Pubdate: Sun, 18 Feb 2001 Source: Omaha World-Herald (NE) Copyright: 2001 Omaha World-Herald Company Contact: World Herald Square, Omaha, Ne., 68102 Website: http://www.omaha.com/ Forum: http://chat.omaha.com/ Author: Robynn Tysver NEBRASKA BATTLING DRUGS BEHIND BARS LINCOLN Drugs were a part of Robert Dickerson's life before he landed in a Nebraska prison, and they remained part of his life during his six years in tan prison drab. Like inmates nationwide, Dickerson found out that prisons are hardly drug-free zones. That goes double in Nebraska. Systemwide, an average of 7 percent of the state's 3,600 inmates tested positive for drugs in random tests conducted in 2000. That was nearly twice the nationwide rate of 3.6 percent in 1999, the last year for which national figures were available. Nebraska inmates ranked in the Top 10 "Dirty Urine" list nationally that year. "Drugs are an escape from reality, trying to forget about being there, a stress reliever," said Dickerson, 28, who is now clean, sober and working in Omaha. He and other inmates say drugs flow easily into the system, past the barbed-wire fences and prison employees who have turned to smuggling for extra cash. Drugs have been taped to arrows and shot into prison yards. Cocaine has been found in ink pens, and balloons filled with dope have been exchanged through a kiss. Marijuana has been found in the folds of an obese woman. The alarming statistics have sparked a war on drugs within the Nebraska prison system. Correction officials are exploring ways to address the problem, including the possibility of tougher penalties for users and drug tests for prison employees. Officials say the state-by-state rankings on drugs in prison are not entirely fair. "That's kind of tricky. The sample size, frequency and how they're doing the test are all different," Correctional Director Harold Clarke said. Nebraska, on average, randomly tests from 540 to 900 prisoners a month for drugs. One solution to the problem is on the horizon. A 960-bed prison under construction near Tecumseh will go a long way in dealing with inmates who abuse drugs, Clarke said. The Tecumseh prison will offer more segregation units to punish inmates who violate drug laws behind bars. The State Penitentiary's segregation unit - known in prison as the "hole" - is filled to capacity with violent, dangerous inmates. Other inmates understand they probably won't be put in the hole if they test positive for drugs; instead they are confined to their cells and lose personal privileges. The state has negotiated with the employees' union to try to drug-test all prison workers, and Clarke said he would consider limiting contact visits for those inmates who test positive. "If we are able to do these things, get these resources, you will see a big impact. I'm optimistic. I think it will go down," Clarke said. Drugs in prison meet a basic demand within a population that has its share of addicts. About 25 percent of the Nebraska inmates locked up in 1999 were for drug-related offenses. In Omaha, 62 percent of those arrested that year tested positive for drugs at the time of their arrest. "If the person who went to prison is an addict, they're going to continue to use in prison," said Dickerson. Dickerson and other inmates say it's not difficult getting drugs. "It's business. It's a way of making money," Dickerson said. They say the problem is not taken seriously behind the walls by prison officials. "They didn't seem real concerned with drugs coming in," Dickerson said. "I never saw them leaning on people and trying to find where they're getting their drugs." Prison officials disputed that. Complacency among workers is a problem, officials said, but most prison employees see drugs as a threat to their safety and act quickly to catch the culprits. "The vast majority of our staff are superprofessional, highly trained with high integrity," said Steve King, director of planning for Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. Richard Tewksbury, a criminal justice professor at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, said drugs are present in "practically all (corrections) institutions at all levels. Stopping all the drugs is difficult because there are so many portals for drugs to come into the system." It will be hard, if not impossible, to stop the drug trade as long as inmates have time on their hands to think of smuggling ploys and as long as they receive visits from family and friends. "They do have 24 hours a day to figure out how to beat the system," said Terry Ewing, security coordinator at the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. Ewing is the man on the front line of the prison drug war. Lately, he and his three teams of drug dogs and handlers have been focusing their attention on the State Penitentiary. The results have been encouraging. The number of drug users in the penitentiary has been steadily dropping. About a year ago, the dogs concentrated on prison entrances. Visitors, delivery personnel and staffers all were subject to dog patrols. With the increased surveillance, the number of inmates who tested positive dropped from a high of 19 percent in March to a low of 6.7 percent in