Inmates in Cumberland County Jail in Portland are given by prison staff black and white photo copies of holiday greeting cards sent by their family members. The originals they don't get because these can be easily spliced and the sheets lined with illicit drugs, glued back together, and smuggled to prison.
The Portland Press Herald quoted Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce as citing this measure as one of the many steps taken by prison officials to prevent drugs from being smuggled into the state's busiest jail.
But even with these efforts jail guards failed to save the life of 24-year old Nicko Walton, a jail inmate who officials believe died of drug overdose on April 11 while in a cell he shared with a sleeping cellmate. The state Office of Chief Medical Examiner has yet to issue a final determination of the cause and manner of Walton's death and Joyce says it is too early to speculate.
Jail officials theorize that Walton may have swallowed a drug-filled balloon before his April 5 arrest and died when it failed to pass his system and ruptured. Walton's attorneys, on the other hand, doubt that theory saying it's more likely that Walton died from drugs smuggled into jail by someone else and given to him. Whatever the real story, both parties agree it's almost inevitable that drugs are smuggled, not only into Maine's jails and prisons, but also into corrections institutions across the country.
The Washington Times said that in many large prison systems a mix of inmate ingenuity, complicit visitors and corrupt prison staff has made the level of inmate drug abuse constant despite concerted efforts to prevent the entry of drugs into prison walls. The recent proliferation of cell phone smuggling has made matters worse as inmates use them not only to arrange drug deliveries, but also draw up contracts to hit witnesses and litigants outside.
To help correctional staff detect the presence of contraband such as drugs, weapons and cellphones, National Institute of Justice is sponsoring a series of research programs and pilot projects to test an array of technologies designed to allow officials to run safer institutions.
They have tested scanning and detection devices, radio wave tracking gadgets to monitor inmate and staff movement and computer programs to help predict where trouble is likely to occur.
The use of a millimeter wave imaging system to scan visitors at the Graterford State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania has proven to be a success. The device is similar to those currently used by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to scan passengers at airports.
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