Periodic cell searches and prison sweeps have turned up such a trove of contraband over the past year that the Division of Correction is launching new attempts to stem the flow, including more thorough searches of staff, visitors and volunteers. “I have a group right now working on front gate entrance procedures,” said Correction Commissioner Frank. C. Sizer Jr.
The Sun reviewed hundreds of pages of contraband reports filed by the state’s nine largest prisons for a 10-month period ending April 30, examined other internal documents and interviewed former and current prison system staff. It found:
The flow of contraband – especially drugs – matters because it fuels much of the violence in prisons, corrections experts say. Those who fail to pay drug debts often become targets for assault. And gangs fight over drug turf in prison much as they do on the streets.
Drug trafficking can be especially lucrative in prison because a small packet of heroin can sell for 10 times its value on the streets, former correctional officers and inmates say.
“That’s what everything in the whole prison is about – drugs,” said Chester Norman, who served time in several Maryland prisons and is now rebuilding his life in another state. “Almost all the violence and stuff is based on the drugs.”
Some union officials say they believe more contraband has been getting into the prisons in the past year because of staffing cuts and employee turnover. Sizer, who became Maryland’s prisons chief in February 2004, says it’s hard to make year-to-year comparisons because the system hasn’t always done a good job of keeping records.
Even now, the review by The Sun found, it is difficult to tally and compare the amounts of contraband seized at different prisons because of inconsistencies in record-keeping. For instance, one prison might list that “controlled dangerous substances” were found on three occasions in a month, without specifying the amount or type of the drugs, while another reported the 109 packs of heroin.
Visitors, volunteers, support staff and officers who are insufficiently vigilant or are dishonest are all means by which drugs and other contraband can get into a prison, according to Sizer.
“The fact of the matter is that we have some staff that are corrupt,” Sizer said, adding that he believes the overwhelming majority of his employees are honest and hardworking.
The minutes of monthly meetings of prison intelligence officers, whose job is to glean information about illegal activity inside their institutions, provide a revealing snapshot.
At the group’s April 27 meeting at the Patuxent Institution in Jessup, one officer reported that “weapons, cell phones, crack and raw cocaine, along with other types contraband, [were] found in cell searches” at the state-run Baltimore Central Booking and Intake Center during that month, according to copies of the confidential minutes obtained by The Sun.
Meanwhile, the haul for April at the Maryland House of Correction in Jessup included 22 cell phones, five homemade knives known as shanks and 30 grams of marijuana, according to minutes of the meeting.
And intelligence officers said members of a notorious gang, the “Bloods,” were selling heroin at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown. They said “canned tobacco prices had increased to $200 for 6 oz. can” at that facility.
Ron Angelone, a former director of Virginia’s prison system who works as a private consultant in corrections, said inmates are adept at exploiting any opening to obtain drugs or other forbidden items: “They are always listening, always watching.”
As an example, he said, a prisoner might overhear one officer complain to another about debts he owes. The inmate might later approach the officer with an offer to earn some easy money by helping get contraband inside, he said.
“Inmates try to get things through everybody they come in contact with – visitors, volunteers, anybody they can see who they think might be corruptible,” Angelone said.
Visitors, packages
Drugs are most often smuggled in through visitors or packages sent by friends or relatives from the outside, according to Angelone, a former Maryland warden and others.
A small batch of heroin sealed in a rubber balloon can be passed without notice during a kiss by a visiting girlfriend or spouse; identical shoes can be exchanged under the table in the visiting room without attracting attention; and a greeting card or book spine can be slit and drugs inserted.
In the case of the 109 packets of heroin found at the Baltimore prison, a correction spokesman said officials believe the drugs were tossed over a fence and onto the institution’s grounds.
“People are very ingenious on moving drugs into the institutions,” said Sewall B. Smith, a longtime Maryland warden who retired last year. “Narcotics are always going to be a problem.” He said security in Maryland prisons has been weakened because the state has cut back on correctional staff: “There are fewer eyes and ears. … It’s easier to get things by.”
He also said high turnover means more rookie officers who can be exploited by savvy inmates. “Inmates know the ropes and new officers don’t,” he said.
Officers familiar with the drug trade say a gram of heroin that would sell for $90 to $110 on the street can be cut into smaller portions and sold for 10 times that sum behind prison walls.
Norman, the former inmate, said he learned a lot about the drug trade from members of the feared “Black Guerilla Family” gang, whom he befriended while serving a six-year term for robbery in Maryland in the late 1990s.
He said it was a common perception among inmates that Jessup was the place to be, especially when compared with the more remote Eastern Correctional Institution on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and the Western Correctional Institution near Cumberland.
“It’s where everybody wants to go because they are more lenient and you can do whatever you want there,” Norman said. “There were more requests for transfers to the Jessup area than any other. ECI and WCI are hated places. Nobody wants to go there.”
Norman, 34, said drug dealing in prisons tends to be dominated by young inmates. Older prisoners who are more interested in a safe and stable environment will sometimes turn in dealers from their tiers because they don’t want the violence and other problems the drug trade carries with it, he said.
Signs of trouble
Angelone said prison managers should be concerned if large quantities of drugs or difficult-to-conceal items such as cell phones are regularly being discovered inside secure prison facilities: “It shows that there is a definite trail that leads into the prison that is obviously not being detected by the staff.”
Referring to the 92 cell phones found at the two Jessup facilities, Angelone said: “That’s an alarming number of phones to be getting into a maximum-security facility.”
Sizer said his agency tried to get the General Assembly to pass a law this year to make bringing a cell phone into a prison a felony offense, but it failed to win approval. He said he is having posters put up at each state prison putting visitors on notice that their visiting privileges can be revoked for carrying in cell phones and separate posters notifying staff they could be fired for doing so.
Ron Bailey, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 92, said the contraband problem is related mostly to insufficient staffing. Of cases in which contraband has been traced back to corrupt officers, he said, “That’s a real small number,”
While drugs, liquor, tobacco and pornography are smuggled in from the outside, other contraband is made on the inside. This includes crude knives and a wine known as “jump,” distilled from fruit left to ferment with sugar and bread or yeast.
The prison contraband reports show 463 weapons were seized during the 10-month period through April. The actual number is believed to be several times that because of flaws in the way data are compiled.
Most weapons were shanks, knives fashioned from broken light fixtures, pieces of outdoor fences, screwdrivers stolen from workshops and plastic handles of toothbrushes sharpened to a lethal point. More rarely, street knives are found.
<!– ART CREDITKENNETH K. LAM : SUN STAFF
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTCapt. Larry Troy, shift commander at the Baltimore City Correctional Center, shows banned items found during searches of prison cells, including hypodermic syringes and marijuana.
CUTLINE TEXT–> <!– ART CREDITKENNETH K. LAM : SUN STAFF
ART CREDIT–> <!– CUTLINE TEXTAmong the items confiscated at the Baltimore City Correctional Center were wire, needles, tobacco and cell phones.
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