Drone-enabled Prison Contraband Conspiracies: Upper-end sentences for cannabis supply and near-maximum for phones/dongles, applying totality

3.1 Precedents Cited

The decision is anchored in R v Akhtar [2018] EWCA Crim 754, quoted at length for three propositions that drove the outcome:

1. Prison drug supply is “even worse” than supply in the community, because drugs operate as a high-value currency enabling extortion, violence, intimidation, and the undermining of prison order and rehabilitation.
2. Illicit mobile phones (and by extension connectivity tools) are similarly corrosive, facilitating intimidation and external criminality coordinated from custody.
3. Deterrence is central in sentencing prison conveyance/supply offences.

The Court treated Akhtar as establishing a practical yardstick: where phones are conveyed into prison, the sentence (after trial) may properly approach the statutory maximum (noted in Akhtar at [21] and applied here to phones and dongles).

3.2 Legal Reasoning

(a) Using the drugs supply guideline as a benchmark—then moving upwards for the prison context

Although there was no Sentencing Council guideline tailored to these prison-list-article offences, the Court endorsed the approach (also indicated in Akhtar) of using the Sentencing Council Definitive Guideline on drug supply as a comparator for culpability and harm, while recognising that prison supply requires “significantly higher” sentences because of the amplified harms identified in Akhtar.

The Court highlighted the guideline feature that all supply into a custodial institution is treated as at least category 3, and recorded the category 3 cannabis starting points/ranges (significant role: starting point 12 months; range 26 weeks to 3 years). It accepted the Recorder’s assessment that the offender’s conduct was “significant role” (indeed, “high culpability”).

(b) Culpability: drone logistics, planning, concealment, and enforcement context

The Court treated the following as powerful culpability markers:

• Planned, repeat travel from South Yorkshire to London and Suffolk.
• Dedicated “burner” phone activated shortly before the offending.
• Hotel booking facilitating the overnight operation.
• Rural deployment site within drone range of the prison, increasing detection difficulty.
• Attempted evasion on surveillance (flight, crossing a river, refusing PINs).
• Commission while subject to court orders (a suspended sentence order and a community order).

Importantly, the Court rejected the suggestion that culpability turned on whether the offender personally piloted the drone. Even if another conspirator was to control it remotely, transporting the drone and contraband to an operational launch location was a central operational function in the conspiracy.

(c) Harm: high prison value and systemic risk (including connectivity tools)

Harm was aggravated by both quantity/value and type of contraband:

• The cannabis quantity (768g) and the Court’s emphasis on its very high prison value, consistent with prison-drug currency analysis in Akhtar.
• Phones and dongles were treated as seriously harmful because they enable communication and internet access, facilitating external criminality and undermining prison security—squarely within the rationale in Akhtar.
• The organisational evidence from the prison authority (increasing drone incidents, disruption, lockdowns, investigative cost) reinforced the need for deterrent sentencing.

The Court also rejected the notion that importing drugs “in bulk” made the case less serious than pre-packaged “deals”: bulk supply into prison can be at least as serious because it supports further internal distribution.

(d) Totality: properly reflecting both counts within an overall term

The Court’s key correction lay in totality. It held:

• If the conspiracy had been drugs alone, it warranted a sentence towards the upper end of the category 3 significant role range (upper end 3 years).
• If it had been phones/dongles alone, it warranted a sentence well up towards the 2-year maximum (by analogy with Akhtar).

Combining these under totality required a substantially higher overall sentence than was imposed. The Court fixed the appropriate overall term at not less than 3 years after trial, reduced to 27 months for the guilty plea.

(e) Undue leniency (section 36 CJA 1988)

Applying the section 36 jurisdiction, the Court concluded the sentencing outcome fell outside the range of sentences reasonably open to the Recorder, given the seriousness of prison contraband offending, the method (drone), and the need for deterrence and totality. Hence the sentence was unduly lenient and required substitution.

3.3 Impact

The decision provides practical sentencing guidance for an increasingly common factual pattern (drone-enabled prison smuggling) in the absence of a bespoke guideline:

• Benchmarking to the general drugs supply guideline is permissible, but courts should move upwards to reflect prison-specific harm (as per Akhtar).
• Connectivity enablers (phones, SIM cards, dongles) should attract sentences approaching statutory maxima in serious cases.
• Totality must be explicit and meaningful: concurrent terms that do not materially reflect additional criminality risk being unduly lenient.
• The Court signalled that, for high-value prison cannabis plus multiple phones/dongles with planned drone deployment, a post-trial sentence around 3 years may be the minimum appropriate level, subject to facts.