INMATES at HMP Dartmoor used fishing lines to rig up a pulley system so they could smuggle mobile phones and drugs over the 200-year-old walls, Exeter Crown Court heard this week.

A line was thrown over the wall which was then led back to create a miniature breeches buoy, which could be pulled backwards and forwards to enable contraband to be taken over the wall, hidden in socks.

The scheme failed after prison officers spotted the wire and intercepted two packages containing thousands of pounds worth of phones, drugs and legal highs.

Fingerprints found on the wrapping led police to arrest a 16-year-old youth and an adult, who both had close family members serving sentences at Dartmoor.

Luke Shephard, now aged 18, of Naseby Walk and Adrian Way, aged 46, of Dyers Close, both Bristol, admitted being involved in attempting to smuggle contraband items into the jail at Princetown.

They were both curfewed for three months by Judge Jeremy Griggs at Exeter Crown Court.

Way was ordered to do 120 hours unpaid community work and Shephard 80.

Judge Griggs told them: 'Those who seek to take forbidden articles into prison commit a very serious offence. I have to punish you for your involvement.

'Nobody knows precisely how the line was actually swung up into the prison or how it was attached. It never got that far because of the alertness of the staff.'

Felicity Payne, prosecuting, said the authorities were unable to trace who had set it up the fishing line pulley system, but they did find the fingerprints of both defendants on one of two packages.

In total the packages contained eleven mobile phones, a screwdriver, Rizlas, 55 tablets of a legal high known as Spice, 31 of the heroin substitute subutex and a small amount of cannabis.

The total value inside jail was estimated at £3,800.

Mr Piers Norsworthy, defending, said Way agreed to take one phone into jail but backed out of the plan when he was asked to add drugs to the consignment. By this time his fingerprint had already got on the package.

Shephard, who has a father and two half brothers in jail, only handled a telephone before it was added to the consignment and neither man had any connection with the mechanism for getting the parcels over the fence.

Way is an unemployed cleaner and Shepherd is hoping to start an apprenticeship as a bricklayer or carpenter in the autumn.