November. Ewing said he does not think the drug problem in Nebraska prisons involves a huge quantity of drugs. Only small quantities have been found during cell searches, conducted at least twice a month. He said that indicates only a small, but regular, amount of drugs is flowing into the system. It doesn't take much marijuana to have an impact on a large portion of the state's 3,600 prisoners. "You may be able to roll a hundred cigarettes or more out of an ounce of marijuana," Ewing said. Ewing and other prison officials acknowledged that some of the drugs are getting in through the mails and through corrupt staffers, including cooks, janitors, other support personnel and guards. Staff members sometimes become friendly with prisoners, who then coerce or blackmail them into smuggling drugs. An inmate may talk a staffer into giving him a piece of gum, knowing it's against the rules. Once the gum is exchanged, the staffer is beholden to the inmate, who will threaten to expose the staffer's poor judgment if he doesn't make the deliveries. "They (staffers) see it as a quick fix - 'I'm going to do this one time and get out of it quick,'" Ewing said. However, he thinks only a few staff members turn into drug dealers. "It is much higher than we want it to be, but much lower than the public's perception." In the past 10 years, four prison employees have been reprimanded for bringing drugs into the system or being under the influence. The low number of staffers who are convicted and sentenced for drug crimes does not tell the whole story. In most cases, employees become aware they are under scrutiny and leave before they are fired. Dickerson, who served six years for armed robbery, said he began to think, as time went on, that prison staffers were bringing a lot of the drugs inside. "The guards that do it are pretty smart and they're dealing with one person," he said. Two former corrections officers, who spoke only on condition their names not be used, said they think drugs come into the system through prison staffers. But, they said, most are eventually caught, or they come under heavy scrutiny and quit before they are caught. "I think it is more the staff than inmate visits because, you know, when those inmates come in there for a visit, they have to get strip-searched afterward," one former officer said. As with drug dealing on the outside, money is the main motivation. "Drugs in prison (cost) four times more than what their street market value is," said Dickerson. Inmates say a marijuana joint the size of a toothpick can cost $10. But how do inmates make the purchase when cash is not allowed inside prison? Inmates say they either trade goods such as pop, cigarettes or candy, or they do "send-outs." Send-outs are when inmate drug dealers set up outside bank accounts. The customer-inmate then has a family member or friend send money to the drug dealer's outside contact. "I refused to do send-outs. They cause more problems because they say, 'I didn't get the money,'" Dickerson said. Drug kingpins do exist in prison - men who specialize in the trade and control a large chunk of the market. But, like on the outside, it isn't always easy to make a bust. The inmates ultimately in charge of dealing drugs rarely store, sell or receive the contraband. They have other inmates, who owe them favors or whom they protect, manage the risky side of the business. "This is all about greed. It's all about selfishness. It's using other people," Ewing said. Some inmates, he said, are targeted for surveillance but their operations are tough to penetrate. "Many times we find that the organization looks like a spider web. You have tentacles and runners going out to every place," Ewing said. A bill now before the Legislature would stiffen the penalties for bringing drugs and other contraband into prison. One way to limit the influx of drugs would be to stop all face-to-face visits between inmates and their families. But few within the prison system believe that would be productive. Visits are important in keeping up prisoner morale. Should all inmates be penalized for a few? Clarke said, however, he would consider limiting contact visits for those inmates who test positive for drugs. He also would like to have more dog-handler teams. The three current dogs are spread too thin to cover all of the state's 10 institutions. "It is my wish we had at least one dog per institution," said Clarke, noting that would require money from the Legislature or, possibly, a federal grant. It costs about $64,000 to maintain one dog-handler team. Clarke also wants to test all prison employees for drugs, saying it's a safety issue. A majority of states, 33, test prison employees before they are hired or after they are hired. Nebraska attempted to negotiate drug testing for all state employees this fall but the proposal was not included in the final contract agreement. Clarke said he hopes that is pursued again when the next contract is negotiated. The state workers' union does not oppose drug testing for prison employees, if it is done properly, said Bill Arfmann, executive director of the Nebraska Association of Public Employees. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth