Former prisoner back in jail after drugs charge
Mar 31 2009 The Journal
A BUNGLING drugs smuggler once banned from Jersey for a botched attempt to import drugs was caught trying to take them into a prison.
Pub chef John Greener, 24, hid five tablets of the heroin treatment drug Subutex in his underwear as he entered a jail in Stockton.
Greener, of Alder Grove, Consett, County Durham, planned to pass the Class C drug, which has a much higher value in prison, to an inmate, prosecutor Jolyon Perks told Teesside Crown Court.
Greener was visiting a prisoner when an officer saw him acting suspiciously and stopped him on the afternoon of June 24 last year.
When challenged, he produced the drugs. He had also left just over 5g of cannabis resin inside a locker at the prison.
Greener had been released from the same prison from an 18-month sentence for burglary four months earlier and had offences on his record for possessing drugs from cannabis to cocaine.
In September 2004, he was caught on Jersey with drugs on him and was “bound over to leave the island” for three years.
Ruth Phillips, defending, said Greener’s motive for taking the drugs into Holme House was a debt he had accrued in prison to another inmate.
She said the former drug user was pressurised to repay the debt after being released and was sorry he made a poor decision about to do it.
Ms Phillips said he was “quite a substantial drug user” at the time of the Jersey incident. But since his last release, Greener had turned a corner and worked as a chef at a pub.
He became a father for the first time last Friday when his partner gave birth to a baby girl, and they planned to move together, said Miss Phillips. The judge, Recorder Henry Prosser, said: “The fact of the matter is that anyone who attempts to smuggle or smuggles drugs into prison must expect an immediate term of imprisonment, of some length.
“The reason for that is that there is a serious drugs problem in prisons and those who try to smuggle drugs into prison are only going to exacerbate the problem if they are successful.”
He jailed Greener for 10 months after he previously pleaded guilty to possessing a Class C drug with intent to supply and simple possession of cannabis.
