A MAN who passed drugs to an inmate on a prison visit has spent three weeks behind bars himself, as a result.

Martin Andrew Mawson, 31, must now also undergo an electronically-monitored overnight home curfew, as a further punishment, for the next six months.

Following the visit, in June last year, prison staff recovered 23.5g of cannabis resin, 188 diazepam pills and eight tablets of buprenorphine, a heroin-substitute, following a search of the visits area and the inmate.

When prison staff played back cctv footage from the visits area, suspicious activity was spotted.

Durham Crown Court was told that the inmate was seen to hug his visitor, Martin Andrew Mawson, just before he was about to leave at the end of the visit.

Mawson, 31, of Park Road, South Moor, Stanley, denied one count of supplying a class B drug and two of supplying a class C drug stemming from the visit.

He admitted possessing small amounts of the drugs, recovered in a subsequent search of his home address.

During a trial at the court last month the jury was told he claimed that he was asked to go and visit the “lonely” inmate by a former cell mate, who had been released.

The court heard he went three times, but on the first occasion the inmate did not even leave his cell to see him.

He claimed it was just a friendly gesture to hug the inmate at the end of the visit, but the prosecution claimed that this was when the drugs were passed from Mawson to the prisoner.

The court was told that when interviewed Mawson twice denied taking the drugs packages into the jail on the visit.

But Paul Currer, prosecuting, put to Mawson, in cross-examination, that the purpose of the visit was more than just to act as, “a Good Samaritan”.

Mawson denied this and claimed it was “coincidence” that the drugs found at his home were similar to those recovered after the visit.

The jury returned ‘guilty’ verdicts on all three counts after the two-day trial and Mawson was remanded in custody by Judge Christopher Prince, pending sentence yesterday (MON NOV 2).

Andrew Finlay, mitigating, said it was not like “street dealing” where money changes hands.

Passing sentence, Judge Prince, said that having spent three weeks in custody, since his trial, Mawson should now be subject of six-months’ 8pm – 7am electronically-monitored home curfew as part of a six-month community order.

He also ordered that all the drugs should be destroyed.