities by their use as an aerial delivery service providing drugs, mobile phones, and other contraband.
A case at Birmingham Crown Court has revealed how one gang had a nationwide operation going, with one of the jails at the end of the supply chain being Featherstone, near Wolverhampton.
While drones are a relatively new phenomenon, this was not some sophisticated hi-tech operation. Anybody with any imagination should have been able to foresee the criminal potential of drones to supply contraband.
And if the security services have not already foreseen their potential for use in terrorism, they are not doing their job. It was simplicity itself. The drugs, phones, or whatever were dangled on wire beneath the drone and then the inmates would make the catch with something like an extendable broom handle to draw them to the cell windows.
The drone gang has now been sentenced. There were 49 drone flights which are known about.
When these illicit deliveries from outside to inside are made, they undermine good order and discipline in jails, which can be a pressure cooker at the best of times. Being in jail is supposed to give society a break, while inmates are supposed to be broken away from influences such as drugs and alcohol.
These deliveries also delivered power. A prisoner on the inside with a mobile phone can continue to exercise control, organise their criminal empire, deliver promises – and make threats.
The principal imported goods in this case do not appear to have been an immediate and direct threat to others, but if mobile phones can be smuggled in, so can loaded pistols and knives.
That would be a different currency for a different criminal clientele. Unless that is an eventuality which can be stopped, the consequences are likely to be tragic and followed by lots of those “lessons in hindsight” which do not need to be learned through hindsight – the risk is obvious now.
There is a fightback under way, in which two West Midlands companies can jamhave are in the van with anti-drone systems jamming the command signals.
The authorities need to be ahead of the game because the invention and creativity of those who are locked up knows no bounds.
