A charity-worker mum has been jailed after succumbing to emotional pressure and smuggling drugs into a high-security prison for her killer son.
Janet Eunice Richardson’s attempts to complete the handover to son Graham aroused the suspicions of officers monitoring the visitors’ area of Frankland Prison, Durham.
She was caught after successfully passing over some wrapped pills, and a subsequent search at a police station revealed two further packages hidden in her clothing.
It landed the previously unconvicted 54-year-old charity worker before Durham Crown Court on Friday where she was jailed herself.
Richardson, of Birch View, Pickering, North Yorkshire, admitted supplying the class C drug, buprenorphine.
She also pleaded guilty to three counts of possession of drugs, of classes A, B and C, with intent to supply, during the visit on August 28 last year.
Richardson was said to have been pressured to bring the drugs into the prison in messages from her son, who was only eight months into his sentence, of which he must serve at least 27 years for the murder of an antiques dealer.
The court heard the killer told his mother he was contemplating suicide as he was being pressured by other inmates to get hold of drugs.
Maria Tenkow, mitigating, told the court: ‘She has suffered depression for some time and she has become yet another victim of her son’s behaviour.
‘He persuaded her. He stated he would hang himself as he had nothing to live for unless she assisted him.
‘She was certainly emotionally blackmailed into this offence.’
Jailing her for a year, Judge Christopher Prince said there had to be a ‘deterrent element’ to the sentence to dissuade other family members and friends of inmates from giving in to pressure to attempt to supply prisoners with illicit substances.
He told her: ‘Taking drugs into prison is a most serious offence.
‘It creates a danger to those within the prison, quite apart from the harm it can cause to users, and it interferes with the ordinary working of prison life.’
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