Wheelchair-bound woman smuggled drugs to convicted murderer in Lancaster Farms Prison
A wheelchair-bound woman who smuggled drugs to a convicted murderer in a Lancashire prison has escaped being sent to jail.
Shannon Frampton, who lost a leg due to her own heroin addiction, sneaked a package of Spice worth up to £2,000 into Lancaster Farms Prison, a judge was told.
The 36-year-old slipped the drugs to her boyfriend when they talked in the jail’s visiting hall. The transfer was spotted on CCTV and a search discovered the package down the front of his T-shirt.
Frampton was given a two-year prison sentence suspended for two years after Judge Paul Hodgkinson heard she had been making real progress in turning her life around since the incident in February 2024 and was now helping others facing amputation.
The judge told her she had been extremely lucky not to be locked up herself. He said smuggling drugs into prison would normally mean “do not pass Go, go straight to prison”.
“I will be quite blunt, when I entered court (today) you were going to prison. But the circumstances you are in currently are exceptional and allow me to draw back from an immediate prison sentence.”
Preston Crown Court heard Frampton had taken a packet of Spice into Lancaster Farms during a routine visit to her partner. The drug was said by police to have a street value of £200, but in prison could be worth anything between £600 and £2,000.
She claimed she had been threatened with the publication of intimate photographs of her if she did not comply. But messages on her phone showed she was being paid and had even offered to recruit other women to smuggle narcotics into the same jail.
Police visited HMP Lancaster Farms after a report a package had been found on the prisoner following her visit. CCTV had shown the couple were talking and as the inmate stood up she placed the package down the front of his T-shirt.
Her phone showed that on the day on the offence she had messaged him saying: “Just going to have a nosey about the shopping centre and (then) get a taxi up to Lancaster.”
While she was in the taxi she text to say: “Do you want me to send my three people I know who are good lasses?”
The prosecution argued that proved she was prepared to recruit others for financial gain.
When interviewed by police Frampton, who has now left Lancashire and is living in Scotland, claimed she wasn’t being paid and had been forced to deliver the drugs following threats.
Her defence barrister Richard Flook said the case was a “sad” one and his client knew the starting point for sentence was normally immediate custody.
But he argued that the judge could step back from that in this instance because of her circumstances.
“There is an element of financial gain,” he said. “There were pressures on her. She was and remains an incredibly vulnerable woman.
“She has had to have an amputation of her right leg because of intravenous drug use. It is for that reason she appears in a wheelchair and is having to start learning to walk again.
“It is very sad that the effects the drugs were having on her life. She is very vulnerable and will be (so) in custody. She has other medical conditions, but to her credit she is much healthier (now) having been seven months clean.
“She is incredibly anxious about the outcome today because she is a very high risk in custody.”
He said that since she got clean of drugs she had been volunteering to assist others.
“She is now a very different person to what she was when she struggled with drugs. This is a case where all the facts support a suspended sentence.”
Judge Hodgkinson told Frampton, of Marina Road, Bathgate, West Lothian: “You have committed a really serious offence. The effects (of Spice) in the prison estate are well-known.
“They (drugs) put prisoners in danger with their health and it creates an environment of debt and that creates a subsequent situation of violence. The danger is hazardous to officers who have to work in those places and places all those people in harm’s way.
“You only have to look on the streets if cities of Lancashire and the North-West to see the dangers and the harm that Spice causes.”
He said that the general rule was immediate prison for those who took drugs into prison because of the harm they cause and also the need for there to be a deterrent to stop others committing the same offence.
“There have to be sentences passed that prevent other people thinking they can take drugs into prison – to prevent other people doing the foolish thing that you did.
“You have made changes to your life with the benefit of hindsight and I am very sorry that your health has suffered because of your addiction when you were younger. You have had an epiphany and a change of positivity and you are now helping people in a similar position to you.
“Do I say ‘do not pass go and go straight to prison, or do I recognise the changes you have made in your life? That would be a wholly exceptional course.”
He said the suspended sentence meant she would have the threat of jail hanging over her for the next two years. He also ordered her to complete 30 rehabilitation activity days.
“I wish you the very best of luck,” he added. “Please don’t fall back into the life you have well and truly left behind.
“If you do then you will not just go to prison you will die. I am not being dramatic about that, you will die. Stay off the drugs.”