A FORMER jailbird caught redhanded as he tried to throw a sock loaded with drugs and a phone into Erlestoke prison is back behind bars.

Daniel Ince was spotted as he was about to hurl the contraband, after getting an instruction from an inmate.

But prison officers caught the 36-year-old before he could make the delivery.

Colin Meeke, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court how he was caught near the establishment on June 21 last year.

He said "Prison staff at HMP Erlestoke had received intelligence that there was going to be a throw-over, as they call it: contraband was going to be thrown into the prison."

During the morning he said officers patrolled the perimeter and in the early afternoon a dog handler outside the fence spotted the defendant.

Ince, who was wearing a motorbike helmet, was on a country road just by the B3098 and when he was spotted he tried to run back to a moped parked nearby.

However the officer managed to detain him and, after he radioed colleagues and the police were called, the defendant became abusive.

Inside the sock, which was by his side, they found a small mobile phone with charger, cannabis mixed with a synthetic cannaboid and a heroin substitute medication.

Although the drugs had a street value of about £450 their worth is inflated hundreds of times inside prison.

Mr Meeke said his phone was examined and found to contain a message telling him which camera to throw the package near.

Ince, of Bedminster, Bristol, pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting to convey prohibited articles into a prison and one of possessing cannabis.

Alec Small, defending, said his client had spent much of his adult life behind bars, getting eight years for aggravated burglary in 2008.

Since his release he said he had served other jail terms but had been out of trouble since his arrest for these matters and was now doing well.

Having run up debts to drug dealers he was pressured to throw the drugs over the fence.

Jailing him for 15 months Recorder Malcolm Gibney said "You are someone who has been before the court on a number of previous occasions, as well as someone who has served eight years for aggravated burglary who knows the value of such contraband in prison."