Criminals have been spotted trying to airlift contraband such as weapons, cellphones, drugs and tobacco into Canadian federal penitentiaries 1,064 times so far this year, statistics obtained by the Star say.
While it’s an increase over the same time period last year which saw 899 “drone-related incidents” reported for the 2023-2024 fiscal year, prison authorities view the tally as a victory for their anti-smuggling methods.
Those methods include radio jammers, cellphone detectors and highly sensitive “ion scanners.”
More conventional methods also include dogs trained in sniffing for drugs, firearms and electronic storage devices, Correctional Service Canada (CSC) said.
CSC noted that in March it became permissible to “use radiofrequency jammers in institutions to prevent unauthorized communications and contraband deliveries.”
In a statement this month, the CSC said it’s fighting back against drone traffic.
“CSC continues to respond to the threat posed by drones and contraband with a layered approach which includes the use of security practices, adoption of new technologies, intelligence activities and infrastructure enhancements,” the statement said.
The market value of drugs behind bars can be 10 times higher than on the streets, due to low supply and high demand.
“By continuing to implement new technologies that facilitate the detection of contraband, including contraband introduced via drones, increases in the reporting of drone-related incidents is expected, as these tools enhance our ability to identify such activities more effectively,” a CSC statement noted.
“For security reasons, we cannot provide a more detailed breakdown on the number of incidents by month or by site or the number of attempts and successful attempts,” a CSC statement said.
In 2024, CSC reported that in a one-month period that spring, roughly $441,900 worth of contraband such as tobacco, marijuana, hashish and shatter (cannabis concentrate), as well as cellphones and cellphone accessories were intercepted on their way into Collins Bay and Joyceville institutions, two of its Kingston, Ontario facilities via drones.
In the fiscal year 2023-2024, there were 899 “drone-related incidents” reported in Canadian federal penitentiaries, compared to 316 drone sightings between July 1, 2013 and an undisclosed date in 2019, according to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Drones have taxed the patience and wits of authorities for years.
The union representing guards has blamed the drone-related drug trade in prisons for what it calls an upswing in violence against inmates and guards.
Criminals have reportedly sent fleets of drones over prison yards at the same time to see which ones are detected, said Jeffrey Wilkins, national president of the Union of Canadian Correctional Officers.
In 2021, The Star obtained records that revealed that in 2019, there were 27 reported incidents of drones airlifting contraband over the walls of Collins Bay Institution in Kingston — and those were just the cases noticed by guards.
One sighting was of a tiny unmanned aircraft that silently disappeared into the night.
“The drone stopped for a moment and then went vertically at a rapid pace,” a prison officer noted in a report on the Sept. 8, 2019, sighting.
The next day, guards found a softball-sized package wrapped in a black women’s stocking in the recreation yard on the grass between the inmate canteen and the inmate grocery.
It contained 15 cylinders of marijuana, each small enough to be hidden in an inmate’s rectum and valuable enough in total to fetch about $45,270 on the prison black market, according to one report obtained by the Star under the Freedom of Information Act.
In case a prisoner who wasn’t the package’s intended target came across it, it bore the label: “HITMAN,” who inmates apparently knew the identity of.
The 2019 freedom of information search found that criminal aviation routinely supplies Collins Bay prisoners with marijuana, carfentanil, crystal meth, knives, a variety of cellphones and even a few smart watches, which are popular with exercise buffs.
People airlifting contraband into prisons are rarely caught.
In October 2021, a Kingston-area man was sentenced to 75 days of pretrial custody and was sentenced to a further 120 days in jail, plus two years of probation for attempting in June 2021 to introduce contraband into a federal prison.
He was also forbidden from possessing any drones while on probation and is prohibited from going to or stopping while in a vehicle within five kilometres of any federal prison.
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