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Prison warden peddled drugs to inmates

The Local
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Prison warden peddled drugs to inmates
Affoltern am Albis prison. Photo: Canton of Zurich

A former prison warden in the canton of Zurich who furnished inmates with pot and cocaine to support her own habit was convicted by a district court on Monday for abuse of authority and for violating federal drug laws.

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The 29-year-old Swiss woman delivered a total of 230 grams of marijuana and 40 grams of coke to prisoners in her custody at the Affoltern am Albis prison, the court was told, newspaper 20 Minuten reported.

As a supervisor at the prison she took advantage of her position to not only sell drugs to inmates but also fast food, such as hamburgers and chicken nuggets from McDonald’s, as well as pizzas, according to the report.

In one case, she provided a prisoner with testosterone and a syringe set, the report said.

The woman said she supplied the prisoners in order to obtain cheaper drugs for herself.

She confessed to smoking a joint every day and snorting a line of coke a week, 20 MInuten said, citing court evidence.

“I was naive and only saw my own advantage,” the ex-prison employee said.

“I deeply regret that it went so far.”

The woman, who is reportedly taking up an internship in another field starting in August, was handed a suspended two-year jail sentence and a 1,000-franc ($1,056) fine.

She had spent 81 days in preventive custody.

Her conviction follows the case of a 47-year-old senior manager at the prison who admitted to embezzling around 48,000 francs from the prison to pay off private debts.

The manager siphoned cash from the prison vault on a weekly basis from January 2012 to August 2014.

He confessed to the theft when police investigated the warden, according to earlier media reports.

A court sentenced the manager to a 12-month suspended jail term and ordered him to pay back the prison. 

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