GOING TO JAIL? DROP YOUR DRUGS

Inmates Dumped Contraband into a Box Provided by Jailer

PRESTONSBURG - Just the other day, Floyd County Jailer Roger Webb
said, a 22-year-old inmate was caught with a tube of prescription pain
pills that she smuggled into her cell in her vagina.

Earlier, he said, jail officials took an inmate to a local hospital,
where X-rays showed his intestines contained small balloons filled
with drugs.

Contraband poses a major problem for many Kentucky jails, state
officials said this week, but a tentative solution floated by Webb
this year has created as much controversy as the problem.

Webb's solution: a metal box labeled "Last Chance Contraband Box." New
inmates see it in the jail's shower-search area, where they are left
alone before they are searched. A note on the box says: "If you have
contraband on you, drop it into the box. Otherwise, you will be
charged with it if a deputy finds it on you."

A new inmate could drop down the slot any illegal drugs or weapons or
anything else the inmate would rather the jailer not discover later.
By doing so, the inmate avoids additional charges. And the jailer
doesn't have to deal with the contraband later, in the jail cell.

"This searching business, it's easy for anyone to overlook
contraband," Webb said. "And if somebody overdoses, it falls back on
me."

Nobody complained about Webb's Last Chance Box until last week, he
said yesterday, when state Division of Vehicle Enforcement officer
Dennis Hutchinson complained to Floyd District Judge Eric Hall after
bringing in a DUI suspect and watching him emerge from the room where
the box was.

"He had a grin on his face and was sort of laughing at me," Hutchinson
said yesterday.

Equipped with a court order from Hall, Hutchinson said he shined a
flashlight into the box's slot and saw pills, rolling papers and a bag
of marijuana but that he had no way of determining who put them in
there.

Webb said Hutchinson had suggested that jail officials could have
taken contraband items from the box. But the jailer, a former state
trooper, said he opened the box yesterday for the first time since it
was placed in the jail's shower-search area four months ago.

"I had intended to wait six months," he said. "There was nothing in
it, really."

With four jail employees and two journalists listed as witnesses, Webb
unlocked the box and removed four red tablets, a blue tablet, a
syringe, five packages of rolling papers and a small bag of marijuana.

State corrections officials, police agencies and the state jailers'
association say Webb's procedures are legal, but the Floyd jailer said
yesterday he was taking the Last Chance Box out of service, at least
temporarily.

"The last-chance amnesty box was started with good intentions, but due
to controversy and misunderstanding, it has been put on hold until
everything is resolved," he said in a written statement.

"Most people don't understand the worries that a jailer has trying to
keep contraband out of their jail," he said.

Pike County Jailer Rodney Scott agreed.

On Sunday, jail officials in Pikeville charged a female inmate with
possession of OxyContin after officers found seven Oxy 80s in her hand
as she tried to flush them down a toilet.

"He's lucky she didn't swallow them to get rid of them," Webb said.
"Once a suspect comes through the jail door, she becomes our
responsibility, not the law enforcement agency's."

Scott said Pike jail employees search inmates "as best we can," but he
said cavity searches can be performed only by medical professionals,
and state law permits strip searches only on convicted drug offenders
or persons charged with violent crimes.

Lisa Lamb, a spokeswoman for the state Corrections Cabinet, said
Webb's box had not violated any state rules.

Webb said he got the idea from a suggestion last year at the state
jailers' conference in Owensboro.

Franklin County Jailer James Kemper, who is president of the Kentucky
Jailers Association, said he was not aware of another last-chance box
in a state jail.

"I don't feel comfortable in saying, if you give it up, I'm not going
to do anything to you," Kemper said, "but I do something similar here."

Kemper says he does not offer new inmates amnesty, but "I tell them if
they turn in their drugs now, I will charge them only with possession,
a misdemeanor. If they don't, I charge them with promoting (drugs), a
felony."

James Woodrum, executive director of the state jailers' association,
said Webb's effort might be unusual, but state law gives him the
discretion to try to reduce contraband in his jail -- just as a law
enforcement officer has the discretion to give, or not give, a ticket.

Woodrum said police officers generally take the view that anyone
caught with contraband ought to be charged with it, but he said they
concede the contraband should be found before the suspects are brought
to jail.

In Webb's case, Woodrum said, "I do think it's important to keep an
accurate record of what was dropped and how it was disposed of and not
necessarily who dropped it."

Legal or not, Hutchinson said, he still doesn't approve of Webb's
box.

"I think it's wrong, extremely wrong," he said. "because it's hurt our
cases. I think if they've got it when they go in, they need to be charged."