By Surihe Gaomas WINDHOEK The Ministry of Safety and Security will seal existing loopholes that are being exploited with impunity by inmates, who in collaboration with visitors have been able to smuggle drugs, knives and other prohibited items into jails under the noses of prison guards. Items brought in for inmates will from now on be subjected to thorough security checks after it emerged some of these items are used as a cover to smuggle knives, metal spoons, drugs, mobile phones and other prohibited items into prisons. And the tightening of prison security covers all rehabilitation centres. At a media briefing yesterday, the Safety and Security Minister Peter Tsheehama expressed grave concern about the availability of dangerous weapons and drugs among inmates incarcerated in the country’s correctional facilities. According to Tsheehama, these are all too obvious signs of potential danger and threat to other inmates and service personnel, and can no longer be tolerated. At the media briefing, prison officials displayed an array of homemade weapons such as knives fashioned from metal spoons and drugs that were seized from inmates and offenders during the period December 2005 to May this year. Other items include pliers, hacksaws, sharp objects, broken bottles, dagga pipe bones, cell phones, sewing needles, grinders, hospital blades, water bombs, scissors and screwdrivers. Tsheehama said that routine searches by police and prison officials in the Windhoek Central Prison, and Katutura and Wanaheda police stations revealed an unpleasant situation of drug trafficking and smuggling of dangerous weapons. “Many illicit drug consignments, mobile phones and deadly weapons have been seized by prison and police officers after being smuggled into these institutions. We have confiscated more than 270 contraband items in 29 months,” said Tsheehama. Most of the items are either smuggled in with the aid of the public, or by corrupt police and prison officials who collaborate with criminals, or are brought in by the inmates themselves. What is rather worrying is that prison and police holding cells in the country have been identified by criminals and targeted by drug dealers as a good market for drugs and criminal activities. While some of the drugs like dagga are smuggled into correctional facilities by the inmates, the public and even corrupt prison or police officials, others are syndicated through the use of mobile phones, posing a serious threat to safety “The main drug dealers are those convicts who come to police holding cells and prisons as a result of dealing in drugs. Some of these convicts have well established links with outside syndicates that allow smuggling and trafficking of these items within the prisons and police holding cells,” the minister said. Showing journalists the numerous dangerous weapons scattered on the table, police and prison officials noted that most of the drugs like dagga and ‘buttons’, and knives and other dangerous weapons, are smuggled into cells through inmates hiding them in their rectums, and are only detected by X-rays. “Inmates have found many ways of concealing things. A hole in a bar of soap is used to hide a knife, or even items like toothpaste tubes are used for smuggling in drugs. Cell phones and dagga are stuffed into the anus of the offender and then later released the natural way,” said Chief Superintendent Ismael Kamati of the Windhoek Central Prison. Cutlery like spoons are sharpened by inmates and offenders and used as dangerous weapons when trying to escape or to attack wardens. Other tactics of criminal gangs include throwing over the perimeter fence items such as dagga packets onto prison premises where offenders scoop them up and distribute them to fellow inmates. Packets or ‘ballies’ of dagga worth N$2,334 have been found between the period January to early May this year in the Windhoek Central Prison alone. “These brown packets of dagga are put into smaller packets (thumb-size) that cost N$20 each inside prison cells. On one inmate we found coins of money (N$8) and dagga in his rectum. The X-rays reveal a foreign object and that is how we found out,” explained Kamati. A total number of 62 mobile phones was also confiscated within a space of two years. “Cell phones are used as a means of survival, a source of income, to organise crimes with people outside or to call to make use of cars for escapes from prison. So security-wise cell phones are dangerous,” said Kamati. Despite the methods used, prison and police staff are continuously ensuring that serious preventative measures are in place. These include searching and checking individuals, visitors, staff, offenders and holding and prison cells. Tsheehama warned culprits, be they members of the public or staff, that if caught out they would end up behind bars.