Holly / Ollie Griffiths
Holly/Ollie Griffiths, a female who identifies as a transgender man, was convicted in September 2022 at Cannock magistrates’ court of possession of diamorphine (heroin) at HMP Featherstone, a men’s category C prison in Staffordshire. Griffiths, 29, escaped a prison sentence and was given a 12-month community order with 100 hours unpaid work, and ordered to pay £280 in costs.
Prison officials had been tipped off that Griffiths – at the time an officer at the prison – was smuggling in contraband for inmates at HMP Featherstone and found a ‘significant’ quantity of heroin stuffed into a tube of Pringles in the footwell of Griffiths’ car on 31 July, 2022. In court, Griffiths admitted having brought illicit items into the prison two or three times previously.
Despite multiple wraps of heroin with a potential value of £3,520 being found and phone messages revealing Griffiths had met people to receive illicit items to take into the prison, the CPS charged Griffiths only with the possession of drugs, and not the more serious offence of intent to supply. This decision was described by district judge Marcus Waite as ‘astonishing’.
In the past year, several other prison officers have been convicted of smuggling drugs into UK prisons (see HMP Doncaster, HMP Wandsworth, HMP Stocken). All have been jailed, for between 16 months and six years.
Photo via Daily Mail
Media reports
Daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11267451/Transgender-prison-officer-caught-3-500-worth-heroin-jail-car-park-spared-sentence.html archive