Corrections boss Hubert Dean has targeted a dozen staff he blames for smuggling drugs into prison.

After tightening up perimeter security to stem the flow of narcotics he believes a small number of prison officers are helping fuel the scourge.

He told : ?Not everything comes in over the wall ? some of it comes through the door.

?It?s no secret I have suspicions some staff members are trafficking contraband into our facilities.?

Prison management are liaising with the Police to catch the smugglers, said Mr. Dean but with little success. ?That?s all we can do. We search everyone coming in anyway.?

Security measures on the door include searching of bags, CCTV monitoring, an Ion scan and sniffer dogs which cover everyone entering the facility but he said no one had been caught yet.

?I would like to think I am always close. But no cigar!

?It?s an ongoing struggle. It?s always been a priority.

?Sometimes I call the Police and say give me something! I have suspicions, I have seen individuals and suggested ? because I don?t have any significant evidence ? that they seek employment elsewhere.

?I can?t fire them. I let them know that ?I believe you are doing something?.

?I tell them I can?t prove it but I say ?If you get caught you will go to prison so maybe it?s a time to look for employment elsewhere?.

?I had a list of about 12 names ? that?s not just in Westgate ? that?s across everything.?

He said a newer, more self-centred breed of officer was to blame.

?This is something new. We are getting a different type of prison officer.

?Gone are the days when people were looking to this department for a career.

?This is a job to a lot of them. They are going to stay for a while and then move on.

?So they don?t have that same attitude that a lot of our older prison officers had where they made a career out of it.

He said all recruits were put through Police screening.

?All we can do after that is staff appraisal to see how the individual performs his duty and talk to the Police to see if they know anything about any individual. Or they will call me about people we need to monitor.?

He said the penalties for dirty prison officers should be extremely high. Asked about the reaction of the Prison Officers Association to his suspicions he said: ?The POA are on the same page when it comes to that.?

Despite his frustrations, Mr. Dean said there had been some success on curbing drugs in prison.

While figures show 80 percent of new inmates test positive for drugs upon arrival, drug use among established prisoners is much lower according to results from the first three months of random testing.

A total of 76 samples have been tested ? of these, seven (11.8 percent) were positive ? eight (10.5 percent) for cannabis and one (1.3 percent) for opiates.

Mr. Dean said the results compare favourably with those from similar sized prisons in the UK.

?We introduced mandatory random drug testing in March of this year and the results we got back were very encouraging.

?Because we get this all the time about prisons being riddled with drugs. They want to bring the Regiment up to rid the place of drugs.

?And the place really isn?t because we have three dogs.

?The random testing we do show the problem is much lower than people would anticipate.?

Mr. Dean has brought in numerous measures to stem the flow.

A searching rota has seen middle managers supervising drugs sweeps to make sure things are being done correctly and to give line staff more support.

However Mr. Dean?s plan to hand pick trusted staff for the searches ran into problems because of low staffing.

A Christmas 2004 crackdown on families bringing drugs caught five and helped deter many more.

?We still have some suspects. We find a lot of drugs in the parking lot.

?When they drive up they see the dogs and the gate and they drop whatever they have and hope an inmate will find it.

?We scan the parking lot daily ? sometimes three times.?

The vulnerable fence on the Malabar field side which used to be regularly cut open to let people throw drugs over has been shored up. Floodlights pick out those willing to still try.

The area around the Shell tanks has also been bolstered while heavy wire screening stops prisoners reaching out of their maximum security cell windows to grab drug drop offs.

And this year Mr. Dean sought planning permission to build a 12-foot wall at the Co-Ed facility in Ferry Reach to thwart drug throwers.

Cell phones are still a problem ? often they are found wrapped up in a sock on the roof.

?We are constantly scanning the area, searching, just curtail the amount of stuff that comes in. But you will never stop it.?