Prisoners have been using dead rats as vessels to try and smuggle drugs and mobile phones into jail, it can be revealed.
In what is the first recorded case of its kind, three dead rodents stuffed with contraband were found by staff while they patrolled the perimeter fence at HMP Guys Marsh in Dorset.
After noticing the rats had stitches along their stomachs, officers opened them up to take a closer look.
Inside them they found five mobile phones and chargers, three SIM cards, cigarette papers, and drugs including Spice and cannabis.
Intelligence has suggested the rats were thrown over the prison fence by organised criminals, who arranged an offender to collect them.
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Had they not been seized, the items would have been sold around the jail leaving chaos and violence in their wake, the Ministry of Justice said.
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The prison service is working with police to find and prosecute the culprits.
Previously, tennis balls and pigeons have been used to smuggle illegal items into prisons.
Spice – a synthetic form of cannabis – has been identified as a key factor behind a safety crisis within HMP Guys Marsh.
Across England and Wales, there were 13,119 incidents where drugs were found from 2017-2018 a rise of 23% per cent on the previous year.
The category C prison has been the subject of a number of critical watchdog assessments.
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