As Bullingdon Prison attempts to crack down on visitors smuggling drugs for inmates, reporter Sarah Brown, dropped in to see how governors are dealing with the problem...

Harley is Bullingdon's latest weapon in the fight against drugs. The two-year-old black Labrador, an active 'drugs dog', has just completed a six-week course so he can sniff out illegal substances ranging from cannabis to heroin. Officer and dog-handler Steve Barnett proudly demonstrates Harley's skill by hiding a stock cube-sized piece of cannabis in the visitors' hall.

Steve then returns to the room in which the dog has been left and shouts 'Harley, find'. His tail wagging furiously, Harley rushes into the room and tracks down the offending object within seconds, barking and clawing at the drawer in which it is hidden.

Steve said: "All it is to him is a toy. He's thinks he's finding it. You have to have the mentality of a five-year-old. Harley associates the smell of any drug with a toy.

"He's taken a real step up in finding drugs from when he was on the course. There they were using cannabis the size of a bar of Cadbury's chocolate. Now we have trained him to find cannabis about the size of an Oxo cube. "Some cannabis, of the herbal variety, we could smell out. But our noses have only got 5 million sensory glands - Harley has 245 million. He can find amphetamines or ecstasy just as easily as cannabis."

Such is Harley's nose-power that he can even sniff out where someone smuggling drugs has been sitting. Steve said there was no reason why he could not wander around with Harley during visiting hours.

"There's no reason for anybody to be afraid of Harley as long as they're not carrying drugs," said Steve.

Bullingdon's governors are now hoping to be given the cash for a 'passive' drugs dog. These dogs also sniff out drugs, but instead of barking and clawing, they merely sit and look at the place or person where the substance is hidden.

Visitors to Bullingdon, including prisoners' family, friends and solicitors - as well as reporters - undergo a rub-down search. Coats are X-rayed and visitors are asked to remove their shoes if prison officers are suspicious. Once in the visitors' hall, CCTV cameras are in operation and physical contact between prisoners and visitors, who all sit round a table, is kept to a minimum. In the hall, numbered plastic seats are grouped in fours and attached around a table. One seat of the four is blue and it is on this that prisoners sit.

If visitors are found to be smuggling drugs into the prison, future visits are 'closed' so friends and family sit one side of a perspex window and inmates the other. There is no physical contact between them.

Head of operations, Patrick Donajgrodzki, said: "We're not at all complacent. We know that visitors regularly attempt to smuggle drugs into prison and we know we don't have a 100 per cent success rate in stopping that.

"People go to extreme lengths to smuggle drugs in; hiding drugs in their underwear, plugging it - which is the term for hiding it in a bodily orifice, hiding it in baby's clothing. Some people wear identical shoes to inmates which have drugs hidden in them and then swap them. They also pass drugs mouth-to-mouth. "These are extreme measures to take and it's important to keep the balance between making sure we're helping people to lead law abiding and useful lives but preventing drugs from being smuggled in."

He said it was important for inmates to keep in contact with family and friends so when they left prison they had a good support network because this meant they were less likely to re-offend.

He added that it was important not to assume everybody who came into the prison as a visitor was trying to commit a crime.

Police liaison officer Det Con Andy Rymer said both heroin and cannabis had been seized inside the prison.

He said: "We've made 15 arrests at the front gate but that's only a percentage of what does get in. If it gets into the prison wings we recover it but we don't have an owner."

Mandatory drug tests are carried out on inmates to discover the problem's level.

HELP AT HAND

Help is at hand for drug addicts and users in the prison who want to kick the habit.

A pilot project with drugs agency, SMART, aims to contact prisoners when they are arrested and give them help and advice about their problem.

Clifford Dent, a worker with SMART, said the agency offered a meeting once a week and one-to-one sessions with those on remand and inmates.

He said: "We look at the relationship between substance abuse and offending, the effect this has on their relationships and the overall effect drugs have had on their life and the options available for the future, should they wish to pursue them.

"This is a pilot project, funded for three days a week and demand far outstrips supply. We've seen about 60 inmates and provided reports for the courts in the first six months. "For a lot of people that have a drugs problem coming into prison is the first opportunity they have to stop using and to begin to explore alternatives.

"People who come in with drugs problems, in 99 per cent of cases the reason why they have committed an offence was to get money for drugs, and further periods of incarceration don't address the problem - they aggravate it.

"There are lots of rehabilitation centres but at the moment it is impossible to get the funding to get people in."

He said most men he worked with in the prison were desperate to tackle their drug problems and to stop re-offending.

MEDICAL CARE IN PRISON

Sister Fiona Hudson works in the healthcare wing of the prison and has seen first hand the devastating effect of drug abuse on inmates. Every prisoner who comes in is tested for drugs.

Drug users are then observed for 24 hours for signs of withdrawal. Addicts are given a mixture of diazepam and valium for up to 14 days to help them through the initial 'cold turkey' period, but for long-term heroin addicts, withdrawal can take months.

Ms Hudson said: "We can then give them vitamin pills and tablets for the physical symptoms, such as cramps, vomiting and diarrhoea.

"It can be extremely bad and people can be brought into our in-patients unit so the physical symptoms can be monitored for as long as necessary.

"With drugs you are also looking at hepatitis, HIV, and many other issues."

She said they also had people with mental illness coming in and that it was often difficult to tell if they were using drugs to mask that illness or if the illness had occurred as a result.

"There is drug induced psychosis," she said. "Mental illness that we can put down to drugs. People can be permanently damaged but you can alleviate the symptoms by withdrawing drugs from them.

"We're the first port of call and often they want anything we can give them to help them through a rough time."

Bullingdon also has a drugs support unit.

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