A 42-YEAR-OLD ex-prisoner at the giant Berwyn jail shouted in protest and kicked the side of the dock in anger on Wednesday night after receiving an 18 months sentence for being concerned in the supply of drugs there.

Judge Huw Rees told Delwyn Billington of Ffordd Cerrig Mawr, Holyhead that supplying drugs in prison had the capacity to destabilise and disrupt.

Billington pleaded guilty to passing a package to another prisoner containing 11.5 grammes of synthetic cannabis worth up to £11,000, 67 anarboric steroid tablets and 15 of a synthetic opioid.

The judge said at Caernarfon crown court the offence happened in May last year and he found the delay in bringing the case “unfathomable”.

Billington, who in May 2016 got three years and three months for conspiracy to supply drugs, was said by his barrister James Coutts to be a changed man who now had a job and was dedicated to his family.

He said he had been a conduit in the jail at Wrexham, not a “street dealer”.

Richard Edwards, prosecuting, said the DNA of BIllington had been found inside the package. He said drugs in prison could be a barrier to rehabilitation and intervention and also introduce a gang culture.

The prisoner to whom he passed the drugs near the kitchen, Paul Davies, aged 45, of Towyn, Abergele, who is still serving a term for drug offences, was last week cleared by a jury at Caernarfon after claiming that he believed the package contained vapes.

Yesterday Judge Rees told Billington: “Your previous convictions increase the seriousness of your offending.”