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| Keeping drugs, weapons out of prison a big job |
| By Associated Press |
| Published: 05/18/2009 |
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ANGOLA — Snapshots of illegal drugs, inmate made knives and other prohibited items found on inmates, visitors and staff at the Louisiana State Penitentiary cover the security office walls. Lt. Joseph Russell's pictures illustrate a problem faced by prisons nationwide — keeping contraband out and finding forbidden items that already have made their way in. It is impossible to keep out all contraband, experts say. Louisiana, which implemented extensive court-ordered prison reforms in the 1970s and 1980s, does a better job than most, said Jim Gondles, executive director of the American Correctional Association. "Angola is a picture-perfect example of how their system has turned around," Gondles said. Angola was known as the nation's bloodiest prison before federal courts forced changes. Louisiana is now one of only 14 states whose prisons are fully accredited by the corrections association, Gondles noted. The state has just less than 20,000 inmates in 11 state-run and two privately managed prisons. Accreditation certifies that they meet national standards set by corrections experts. But even well-run prisons confront problems with contraband. "It's like fishing; you can't catch them all," Angola Warden Burl Cain said. According to statistics compiled by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, illegal drugs were found inside state prisons 1,265 times from 2006 to 2008. During the same three-year period, 1,402 urine tests showed inmates had taken drugs. The prison system conducts more than 40,000 such tests each year, records show. Most are random, but others are based on "reasonable suspicion" that an inmate might be using drugs. Most positive tests — 1,167 — registered for THC, the active chemical in marijuana. There also were 71 positives for cocaine, 30 for amphetamines, and 119 for other drugs, according to prison data. Jeff Travis, chief of operations for the corrections department, said drugs find their way into Louisiana's prisons a variety of ways. For example, he said, an outside accomplice might tape a packet of drugs to the back of a street sign for an inmate on a work crew, or leave drugs in an empty soda can along the highway. "When you've got a bunch of inmates trying to beat you, a little bit gets by you sometimes," Travis said. One inmate had a friend tape marijuana to a paper airplane and sail it across a double security fence and onto prison grounds, said Steve Rader, warden of Dixon Correctional Institute in Jackson. "There's a lot of guys that like to smoke marijuana and will pay whatever they have to pay to get it in," Rader said. Drug-sniffing dogs, cell and dormitory shakedowns and inmate strip-searches are used to keep contraband out of the prisons. So is sophisticated technology, such as ion scans that can detect the slightest trace of drugs, he said. "Even in the most high-tech, high-security prisons in the country, contraband still gets in," said Rader, a 30-year veteran of Louisiana's correctional system. He added, "We do shakedowns continuously and we still find stuff, although not as much as some systems find." Corrupt staff provide one avenue for drugs, cell phones and other contraband. Better pay for guards helped cut that problem by attracting better candidates who were less prone to corruption and improving retention rates, Cain said. Read more. If link has expired, check the website of the article's original news source. |
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