An addict stashed a variety of drugs inside himself before voluntarily going to prison, a court heard.

Matthew Lycett was said to have “prepared himself” for his time in jail by secreting heroin, cocaine and the legal high known as Spice in his body after breaching bail conditions.

Maidstone Crown Court heard on Mon Aug 24 the heroin and cocaine were for his own use but he planned to trade the Spice with other inmates at Elmley Prison on the Isle of Sheppey. Of the 19 packages found, 18 contained a total of 30.21g of Spice, a laboratory-created cannabis substitute.

Lycett, 22, who has previously been jailed for trying to smuggle mobile phones hidden in Pringles tubes while an inmate at Rochester Young Offenders’ Institute, later told police he planned to sell it for £50 per gram.

The court was told the drugs were not found during an initial search as Lycett was booked in to the prison in December last year. However, he aroused suspicions when he went to the toilet, and then a second search revealed the stash in his jogging bottoms.

Prosecutor Deborah Champion said: “He said his experience in prison had been that his medication was, as he put it, messed about with, and he needed the class A drugs to medicate himself.”

Lycett, of Boundary Road, Chatham, admitted two offences of drug possession and one of taking a prohibited item into prison. He also admitted being in breach of a six-month suspended sentence imposed for theft and drugs possession in November last year.

The court heard he had handed himself in to police after he could no longer comply with a curfew imposed as a bail condition for an unrelated offence.

Craig Evans, defending, said Lycett had become hooked on drugs from a very young age and was taking crack cocaine and heroin by the time he was 18.

Recorder Cairns Nelson QC jailed Lycett for a total of nine months, although he was expected to be released immediately having spent five-and-a-half months on remand.

In January this year the same court heard that Lycett was serving two-and-a-half years for robbery at Rochester YOI in May 2013 when he collected two Pringles tubes laying on the grass.

He tried to throw them at cell windows before hurling them over a perimeter wall.
They were recovered and inside were three mobile phones.