A CROOK has been sent back to jail after committing new offences during a “romantic break in the Lake District” while on prison licence.
Jason Lee Farmer, 30, was locked up for six years in the summer of 2016 for his role in a £1 million county lines drugs supply plot. This was masterminded by a serving prisoner who used illegally-held mobile phones to direct the delivery of illicit substances into Cumbria from his Cheshire jail cell, and resulted in 18 people being brought to justice by police.
One of them, Farmer, was back in front of a judge today (FRI). Carlisle Crown Court heard that just two months after his release from custody on licence, he was detained by staff at a bar in Bowness-on-Windermere in possession of cocaine. Farmer then gave false details to police, and later tried to arrange for two mobile phones and SIM cards to be hidden inside personal property which was delivered to him at a police station before he was returned to jail.
Farmer admitted cocaine possession, obstructing police and trying to convey a banned article into a prison.
Sarah Magill, defending, spoke of an “embarrassing chain of events” for Farmer, saying: “What was supposed to be a romantic break in the Lake District with a new partner went terribly pear-shaped.”
Farmer, of Gilsland Road, Carlisle, was jailed for 12 months by Recorder Kevin Grice. “Mobile phones are of enormous value in prison,” said Recorder Grice. “Therefore those who smuggle or try to smuggle such items into prison should expect deterrent sentences of some length.”
