A secure way of verifying legal correspondence sent into prisons must be developed urgently to deal with the problem of drugs sprayed onto fake letters, MPs say today. In its report, Tackling the drugs crisis in our prisons, the Commons Justice Committee describes the trade and use of illicit drugs in our prisons as ‘endemic’.

Post is a ‘regularly used conveyance route, especially for [new psychoactive substances]’ as these can be ‘sprayed onto papers, such as fake legal correspondence’, the committee reports.

Currently HM Prison and Probation Service photocopies incoming mail to prevent drugs being smuggled but the measure ‘has not been consistently implemented across all prisons due to lack of funding and staff shortages’, the report states. It notes that HMP Wandsworth has adopted a ‘barcode policy’, called Send Legal Mail, for legal correspondence where ‘prison staff scan the barcode to verify the authenticity of the letter’ in a bid to address the issue.

The committee recommends the prison service ‘rapidly develop and enforce a national, secure protocol for verifying legal correspondence (e.g., mandatory secure digital portals or standardised, verifiable bar-code systems) across all prisons to eliminate the exploitation of privileged mail’.

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The report also highlights that staff exposures to drugs should be regarded as a ‘serious workplace safety violation’. ‘The MoJ and HMPPS have a duty of care to protect their employees, but the prevalence of drugs in prison is risking their ability to uphold it,’ it adds.

‘The high prevalence of drugs in prisons, particularly NPS, poses an unacceptable and direct threat to the safety and well-being of prison staff. The current reality of staff becoming “desensitised” to daily suffering is a sign of a failed system and a dangerous culture of acceptance that must be broken.’

Other recommendations include expansion of ‘purposeful activities’ such as education, vocational training, and accredited work programmes and ‘consistent’ training in responding to medical emergencies for all frontline staff.

Committee chair Andy Slaughter said the findings were ‘sobering’.

He added: ‘Put simply the drugs crisis across the prison system has reached endemic levels, fostering a "angerous culture of acceptance that must be broken. Without urgent reform and investment that tackles the profitable supply networks, the discrepancies in treatment provision and purposeful activity, plus the poor physical condition of the estate, prisons will remain unstable, unsafe and incapable of gaining control over the drugs crisis."