Prisons Drugs arrive at Sörnäinen prison in a ridiculously old-fashioned way – Visible smuggling is still difficult to tackle

Yet for a few days you can only walk to the door of Helsinki Prison – if you do not obey the signs in the prison area, which prohibit improper stay in the area.

Easy access to the prison wall has allowed drugs to be smuggled into the prison in a very traditional way: drugs have been delivered to the prison simply by throwing them over the wall.

However, this is about to change.

A new 60-meter fence and new gates for passenger and car traffic will be built on the border of the prison area. The security of the prison area is considered to increase when the courtyard of the prison area cannot be accessed as before.

“In the future, if you plan to enter the prison area without permission, you will have to climb over the fences. It then requires a little determination, ”says the deputy director of Helsinki Prison Tero Uuranmäki.

When you can no longer get next to the wall, throwing drugs over a wall of about four meters becomes much more difficult. However, it is still not impossible.

“Yes, a healthy young man with a good throwing hand can throw even further. But hit accuracy suffers, ”says Uuranmäki.

Prison drugs thrown over the wall are not a new phenomenon. According to Uuranmäki, this is an issue that is regularly dealt with.

Usually, knowing prisoners ’outdoor schedules throw drugs into jail. Throwing drugs into the outdoor yard at the agreed time is one of the easiest ways to deliver illegal substances to the prison, Uuranmäki says.

Although inmates do not have access to licensed cell phones or open internet to tell their daily programs outside the walls, the messages flow in many ways.

Prisoners can call out on ward phones. Messages inside the prison are transmitted on teletext chat pages, among other things. According to Uuranmäki, contact requests are made via teletext and it is said that we are sad.

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“Hit accuracy does suffer.”

Roughly 80–90 per cent of Finnish prisoners are addicted to drugs, says a specialist from the Finnish Penitentiary Sami Peltovuoma.

Helsinki Prison is no exception.

According to Field Flow, the most significant way to get drugs into prison is by smuggling inside the body.

Drugs are brought inside the prison, for example, in connection with unsupervised family reunions and health care visits, as well as when prisoners return from authorized holidays.

Ten years ago, a line was fired at the roof of a Helsinki prison with a bow gun to try to inject drugs into the prison area.

The planes were also used for smuggling in Helsinki before the law that came into force in 2021 allowed prisons to restrict the use of planes in the prison area.

Drugs are also sent by mail to the prison.

“The patches are hidden under letter stamps or hidden in clothing shipments,” says Uuranmäki.

Individual doses are also delivered to prisons soaked in cards and letters, according to press reports. sometimes even to Aku Duck magazines.

Penitentiary According to Peltovuoma, the attempt to deliver drugs to the prison by throwing them over the wall or by means of airplanes is in a way a positive sign of the operation of prison supervision.

“Throwing ghosts across the wall says there are no better routes for smuggling. From the point of view of prisons, such self-employment is also a good thing because staff are more likely to detect a throw-in and the loss is greater. ”

Department of Health and Welfare The drug situation in Finland in 2020 According to the report, various experts from the Penitentiary Department have estimated that up to 20% of the drugs in the facility can be seized in prisons.

The most common According to Peltovuoma’s estimates, the drugs used in prisons are opiate derivatives and fentanyl derivatives.

Subutex, an opiate-derived drug, is a typical drug used in drug substitution treatment.

In a closed prison, Peltovuoma estimates that the price of an eight-milligram tablet of Subutex can be as high as 150-200 euros per piece.

Drug trafficking within prisons has been a major cause of incarceration and the threat of violence.

According to Peltovuoma, the situation has improved considerably over the past year with the deployment of prisoners belonging to criminal groups in the intensive care units.

Thanks to these wards, prisoners belonging to gangs are still unable to exercise their influence over other prisoners or, for example, to put pressure on drug smuggling.

In 2020 nearly a quarter of those serving their sentences in prisons had been convicted of drug offenses.

There are currently 309 prisoners in Helsinki Prison.