X-ray vision, teamwork keep drugs on run at Strafford Jail

County Administrator Ray Bower stands where an inmate would stand to be viewed by the Secure Pass, while Corrections Officer Bruce Gautier sits at the operator station and Acting Jail Superintendent Chris Brackett looks on. (Lebanon Voice photos)

DOVER - While state correctional facilities grapple with continuing drug problems and overdoses, including four in one week in which one was fatal recently, officials at the Strafford County House of Corrections feel they have a better handle on the drug problem there.

"Do we catch everyone? No," Acting Jail Superintendent Chris Brackett said on Thursday, "but we test so frequently, we catch almost all of them."

In 2015, the most recent year in which verifiable urinalysis test evidence is available, only two and a half percent of those randomly tested for having drugs in their system tested positive, Brackett said.

While he wouldn't draw any inference on whether or not that percentage represented the overall inmate drug use inside the jail, he said the aggressiveness with which his staff enforces their anti-drug initiatives and the technology they use to augment that effort gives him confidence that they're doing a very good job.

One of the visitation room at the jail that looks out on a housing unit

And when it comes to overdoses at the jail, he said in 2016 there were no more than three, even noting that among those, medical issues could have played a role in some of those incidents, none of which were fatal.

Their success, Brackett said, is a combination of technology and teamwork.

First the Strafford County House of Correction is currently the only county jail facility in the state that has the Secure Pass, an x-ray monitor similar to a TSA airport scanner, said Strafford County Administrator Ray Bower.

The scanner is visually so intrusive that only gender-specific scanning is allowed, which means only male jail personnel can operate the Secure Pass on male prisoners, and only female personnel can operate it on female prisoners.

One of the major ways those being processed for intake try to take drugs inside the jail is in a body cavity, Brackett said. Since jail personnel do not execute body cavity searches, the Secure Pass is vital in drug detection.

"One of the biggest things we try to do is keep contraband from coming in, so the Secure Pass is vital," said Brackett, who added that the jail population is aware of the scanner and even "word on the street" is perhaps reducing the number of those who might try to sneak drugs in.

The Secure Pass was purchased by the county on a five-year lease sale agreement for about $35,000 a year, Brackett said, and is an invaluable tool.

Bower noted that some intake prisoners brought in on other charges have found themselves saddled with an additional drug charge thanks to the Secure Pass.

Since the jail has been a noncontact visiting facility since 2004 - which means visitors can have no physical contact with inmates whatsoever - the only other way drugs, or contraband as it is called, can get into the facility is by those on daily work release.

However, if a work release inmate comes back with a "hot" urinalysis test as it is called, they could lose that privilege, Brackett said.

"And at the same time we're trying to prepare them to participate in the process of going back into society so the work release aspect is important," he added.

But beyond the technology of the Secure Pass and urinalysis tests is the human factor. At Strafford County Jail, guards work 90-day stints in the same cellblock, during which time they get to know the inmates, their moods and their personalities.

"All the officers are well trained in observing the population," Brackett said. "If they would suspect some drug use they would segregate them and put them in a secure cell while awaiting that test."

By test they mean urinalysis tests, which are done quickly and onsite, allowing for an immediate possible disciplinary action that is adjudicated at a hearing where a "preponderance of guilt" is the rule of thumb, not "beyond a reasonable doubt" as used in a criminal trial.

"If you're doing the drugs to get the high, our officers are in their living quarters living with them and they'll see it," Brackett added. "Officers get 90 days in their assignments, they get to know these ladies and gentlemen and when they see it (appearance of drug use), they know."

And the random urinalysis tests come just that way: random and often.

Another tactic they employ at the jail is the "tossing" of cells, in which personnel go through cells with a fine-tooth comb.

Brackett estimates that they execute about four hundred cell searches each month, sometimes as many as 10 or 15 a day.

"And we might toss the same cell two days in a row," he said. "They just don't know."

With a current jail population of about 450, Bower and Brackett aren't naïve enough to think no one's using.

"Anyone who runs a jail who says there's no drugs in here, they're not being honest," Brackett said.