Prisoners in jails across the UK have been earning money from TikTok videos filmed on smuggled phones as they appear to use drugs, party and cook food.
Serious questions have been raised over how banned items and drugs are being smuggled into prison facilities which some inmates have dubbed "HMP Butlins".
Videos circulating on the social media platform show prisoners cooking in their cells and using drugs including cannabis and spice.
In one video, an inmate shows off his collection of iPhones in his cell and captions it: "You ain't mashing like us."
Prisoners in jails across the UK have been earning money from TikTok videos filmed on smuggled phones as they appear to use drugs, party and cook food
GB News/ TikTok
Another video featured of a small Zanco phone, which is around one sixth the size of an iPhone with the tag: "HMP Fix It."
Other videos appear to show inmates in states of drunken or drug confusion in their cells and communal areas.
And several clips display inmates having parties in their cells and drinking and rolling cannabis joints.
In one video an inmate can be heard to be saying: "This is why you don't do drugs. The spice has got him man."
Speaking to GB News, former prison governor Vanessa Frake explained that it is a "constant battle for any prison" to try and stop contraband coming in.
She said: "Technology has moved forward and unfortunately the prisons haven't quite caught up yet.
"You might say, well, why don't we put mobile phone blockers in prisons? Yeah, that's a good idea. But you know, these these kind of technologies with a prison, it's not one-size-fits-all.
"There's many, many different prisons, over 170 of them. Some are big, some are small, some are top security, some are open. Some are in the middle of towns, London, Manchester, Birmingham.
"You put a mobile phone blocker in there, it's very difficult to pinpoint access, so people living in surrounding the prison may be affected, businesses might be affected. It's very difficult for prisons and also if you're just blocking the mobile phones, you're losing a lot of intelligence because yes, you might see these idiots with their phones and on TikTok, but you can bet your bottom dollar that they are three or four of them in there.
"There's there's probably been found 20, 30, 40 phones that prisons gather intelligence off and pass that intelligence on."
Video of prisoners using illegal phones have been posted online
GB News/ TikTok
Explaining how inmates had bent the rules, one former convict on TikTok alleged there were multiple ways to get items inside the prison including befriending a "corrupt screw".
He said: "You can smuggle one in yourself or get someone you know to bring one in if you know the ways and means which isn't hard.
"If you know a corrupt screw and you're on terms with them like that, anything can be bought at the right price."
Putting content on TikTok can secure huge rewards for inmates, with TikToker Sam Walker gaining 24,000 subscribers while serving a sentence for cannabis possession which he bragged made £1,700 a month from his videos.
Mobile phones are banned from UK prisons as they could be used for criminal activity and to plan escapes.
A spokesman for the Prison Service said: "We do not tolerate mobile phones in prison and those found with them face extra time behind bars.
"Our £100million investment in airport-style security has blocked more than 20,000 attempts to smuggle contraband into prisons."
