MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — Contraband has a way of making it into jails and prisons in various ways.
According to the Georgia Department of Corrections, in January they arrested seven people in eight days across the state for sneaking contraband into prisons. That ranges from cell phones to cannabis gummies, Bluetooth earphones, tobacco and more.
It happens in Central Georgia too.
“All the time and in different ways,” Baldwin County Sheriff’s office jail administrator Major Robert Adams said.
He said 15% of the time contraband is snuck in, it's through jail staff.
“But mail is one of the biggest ways it comes in. Over 90%,” Adams said.
Before, Adams says the post office would drop mail off and a deputy would bring it over to the jail. Jailers would have to inspect every piece of mail by hand before going to the inmate.
“It's kind of scary at times because you never know what it might be. A knife, or weapon, or drugs,” he said.
Adams says one method of getting contraband inside jail involves soaking a letter, a stamp, or piece of clothing in a drug, like fentanyl. They let it dry and then mail it to an inmate.
“Inmates go up there and tear it up, smoke it some kind of way, or ingest it, and that's how they get their high,” Adams said.
IT director Corey McMullen says before this job, he worked on the Ocmulgee Drug Task Force and helped prosecute someone trying to mail contraband like to the Baldwin County Jail in 2018.
“A person, she soaked these white items in meth and allowed them to dry. A person here was asking, ‘Where’s my stuff?’. Luckily that call was intercepted and we were able to intercept the items before they made it into the jail,” he said.
McMullen says their new jail policy will cut all of that out.
“We gave notice, gave 30 days and said, ‘Hey, February 10--we're going to start scan by mail,'” he said.
McMullen says all inmate paper mail and packages must now be mailed to a second facility to be inspected first. Inmate mail that comes to the jail will be sent back.
“It's scanned in, they upload it into the system. Then we can log in online and check to see there's no threats,” McMullen said. “Once it's approved, there's a kiosk in every dorm where they can log in and check their email.”
Legal documents will be the only physical mail inmates can get from now on. McMullen says it's just safer.
“For the the officers here for the inmates who get the mail-- it's safer. You don't know what is being put into these drugs. Fentanyl– all you have to do is touch it and it could be absorbed into your skin, and if someone isn’t around to help you, you could die,” he said.
It's faster too. Adams says it cuts down on time to check each piece of mail.
“We don’t get much mail but when we do, we have to check it very thoroughly. Usually it takes a couple of hours,” he said.
Adams says it seems to be working.
“I don’t know whether they're saying, 'Well I can’t send my contraband no more.' Only thing that's been coming through is a bunch of photos,” Adams said
The sheriff’s office says that they used to allow families of inmates to drop off white t-shirts, socks, and boxers, but now they must be bought off of Amazon and delivered to the sheriff’s office before going to an inmate.
They say letters sent and digitized to inmates will be kept for 14 days before being archived in the system. After the inmate gets out, he can be given instructions on how to download all letters to have.
Physical copies of letters will be destroyed.
If you want to send a letter to an inmate, you can send it to 925b Peachtree St. NE, Box 2062 Atlanta Ga 30309.