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| Illegal drug use persists in US prisons |
| By latimes.com |
| Published: 01/18/2010 |
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Richard Pillajo, a wellness education officer at a Florida state prison, strayed beyond his job description, according to investigators who arrested him last year. He allegedly planned to smuggle cocaine, marijuana and hydrocodone pills to inmates for a payoff of $2,500. Florida's corrections secretary, Walt McNeil, praised the investigators from his own department who cracked the case. Yet official annual reports suggest these investigators, like their counterparts in many states, are playing a frustrating version of Whack-a-Mole as they try to keep illegal drugs out of America's prisons. In many large state prison systems, a mix of inmate ingenuity, complicit visitors and corrupt staff has kept the level of inmate drug abuse constant over the past decade despite concerted efforts to reduce it. A recent boom in cell phone smuggling has complicated matters, with inmates sometimes using phones to arrange drug deliveries. "The prison wall is not a boundary anymore," said Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for California's corrections department, which seized about 5,000 contraband cell phones in 2009 — more than triple the 2007 total. Read More. |
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