While ago I wrote about an old phenomenon that is prison contraband and a new way of committing it, namely by drones. Lets say there is a convict who wants some XXX material to read, a cellphone for calling his dearest grandmother and a few grams of cocaine to make his stay in prison a bit more tolerable. Using his contacts, he (or she – lets be fair) orders a delivery. The order is being collected by someone ”on the outside”. That outside person then buys a drone worth one hundred bucks (reasonable price, seeing how it can be used multiple times and how much said person can probably ”earn” this way), walks up to prison walls, fires up the drone and simply flies it over to the convict, who receives his goods. Done.

Sounds good, right? Works well in practice, too, at least according to the United States’ Department of Justice. According to the Department’s report, large majority of drone contraband reaches its destination. This data pertains only to the US, naturally, but I suppose it can be safely assumed that the situation is not much better in other countries. The problem, reportedly, is that there are no good ways of dealing with drones physically. Yes, if you actually see the drone then you can try to shoot it down or catch it with a net gun (they actually have those. Awesome), but drones are hard to notice, especially if operated by night. British Channel Islands prison may become a pioneer in this regard; it is said that Channel Islands works on implementing an electromagnetic barrier around the prison walls that will simply knock out any drone that flies anywhere near the facility. Sounds a bit sci-fi-like, but who knows, maybe it will work.