This takes up valuable minutes that could be spent together.Īll our mail arrives with the stamps ripped off, and often some of the letter itself ripped off with it. The visitor must run back and forth from the prisoner to the machine and the microwave while the prisoner sits alone at the table. When our visitor wants to eat with us, we can’t even go with them to the vending machines or microwave, for fear that food is seen as just a pretext to transfer drugs. Even before COVID, it resulted in tighter restrictions and unnecessary hardships being placed on prisoners and our loved ones. The idea that visitors brought in most of the drug supply came from prison officials, of course. I’ve watched someone’s body be covered and taken away, and then had to call his mother.
#PRISON CONTRABAND HOW TO#
Many of my neighbors will instruct each other on how to notify their loved ones should something happen we don’t trust prison officials to do it appropriately.
It had also banned the volunteers who led religious programs, AA or NA groups, and important reintegration classes.Ī unit of 128 guys with no visitors, no outside air, no activities, is just waiting for overdose and death. The visitor ban hadn’t applied just to families and friends. Since around the beginning of this year, a limited number of visitors have been able to make appointments for half-day visits. Two Corrections employees have been arrested on contraband charges in March 2022 alone. But acknowledging that their employees are responsible for the drugs-and by extension, the overdoses-would cause a public relations nightmare and further loss of staff, neither of which they can afford. I’m sure the administration has known for years that the biggest drug dealers in prisons like mine aren’t the people locked up for it. The state of Tennessee does not provide prisoners who have opioid use disorder with medication, but it certainly can’t be said that Department of Corrections doesn’t provide prisoners with Suboxone. If no needles can be acquired from diabetic prisoners, who are paid to hustle them back after they’re done using them for insulin, homemade ones are fashioned out of pens. It’s probably the easiest banned substance of all for staff to smuggle in paper-thin, flexible. The tragic irony is that in the midst of all these overdoses, the prison is swimming in Suboxone. The story you hear is that some prisoner must have laced their drink or food. Medical staff hit them with Narcan and they get carted off, not to return again. I’ve witnessed three staff-two COs and a counselor- overdose while on the clock. There’s at least one such incident every couple of months. By my count, four prisoners have died of overdose in the past year. COs and other staff are supposed to be trained to use it too, though I haven’t personally seen them do so. Overdose had already been increasing for years, but now you see medical staff using Narcan on a prisoner two or three times a week. Now, they’re $5.īy my count, four prisoners have died of overdose in the past year. Cigarettes were $2 each before the pandemic. Even a postage stamp-sized paper of K2 is usually around $20. A thimble of heroin, or at least what’s supposed to be heroin, goes for $320. Staff can smuggle in just about any form of substance-pills, powder, soaked paper.Īll prices are at least double what they were two years ago. And a ban on visitors means any competition they did face has been eliminated, giving them total control of a lucrative market.Ĭontraband slips in tucked under hair, between breasts, under a belly, up a body cavity, even taped to the inside of their glasses. Understaffing allows them to easily bring in just about anything without being caught. Low pay makes contraband an attractive business for COs. Usually corrections officers (COs), who maintain the most direct contact with prisoners. Over the course of my 25 years of incarceration, it’s always been the case that staff brought in most of the drugs. The only people coming in and out were staff. It increased, and so did the frequency of overdoses. But for most of the past two years, all visitors have been barred from entering the facility, yet the flow of drugs didn’t stop. The Tennessee private prison where I’ve been incarcerated since 2016 has long maintained that the supply of contraband drugs here is mainly brought in by visitors.