WHEN DRUGS GO TO JAIL

AND YOU THOUGHT that once someone was convicted and sent to jail it meant
saying goodbye to drugs, pagers and means of doing business with the
outside world. Now that may be true of some prison systems -- though, in
truth, no correctional institution is drug-free. But the District's system
is in a class by itself. It's an open question whether more drugs can be
found inside the city's correctional facilities than at some of the city's
more infamous open-air drug markets. The latest indictments of corrections
officers bring that unpleasant thought to mind.

This week, prosecutors indicted four guards at the privately run
Correctional Treatment Facility, a D.C. jail annex, on charges of smuggling
drugs, pagers and cash to prisoners in exchange for bribes offered by
undercover FBI agents. Three of them were working at the facility when they
allegedly took the bribes. The fourth, a former employee, allegedly served
as a go-between. The Corrections Department brass would have you believe
that the smuggling has nothing to do with them because the Correctional
Treatment Facility is run by the Corrections Corp. of America, a private
concern that operates about 60 prisons elsewhere in the nation. Don't buy
it. The city pays the Nashville-based CCA about $20 million a year for
handling the Corrections Treatment Facility, which, as far as we can tell,
is not being run any better than when the city was operating prisons.

Not that the city's track record was any better. Who can forget:

- - The random drug tests conducted a few years ago that found 9 percent of
D.C. Corrections inmates had tested positive for illegal drugs -- a rate
four times above the national average for state prison systems.

- - The 76-year-old woman caught smuggling marijuana into Lorton for her
grandson.

- - The 3-year-old boy with marijuana in his pocket while visiting an inmate
(the two women accompanying him were let go when prosecutors couldn't prove
who had planted the drug).

- - The smuggling of cocaine and prostitutes into Lorton and the filming of a
pornographic video in the prison chapel.

- - Keith Gaffney-Bey, who made between $250,000 and $750,000 a year
operating a large-scale drug distribution cartel from his cell at Lorton.

All of the above occurred within the past six years and on the watches of
two mayors, numerous D.C. Council members and the omnipresent financial
control board. It matters not that Lorton is closed or that a number of
inmates have been transferred out of the area. The ones left behind, and
the officers guarding them, are still making names for themselves.

None of this is the least bit amusing. It is a disgrace. Last year, 10
corrections officers, including nine from CCA, were indicted on bribery
charges stemming from a similar investigation. All 10 were convicted. But
the corruption, nonetheless, goes on. What does that say about the
competence and efficiency of the private firm that is pocketing millions of
taxpayer dollars -- or about the agency that is supposed to be overseeing
that operation? What does it say about a city government that apparently
tolerates such a scandal?