News Smuggled drugs stash into prison
A woman who went on the run from Goole magistrates for a year after smuggling heroin into a prison has been brought to justice.
Tracy Kemp (37) appeared before Goole magistrates' court after being arrested and charged with smuggling drugs worth £1,200 into Full Sutton Prison - but then vanished into the criminal underworld.
She was arrested after failing to answer bail three times between December, 2006 and April, 2007 and was finally sentenced to two and a half years in prison at Hull Crown Court last Friday.
Miss Kemp tried to dodge a jail term after smuggling drugs to an inmate she had never met - Mark Bowman - in November, 2006.
She hid the 6.3grams of the class A drug in her knickers and posed as a visitor, with a minder accompanying her and the secret haul.
Prison officers became suspicious as there was no record of Miss Kemp ever visiting Mr Bowman before. She even had to ask who he was.
Crown barrister Mark Kendal told Hull Crown Court that, at the end of visiting, Miss Kemp went to kiss Mr Bowman and was spotted exchanging a ball-size packet of heroin into his mouth.
"Mr Bowman began to struggle with his breathing," said Mr Kendal. "They were worried about his life. He collapsed on the floor and had to be given oxygen."
Mr Kemp was arrested but told guards all that she had passed were Polo mints.
Miss Kemp, of Henlow Walk, Manchester, appeared before the court for sentence after earlier pleading guilty to charges of possession of a category A drug with intent to supply into a prison and failing to answer bail.
Defence barrister Nigel Clive said Miss Kemp had been targeted by criminals. He said: "Those who want to get drugs into prison scour the area for contacts - for someone with low self-esteem; someone who has a wretched life and who has difficulty saying no. They found all these things in the defendant. She has drug dependency for 16 years, causing her life to spiral downward."
He said Miss Kemp went on the run following her first Goole Magistrates' Court appearance after a man wearing a balaclava approached her and threatened her to keep quiet, suspicious she had told police too much as she was on bail.
"She was promised 'A small amount if you do, and a beating if you don't'," said Mr Clive.
Sentencing, Recorder Timothy Roberts, QC, ordered Miss Kemp to stand as he told her: "It was an extremely serious breach of prison security. It was not a case of taking them for a relative. It was a commercial risk. You should have had the strength of character to say 'No'."
She was jailed for a total of two and a half years and told she would serve 15 months in custody before being released on licence.
Published on 17th July 2008 in News.
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