By Kurt Erickson
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri prison officials changed how inmates receive mail in 2022 and books in 2023 in an attempt to stop drugs and contraband from entering the state’s 19 lockups.
Now, with drug problems still plaguing the sprawling agency, the Department of Corrections is launching a $1 million special investigations unit designed to further staunch the flow of illegal material to inmates.
As part of the new state budget that went into effect July 1, the department has funding to hire 19 additional employees to investigate and prosecute employees, visitors or anyone connected to the distribution of contraband inside the prison walls.
“The main functions will be to try to keep drugs, weapons and other dangerous contraband out of prisons and to report and oversee prosecution referrals when people commit felonies in our facilities,” Corrections’ spokeswoman Karen Pojmann told the Post-Dispatch.
The latest move comes as a former prison guard is scheduled to go to trial in Texas County in August after she was arrested for bringing 111 grams of methamphetamine into the South Central Correctional Center in Licking in November 2022.
According to a probable cause statement, Correctional Officer Trishana Barton was contacted by an associate of an inmate at the facility and agreed to bring two “replica” 7-Up soda cans concealing the drugs to a housing unit.
Investigators determined the white, crystal-like substance was meth.
State payroll records show Barton was employed by the department for less than a year. A pretrial hearing is set for July 16.
Barton’s case is an example of how drugs can enter the 10,300-employee prison system despite efforts by administrators to cut off the supply.
In 2022, the department banned most paper mail in prisons. Letters and correspondence are now electronically scanned and shared with prisoners through photocopies or on tablets.
In the video below, Gordon Graham discusses how to combat contraband in correctional facilities.
Last year, the department prohibited inmates from being able to receive books and other publications from friends and family.
In both cases, the department said the new policies were an attempt to reduce the influx of drugs and other contraband into prisons, where the number of inmate deaths nationally due to drugs or alcohols increased from 35 in 2001 to 253 in 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Pojmann said the department submitted a request for funding the new investigative unit to the General Assembly in February.
“A major goal is to increase the safety of our worksites by keeping out drugs, weapons and other dangerous contraband,” she said.
She said the investigative team will work with local law enforcement to address the problem and prosecute offenders.
The 19-member team will include 12 ground-level investigators spread across the state in zones.
Along with the new unit, the department has begun expanding searches at entry points and in housing units. In addition, the department is planning to expand the use of body scanners for visitors, vendors, contractors and staff, Pojmann said.
But even those efforts sometimes end in disaster.
In 2023, a group of guards making up the Department of Corrections Emergency Response Team was sweeping a housing unit at the Jefferson City Correctional Center for contraband when officers entered 38-year-old Othel Moore’s cell.
Although an investigation showed the former St. Louis resident complied with orders to leave the cell, he was pepper sprayed and then placed in a restraint chair where he later died.
Five officers were fired and face felony charges in his death. The warden of the prison was fired.
The acting director of the Missouri Department of Corrections told a panel of lawmakers that the plan now is to have room for 14 mothers, double the size.
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