The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

If much of what's listed on the reports appears benign, prison officials say, that's because maintaining security and safety requires more than just keeping out guns and knives.

Extra amounts of allowable property — which is the bulk of what prison guards seize — can sow disorder in a host of ways, staff said, from creating a fire hazard to breeding bad blood between prisoners.

What's more, even mundane items can be made dangerous, officials said. One favorite tactic of inmates is to melt a razor blade removed from prison-provided shavers into the handle of a prison toothbrush.

Instant weapon, easily concealed.

"Anything in a prison can be a weapon if that is the intent," said Dan Westfield, security chief of prisons in the state Department of Corrections.

Another inmate might use the wooden squeegee handle of a prison mop bucket, which records show was seized from a male prisoner at Fox Lake Correctional Institution last year, or grab a spray bottle from the laundry filled with bleach. That was found in a prisoner's cell at Taycheedah Correctional Center, the state's prison for female maximum- and medium-security inmates.

"Using stuff within the facility is much easier than having somebody trying to bring them a knife or a gun," said Rick Phillips, security director at Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, a men's maximum-security prison.

Hiding places

The Wisconsin State Journal reviewed contraband reports from five state prisons at a variety of security levels. The prisons were Fox Lake, Taycheedah, Dodge, Oakhill and the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility in Boscobel, formerly known as Supermax.

The reports bear out not only the seemingly ordinary nature of many confiscated items but also their hidden potential. Prisoners sometimes hide banned items inside allowed ones and convert many normal, daily items for illicit purposes that would rarely occur to a free person, staff said.

To a prisoner, a deodorant cap can be a good place to stash tobacco — illegal in the state's smoke-free prison system — and a long piece of thread can be a communication cable.

Thread is seized frequently in the Secure Program Facility, which houses the most unruly felons in highly restrictive conditions.

Many inmates there use thread pulled from their uniforms to "fish underneath the doors with," passing notes or other materials, said Monica Horner, security director at the Boscobel prison. "It's hard to stop, because it's something we give them every day (in their clothes), and it's easy for them to get rid of by flushing it down the toilet," she said.

Some inmates also take apart pens and attach them to small motors to make tattoo guns or hide drugs and cash inside book bindings. That kind of ploy likely accounted for the reportedly "altered" Bible seized at the Boscobel prison in 2007, staff said.

Even a roll of toilet paper — something prison officials obviously can't stop providing — can be used alone or molded with other materials to make ropes, daggers and fake but realistic-looking guns. Toothpaste often provides the hardening element, staff said.

At Taycheedah in October 2007, one inmate even made a woven noose from toilet paper, intending to use it to kill herself. Such things turn up especially among inmates with mental problems, staff said.

"They weave things out of what's available to them," said David Tarr, Taycheedah's security director. "There's always toilet paper. When you weave it the right way, it can support the weight of a 200-pound person."

Inmates also frequently abuse prescription medicine, which is far more of a problem in prisons than illegal drugs, staff said. The abuse happens when inmates with legal prescriptions take it in oversized doses or provide it to others.

"It's so dangerous if they're stockpiling medications," said Jodine Deppisch, warden at Fox Lake, a medium-security men's prison. "There's always a big fear of medication abuse, because if someone has a bad reaction, you don't really know what you have there."

Staff said prescription drug abuse is more of a problem among women inmates than men. In men's prisons, more street drugs are confiscated, along with much more gang-related photos and papers.

Clutter a problem

Even if no rule-breaking is intended, clutter in a cell can hamper prison operations just by being there, officials said.

For one thing, it taxes the ability of guards to conduct timely and effective searches.

"An inmate might have a piece of paper showing all the gambling debts he owes to another inmate," said Deputy Warden Gary Boughton at the Boscobel prison. "If he's got that one piece of paper stashed in between stacks and stacks of paper, it's more likely (guards) will miss that."

An inmate with many possessions also can build undue influence through gifts or loans of items to other inmates, while botched trades and unpaid debts can lead to retaliatory violence, staff said.

One way an inmate can accumulate a lot of possessions is by not turning in old items as required when new allocations are made. At Dodge, prisoners have used excess clothing to evade supervision by making a dummy dressed in their clothes and left in their cells.

"So he looks like he's there," Phillips said.

Inmates who hoard clothes also pose difficulties for the prison laundry and stockroom.

"If we don't know how much clothing they have, we can't keep track of it," Phillips said. "We need to keep track so we have enough clean stuff in stock to distribute."

Cell phones new threat

Prisons' security chief Westfield said the most sought-after contraband in state prisons has long been money, drugs and tobacco. Cell phones — as they have become smaller, cheaper and more sophisticated — are a growing new threat, he said.

Cell phones threaten prison security and endanger public safety because they give prisoners an independent communication channel to the outside world, officials said.

Ordinarily, prison officials monitor messages inmates might seek to send out, by examining their mail and listening in on the calls they are allowed to make on prison phones.

But having a secret cell phone, officials said, would circumvent that safeguard and allow prisoners to communicate messages about things that law enforcement would like to know about — such as plans to escape, criminal plots, or directives to criminal associates on the street.

Pornographic drawings or photos, often ripped out of magazines, are also always near the top of the list, staff said. Monica Horner, security director at the Boscobel prison, said the going rate for a 12-by-12-inch pornographic picture is $30 — a princely sum for inmates who make less than $1 an hour at prison jobs.

"That just turns into a lot of strong-arming and unauthorized transfer of property," she said.

Beyond the property bans and limits, prison officials try to stem the flow of contraband through frequent random and scheduled searches. They also closely examine mail and screen visitors to the prisons.
Studying contraband records can also point up weaknesses, staff said, and inmates themselves can flag a problem.

"They might drop off a note or make a comment that somebody has something they shouldn't have in their cell," Dodge Warden Tim Lundquist said. "The inmates want to be in a safe environment, too."

Then again, he added, "They'll send us on wild goose chases, too, sometimes."
http://www.madison.com/wsj/arch_local/438434