A prison officer was jailed for six years after police raided his house and found £8,000 worth of heroin, steroids and cannabis hidden in shampoo bottles.

Police believe Jonathan Rattigan, formerly of Kingfisher Way, Bicester, was planning to smuggle the drugs into Bullingdon Prison, where he worked.

The incident is the latest in a string of bad publicity for the jail, which hit the headlines earlier this week after two inmates were founded hanged within seven days of each other.

Rattigan is the second prison officer at Bullingdon to be convicted on charges relating to drug smuggling in less than 10 months.

In April, a judge decided not to jail a convicted drug addict because he said the easy availability of drugs at Bullingdon would only make his situation worse.

Rattigan denied four counts of possessing controlled drugs with intent to supply during his two-day trial at Oxford Crown Court this week, but was convicted by a jury.

The court heard how officers raided his home on June 6 last year and found the drugs - 581g of cannabis resin, 92.5g of cannabis, 51.6g of heroin and 100 steroid tablets - hidden in numerous shampoo bottles.

Dc Steve Willis, of Bicester police, said the drugs had a street value of about £8,000 - but added their value in a prison would have been "significantly" higher.

Dc Willis said: "At the time of his arrest, Rattigan was a serving prison officer. It appears he was going to supply these drugs to prisoners in HMP Bullingdon.

"A lot of hard work was put in by officers, working with the prison service, to gather enough intelligence to obtain a warrant and secure a conviction.

"I am very pleased with the sentence passed by the court and hope it will serve as a warning to others that we will always investigate and convict drug dealers, regardless of the environment or the persons involved."

A Prison Service spokesman said: "The prison service has a zero tolerance approach to corruption and is determined to root it out wherever it's discovered.

"The vast majority of prison service staff are honest, hard-working and professional and the hard evidence of exceeded targets on positive drug tests and escapes suggests that corruption is far from widespread.

"All prisons have a police intelligence officer who will assist in investigations into alleged staff misconduct. The Prison Service is working on an action plan following an inspection by the surveillance commissioner last year. The action plan will improve our use of directed surveillance and covert human intelligence sources in all our prisons."

When Bullingdon's governor Phil Taylor took up his post in June, he told the Oxford Mail that drug-related offending was one of his major challenges. He said 11 per cent of random drugs tests at Bullingdon were positive.