Pubdate: Thu, 28 Jun 2007
Source: Edmonton Sun (CN AB)
Copyright: 2007 Canoe Limited Partnership.
Contact:  http://www.edmontonsun.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/135
Author: Ajay Bhardwaj, Sun Media

PUNTING POT

Inmates Use Footballs And Baseballs To Smuggle In Drugs

Guards at the Fort Saskatchewan Correctional Centre  foiled a bizarre
attempt to smuggle drugs in a  football.

On Saturday night, a prisoner doing cleanup duty  triggered an alarm
when he got too close to a fence  line at the jail, sending guards
scurrying to the  scene, where they grabbed the inmate and discovered
a  football filled with tobacco, said Solicitor General  spokesman
Christine Skjerven.

"This is the only time we know of that this has  happened," she said.

The inmate faces internal charges and a disciplinary  hearing.

Correctional officers, who regularly sweep the prison  inside and out,
found another football inside the fence  line containing tobacco and
two more outside containing  drugs, Skjerven said.

But inmates insist they've been receiving contraband  from footballs
tossed into the jail's open field for  more than six months.

"This has been going on for a while," said one  prisoner. "It's been
going on since I've been here and  I've been here since November."

Using the technique, inmates say they have smuggled  crack, marijuana,
ecstasy, hash oil, tobacco and  lighters into the facility.

Once inside, inmates sell the drugs: $15 for a gram of  tobacco, $50
for a gram of weed, $80 for half a gram of  crack and $150 if a
lighter and pipe are included.

Inmates say they just wait for guards who don't pay  close attention
to them and then sneak out to snatch  the footballs.

Football or baseball tossing as a way to smuggle drugs  inside the
institution isn't novel.

But correctional officers also aren't lazy and don't  turn a blind eye
to inmates smuggling drugs, said the  president of the union that
represents them.

"I doubt that," said Doug Knight, president of the  Alberta Union of
Provincial Employees. "Consider the  source."

Skjerven said correctional officers are "vigilant" and  "diligent"
when they do their searches.

"We do a security check of the wall every shift," she
said.

The field in which the footballs would have landed,  happens to be
huge and anything landing in it would be  easily seen, Skjerven added.

"It's pretty hard to miss them," she said.

Besides, the perimeter of the fence is sensored and  activates an
alarm any time it's stimulated, she added.

In March, the Solicitor General's department added a  sniffer dog,
Chaz and his handler, Shaun McCoy, to comb  eight provincial jails for
marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy,  crystal meth and prescription pills.

Plans are to do 100 random searches annually.

The province has been using provincial jails, including  Fort
Saskatchewan, to alleviate overcrowding at the  Edmonton Remand Centre.

The province is building a new remand centre.

The new 16-hectare facility is intended to house 2,000  inmates
awaiting trial.

It will replace the current, badly overcrowded,  27-year-old downtown
lockup.

Construction is set to start this fall, and should take  three to five
years.
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MAP posted-by: Derek