Holme House prisoner speaks out on crime at Stockton jail

This is his story of how being locked up in Stockton’s Holme House prison changed him forever.

The first mistake Andrew made while banged up was to grass up a fellow prisoner for smoking notorious drug Spice around him.

Soon after, he was in the shower when “lads came at me, one with a sharpened toilet brush and others with lids from tuna cans.”

Read more: Prisoner hides in bin in drug smuggling plot at Holme House

He’s not a fighter, he says, but he stood his ground and emerged with “just a few scars”.

This was his introduction to the mayhem reigning behind bars, where bullies and brutality are rampant and black markets reportedly thrive.

“I was attacked that often that I ended up carrying a kettle of boiling water around with me, to scald people with if I had to,” he says with a nonchalance suggesting he’d been witness to much worse.

In Holme House in 2021-22, 162 assaults were recorded, among more than 2,000 logged in a decade.

Sparking much of that violence are drugs and contraband that are bartered for and sold at eye-watering prices. When the drugs run low, robberies and attacks soar, Andrew says.

Drugs have been seized more than 1,200 times in Holme House in just five years, with officers confiscating phones, chargers and SIM cards on over 400 occasions.

Read more: Thousands of assaults at North East prisons as violence rises

Some prison dealers are earning up to £10,000 every week from exploiting their fellow inmates, Andrew claims.

“Drugs are everywhere and if people know there’s a batch of Spice or whatever that’s led to someone nearly dying, that’s what they’d want, it’s seen as the good stuff.”

He can list several ways in which prisoners get contraband into jail, from visitor handshakes to parcels at the perimeter and drug drops by drone.

As prisons become more adept at interrupting supplies, inmates are turning to more inventive smuggling methods.

Two inmates were disciplined recently over a plot that saw one hide in a bin before being wheeled out with rubbish to collect packages of prescription drugs reportedly worth a fortune on the inside.

Some people will reoffend immediately upon release to be recalled back to jail, having swallowed contraband, ready to profit from their fellow prisoners.

And profit they do – whether it’s from flogging crack cocaine, cell-made hooch or phone calls to loved ones.

“There’s a heroin substitute that’s £2.50 a tablet on the outside but in jail, it’d go for £250,” Andrew says.

“People pay £50 to use a phone for a ten-minute call –it’d cost you around two grand to buy an old phone.

“It’s also common for prisoners to use phones to post videos online, but the screws will find them within days.”

The Echo found both TikTok and YouTube awash with prisoner content, from inmates rapping to fights and aspiring chefs posting grim-sounding recipes – like mackerel cooked in a kettle or prison hooch – from their cell.

Andrew’s own hooch recipe involves orange juice, sugar, bread and his own socks. The concoction's worth £40 a litre, he says.

But his black market days are behind him now, he claims. He's turned his back on his old ways, desperate never to return to prison.

He said: “I never thought I’d end up in jail and it was a huge culture shock.

“I don’t ever want to be back in, I’d go on the run instead.”

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said enhanced gate security, body scanners and extra search patrols were helping to stop contraband getting into Holme House.

The prison’s Drug Crime Reduction Unit won the national Prison Officer of the Year Awards for their efforts in preventing illicit items entering the jail, where the number of ‘prison finds’ has dropped in recent years.

Read next:

• Weapons, drugs and sexual misconduct behind school exclusions
• Northern Echo reveals swathe of 'dental deserts' across the North East
• 25 child rapes reported every week in the North East

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