Hawke's Bay prison officer tried to distract drug dogs with Marmite and curry powder

Trent Hill was a corrections officer at Hawke's Bay Regional Prison. Photo / NZME

A Hawke's Bay corrections officer found in a prison carpark with drugs in his car and tobacco in his sock has been sentenced to community detention and will be sacked, a court has heard.

"Your fall from grace is a sad, sad case," Judge Russell Collins told Trent Gregory Hill in the Napier District Court on Thursday.

Hill, 46, had already been identified as a "person of interest" by a search team looking for contraband intended for inmates when he turned up for work at Hawke's Bay Regional Prison on June 4 last year, the judge said.

On entering the gatehouse and seeing the searchers, Hill patted his pockets as if he had forgotten something, turned around and walked back to his car.

Members of the search team followed him and found him in possession of the drugs and tobacco at his vehicle, the court was told.

Hill pleaded guilty to a breach of the Corrections Act, for trying to take the tobacco into the jail, and possessing cannabis oil, cannabis plant and 10g of methamphetamine found in his possession.

The tobacco and the drugs were in a number of well-wrapped and sealed packages, some of which were smeared with Marmite or curry powder to put search dogs off the scent.

Judge Collins sentenced Hill to five months of community detention on an ankle bracelet, with a 7pm to 7am curfew, and 12 months of supervision by probation officers.

One of the conditions of supervision was to undergo an assessment for alcohol and drugs treatment, and undergo any counselling recommended.

Judge Collins said Hill was a man who had "done well in life" and during seven years as a prison officer but who had been caught in a downward spiral through alcoholism.

He told Hill he would have been sentenced to imprisonment had he been found guilty of smuggling drugs for prisoners, rather than merely possessing them.

"I've got to sentence you not on what I think might have been happening but on what you have pleaded guilty to," the judge said.

The judge asked about the status of Hill's employment with the Department of Corrections.

Defence counsel Matthew Phelps said there would be a meeting on April 26 to discuss his future.

"His employment advocate tells me it is inevitable he will be dismissed," Phelps said.