ANNA HANSEN Wisconsin State Journal
Smuggling contraband into prisons doesn’t look like it used to, and Wisconsin officials are trying to keep up.
Department of Corrections employees have found narcotics sprayed onto crayon drawings, calendars and photographs, hidden in cracked book spines, slipped between Bible pages and into manila envelopes masquerading as legal mail. Against the department’s best efforts, the smugglers are becoming increasingly innovative.
On Saturday, a Waupun Correctional Institution employee was hospitalized and treated with Narcan after trying to intercept a drug-laden piece of paper being passed between two inmates, according to DOC spokesperson Beth Hardtke.
In September, substance exposure sent two DOC employees to hospitals, one of whom touched an item that tested positive for cocaine and fentanyl. The other fell ill after treating an inmate who was showing signs of intoxication, Hardtke said.
Between Jan. 1, 2019, and Dec. 31, 2023, 20 Wisconsin inmates died of overdoses, Hardtke said.
“This stuff is really dangerous,” she said. “Over the last several years, DOC has had to take additional, important steps to ensure the safety of our institutions, including addressing drugs entering our facilities via paper from personal letters, legal mail and books, among other materials.”
The DOC has been tracking an increase in drug-related incidents among inmates, and they’re getting harder to track due to the ubiquity of K2 and other synthetic cannabinoids, which are odorless and difficult to detect. Sometimes, it’s not even drugs: There have been instances of people smuggling wasp spray or embalming fluid into institutions on paper, Hardtke said.
Paper and envelopes can be sprayed or soaked in the substances before they’re mailed off to inmates. The highs these drugs produce can cause violent behavior as well as serious medical distress. From Jan. 1, 2019, to Sept. 18, the DOC reported 881 drug-related contraband incidents. Nearly a quarter of those incidents involved drugs on paper.
Among the DOC’s preventative steps are stricter mail room protocols. In 2021, the DOC implemented mail scanning after a successful pilot program at Fox Lake Correctional Institution. Personal mail is photocopied by an outside mail management service, which then sends the photocopies to each institution for delivery.
Official mail, such as that from attorneys, is handled differently: Rather than being photocopied by the outside mail management service, it’s photocopied in house. That saves time, as court documents and business information can come with tight deadlines. It also allows inmates a sense of security: They can see their documents being scanned in real time, eliminating suspicion that their legal mail has been tampered with.
The department also has tightened limits on books its facilities accept from organizations such as Wisconsin Books to Prisoners. The DOC has long prohibited used book donations, but an exception had been made for Wisconsin Books to Prisoners. However, the prevalence of bad actors masquerading as WBTP led to tighter restrictions and in January, when the DOC announced that it would no longer accept used books from any entity. This policy now is being implemented not only in books sent personally to inmates but in library donations as well, as each prison has its own library.
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