Legal high is fuelling jail violence

They are particularly attractive to inmates because they are cheap.

One prison director said that prisoners were making a fortune selling them to other inmates even though they can trigger health risks including confusion and dizziness.

Spice is also behind a new game which is gaining popularity in the 118 jails in the country, the report said. It involves prisoners being challenged to smoke £50 worth of Spice and if they smoke it before passing out, they get it free but if they fail they must pay up.

The report highlights the huge impact of novel psychoactive substances, known as “legal highs”, on the jail system with seizures of of Spice jumping from 15 in 2010 to 737 last year.

It said Spice was “tearing prisons apart” with prisoners who had used the substance describing it as being like addicted to crack.

“Prisoners have been found on the floor of exercise yards believing they are in a swimming pool. Others have seriously injured themselves head butting mirrors thinking they were being attacked”, the report said.

It added: “We heard a considerable number of stories outlining just how serious the issue has become. Prisoners who had used Spice described it as being ‘like a crack addiction’ or “like cannabis, just a lot stronger”.

One prisoner told researchers that they had seen half a dozen people drop to the floor unconscious after taking Spice.

Although the Ministry of Justice has taken action to tackle legal highs, one prison governor said the jail service was “going to sleep at the wheel” on the issue.

The report said overall drug use in prisons is widespread with just under a third of inmates saying it was easy to get illegal substances.

Despite the scale of the problem, attempts to curb the extent of drug use are being thwarted by corrupt staff smuggling substances into prison and ineffective searching both of visitors and inmates.

Drugs are being smuggled in during visits, in the post, via corrupt staff and by inmates returning from courts or release on temporary licence, the report said.

One prison official said it was relatively easy for staff to bring drugs into prison as staff were rarely searched.

Visitors have been found with drugs “stashed” in their underwear, hidden in the vagina or back of the throat and in children’s nappies.

At Dovegate prison, a mother was found “snogging her son to transfer drugs”, the report said.

Prisoners are also believed to be abusing the privilege of legal mail to have drugs smuggled to them. Under jail rules, mail from solicitors or barristers is not allowed to be opened or read by staff unless there are exceptional circumstances.

The report said the only way the Government will get a grip on the “endemic problem of drug abuse” among prisons is to install body scanners in all 118 jails.

It also calls for a tenth of all prison staff and contractors to be randomly searched every month. It also says that visitors should be searched at every visit and prisoners every time they enter a prison.

Edward Boyd, deputy policy director at the Centre and author of the report, said: “Prisons are awash with drugs. This is leading to greater addiction and more crime.

“Prisons need to turn people’s lives around, not entrench addictions. They urgently need to install body scanners to catch those smuggling drugs and offer rehabilitation that works.”

Mr Boyd added: “Politicians have promised to rid prisons of drugs for decades, yet little has changed.”