'I was facing 10 years in jail,' says Green candidate in London caught smuggling 10,000 ecstasy tablets into LA

A Green candidate in the May local elections in London has told how she feared spending ten years in jail in America for smuggling drugs.

Carlotta Allum, who hopes to be elected to Lambeth council in a Green Party political surge in the capital , was caught at Los Angeles airport with 10,000 ecstasy tablets strapped to her waist and legs.

She was acting as a mule for a Leeds drugs dealer and was due to be paid £5,000 to take ecstasy into America and a further £5,000 to bring cocaine back to London.

“It was terrifying,” she says in an interview with the Standard, reflecting on her time in prison at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in LA, and regretting having agreed to carry the drugs.

“For the first three months, I thought I was going to get ten years before they caught the man who put me on the plane.”
She testified against the drugs dealer in a deal with US authorities and he was sentenced to seven years in prison in Britain.

At the time, nearly 30 years ago, Ms Allum also discovered she was pregnant.

“My mum was coming over to make provisions to look after the baby near the prison,” she recollects.

“But then, I was able to testify against the man who put me on the plane.”
Ms Allum, who was then aged 25, spent nine months in prison before being freed to return to Britain.

She stressed that her “real life” experience of being arrested in 1996, jailed and after her release helped her in her work to support these individuals with art and storytelling projects.

“It's given me an insight into criminal justice, into prejudice against people with criminal records,” she says.

Fact check: No evidence Zack Polanski made border statement
Greens and Reform 'to win London councils in May elections political earthquake'
Winter escapes and activities to end the year in style
“Obviously, I've done lots of work with young people to sort of dissuade them from going down that path.

“People with real life experience have a lot to offer, I think, in politics in general.

“Mayor ( Zohran) Mamdani recently appointed a former prisoner as his head of corrections in New York City.”
Ms Allum is standing to be a Green councillor in the Brixton Windrush ward for Lambeth council.

The mother-of-three, whose husband Andrew is also seeking to be elected as a Green councillor, only joined Zack Polanski’s party last September, the month he was appointed leader .

“There was a real sort of momentum,” she remembers.

“It felt really exciting, like you really could get involved and make a difference.”
She backs the Green Party’s controversial policy for the legalisation of all drugs, including Class A substances like heroin and cocaine, which aims to disrupt illegal markets, and to prioritize treatment over criminalisation.

With less than three weeks to go before the May polls, Ms Allum is now out campaigning every evening.

She says her drugs crime and jail past has not been an issue with local residents with who she speaks, with local and national issues key talking points.

When she sought to be chosen as a Green candidate she was open about her time in jail after being lured into the drugs world.

“I grew up in Manchester.

I was part of the acid house rave scene in Manchester,” she explains.

“There was a certain amount of decriminalization of drugs at the time.

“Somebody I knew had a business where they were transporting drugs around the world.

“I got tempted into taking some Es to America.

“But he was already being watched.

He was stopped with my details on him.

“I was stopped.

I was intercepted at the airport.

I testified against him.

I was caught bang to rights.”
Her parents remortgaged their house and put up £30,000 bail money.

I got out after nine months,” she adds.

“You can make a deal in America, which he wouldn't have been able to do here.

“But it did make me feel very lucky.

I had a lot of support on my side, a lot of visitors, and my parents came out and visited me three times.

“Obviously, they were able to put up the bail and made me realize how lucky I was.

“Education and choices, and I've used it, I've not been scared to talk about it and use it as the basis of my passion to help prisoners or criminal justice.”
If she had been caught for the same offence in Britain, she thinks she would have got a three years’ sentence.

She believes that the American authorities wanted her out of the country, so she was released from prison, as otherwise her baby would have been a US citizen.

On her return, she got a job as a teacher at a west London primary school.

But after the Soham murders in 2002, criminal record checks were tightened.

“I was a qualified teacher, and I couldn't get a job because of my over six months in prison, so I've spent a lot of time fighting the prejudice of having a criminal record and how drug records shouldn't be the same as violent or sexual offences,” she argues.

Ms Allum, who has worked in Brixton prison and run her charity for more than 20 years, added: “I feel like I've put my experience to good use.

“I'm doing a PhD at Central Saint Martins University of the Arts, and it's all about how people with lived experience should be working with people coming out of prison to help rehabilitate them, because it's very valuable.