Prisoner found with phone + charger in anal cavity

A Scottish man has been given an extra stretch inside after prison officials found him trying to smuggle both a mobile phone and its charger into prison up his bottom.

Christopher Hughes was facing a nine-year sojourn in the Big House for stabbing four people outside a Motherwell nightclub with a pair of scissors. He pleaded guilty to one charge of attempted murder and three of serious assault to permanent disfigurement.

Hughes now has an extra three months inside added on, after admitting in Perth High Court that he attempted to smuggle prohibited items into the prison system; to wit, having a mobile phone and charging lead "concealed within your anal cavity," STV reports.

The phone was discovered during a full cavity search for new inmates at Her Majesties Prison Castle Huntly near Dundee. After retrieving the rather damp package, prison officers presumably had to double check he hadn't stuffed an iPad Mini up there as well.

Mobile phones are highly prized by prisoners, since access to the fixed-line phone services is strictly limited and highly expensive. In the US, for example, phone companies have a literally captive market and charges are among the highest in the world, with a 15 minute call costing as much as $17, according recent reports.

Smartphones are particularly highly prized, since internet access is an ideal way to make those long hours inside with nothing to do pass faster. But while Hughes might have thought he was making a supreme sacrifice for his leisure time inside, a recent prisoner in the US makes him look like a smuggling virgin.

Last year, Californian Earl Lee Vogt managed to successfully smuggle a Kyocera Metro cell phone, an MP3 player, ear bud headphones, marijuana, tobacco, and $140 in cash into a county jail using the same hiding place as Hughes. Prison officers only found the stash when they smelled him smoking the weed, which must have been really good s**t considering the trouble he went to. ®