Woman hid heroin in card sent to boyfriend at Swansea Prison

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A WOMAN has been jailed after posting heroin to Swansea Prison in the hope it would reach her boyfriend.

Stacey Norris concealed the Class A drug under a heart- shaped design on a greetings card.

But the heroin was intercepted after a sharp-eyed prison officer noticed that the card had been tampered with.

Norris, 22, of Vicarage Road, Morriston, was yesterday sent down for 15 months after pleading guilty.

At Swansea Crown Court she admitted unlawfully "causing an employee of Royal Mail" to convey 0.262 grams of heroin into the seafront jail.

Brian Simpson, prosecuting, said that on July 28 an envelope arrived at the prison, addressed to inmate Christopher Williams, Norris's then boy- friend.

It had been sent by special delivery and Norris was named on it as the sender.

The envelope contained a greetings card with a cardboard heart-shaped design on it.

A prison officer discovered that hidden under the design were two £10 wraps of heroin.

When she was arrested and questioned, former Royal Mail employee Norris denied involvement and tried to put the blame on another woman.

She maintained her denials until her fingerprints were identified on the underside of the heart-shaped design.

Ian Wright, in mitigation, said Norris's life became "turned upside down" after she formed a relationship with Williams and began using heroin.

The barrister claimed that, after being sent to prison in June, Williams "bullied and pressurised" Norris into sending him the heroin.

"Very foolishly, she succumbed to that bullying," he told the court.

Mr Wright emphasised that the relationship in question was now over.

And he said that since her arrest, Norris had made enormous efforts to turn her life around and put it back on track.

When he was allowed to address the court from the witness box, the defendant's father, Michael Norris, urged Judge Paul Thomas QC to show mercy and not impose an immediate jail sentence on his daughter.

"It would be devastating if she were taken from us," said Mr Norris.

But Judge Thomas said Norris had carried out a carefully planned offence that was too serious to enable a suspended sentence to be imposed.

"I have a public duty to make an example of you," he told her.

"The courts have to pass sentences which show the general public how seriously they treat attempts to get heroin into prisons, and to deter others from trying to do the same."

As the jail term was announced, a woman relative of the defendant broke down in the public gallery and had to be helped from the courtroom.