Karen Jones, pictured outside Teesside Crown Court, said she was threatened into taking drugs into jail for the prison she had fallen for
A mother-of-three who fell for a prisoner serving a life sentence has been jailed herself for smuggling drugs and a contraband phone into jail for him.
Karen Jones, 32, hoped for a relationship with a man serving an indefinite sentence of imprisonment for public protection (IPP).
‘Your story is that you fell for a wrong ‘un, essentially,’ said Judge Simon Bourne-Arton QC, the Recorder of Middlesbrough.
‘A man who took advantage of you, a serving prisoner.’
The inmate’s associates put pressure on her and broke her windows until she lived in fear and at the brink of a nervous breakdown, Teesside Crown Court heard.
She took four types of drugs worth thousands of pounds and a mobile phone into Holme House Prison in Stockton for her prospective boyfriend.
He was spotted with ‘his hands down her trousers for quite some time’ as they kissed and cuddled during the visit on the afternoon of September 28 last year.
The prisoner was taken aside and caught with a package containing the phone, powder and tablets – 57g cannabis, 72 tablets of the heroin treatment drug Subutex, 20 temazepam tablets and 11 tablets of the steroid methandienone.
The Subutex tablets alone had an inflated value of up to £7,200 inside, said prosecutor Harry Hadfield on Monday.
Jones, of Windleston Drive, Park End, Middlesbrough, told police it was a ‘moment of madness’.
She said she had been receiving calls and threats asking her to take drugs into the jail.
The night before, she was given the package and told she had better see the prisoner ‘or you know what will happen’.
Jones, of Windleston Drive, Park End, Middlesbrough, told police it was a ‘moment of madness’
She confessed she took the contraband in fearing for the inmate’s safety.
She admitted five counts of taking prohibited articles into prison.
A statement from the prison told of the serious impact of drugs there.
Nigel Soppitt, defending, said Jones met the man while he was a serving prisoner: ‘She’s been duped by this man, in hindsight.
‘She hoped there would be a relationship when he was released.
‘She effectively was told he was suffering in prison and the only way his suffering could be alleviated was by her taking something in for him, to stop him being bullied.
‘Of course that was probably untrue. She had no idea. She was a naive woman, gullible.
‘That relationship has ended.’
He said she resisted the pressure, had to move home because her windows were broken but was found again.
He said she carried the drugs in her underwear, thinking she would be caught at the gate.
He told how friends and family supported her through physical and mental illness.
‘She’s not very well at all,’ he added.
‘Before the incident took place she believed she was on the cusp of a nervous breakdown. She’s been referred to Mind as a result of that.’
He asked the judge to consider a suspended sentence as her family would suffer if she were jailed.
The judge told Jones: ‘Yours is not an unfamiliar story.
‘The vulnerable, people like you, are targeted by those such as him to bring contraband into Holme House.’
He said he could reduce the sentence because of Jones’ attitude in the dock and her health, but could not suspend it.
‘The message has to go from this court to those who take part in this activity,’ he added, jailing her for eight months.