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.