CREATIVELY smuggled inside tubes of toothpaste, bars of soap, the hemlines of clothes and even in frozen items, inmates of Jamaica’s prisons and lock-ups have access, the Sunday Observer has learnt, to contraband such as cell phones, ganja, matches and lighters and even DVD players.

But while the trafficking in contraband is nothing new or exclusive to Jamaican prisons and lock-ups, startling events abroad bring to light the dangers that such items in the hands of inmates could pose.

Earlier this summer, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, disgruntled incarcerated gang leaders orchestrated several days of violent unrest outside a prison using cell phones. For days, the city of 10 million was brought virtually to its knees as chaos reigned, ending days later, but not after more than 60 public buses were torched, banks and several police stations broken into and over 100 police officers, civilians and gangsters killed in fiery street battles.

Still, while those in the know admit that it would be difficult for a similar event to happen here in Jamaica, the dangers of inmates having access to banned items are real, present

and conceivable.

“It is inevitable that if we have a system that allows contraband to be smuggled into prisons and allows prisoners to have contact with the outside world it will end with a critical incident that will involve the deaths of either inmates or members of the correctional and security forces.

That will happen,” warned deputy commissioner of police with responsibility for crime, Mark Shields.

When a person is detained, charged and remanded into custody for a serious criminal offence and they still have access to means of communication with the outside world, explained Shields, the scope of possibilities for impacting the course of justice is widened.

Yet, from inside the prisons and lock-ups, inmates with cell phones can contact just about anyone, it seems.

In fact, Observer reporters have, on occasion, received phone calls and text messages from inmates in both prisons and lock-ups, most of whom request interviews or demand that journalists report on their cases.

Some have even rung up the crime boss himself.

“I have intelligence that convicted prisoners are able and have communicated with their partners in crime outside, and I will go as far as to say that criminals have in the past telephoned me from within prisons,” Shields admitted.

While conceding that those calls have, on occasion, provided useful information to fight crime, Shields was clear in decrying the practice, pointing out the problems such access to communications can create.

“My biggest concern is not just that they are able to communicate to organise their criminal enterprises,” Shields added, “but that it allows them to interfere with witnesses as well.”

Last year, according to statistics from the Department of Correctional Services, which runs 12 correctional facilities, a booty haul was raked in from 260 searches done at the department’s five adult prisons, turning up over a quarter of a million dollars, 55 ratchet knives, over 200 jammers (crude stabbing instruments), nearly 400 cell phones and over 4,000 parcels of ganja.

While admitting that contraband is an issue within his institution, Commissioner of Corrections Major Richard Reese said that the mere fact that these items are being found points not to the extent of the problem, but rather sheds light on successes the authorities are having in tackling the problem.

“The matter of trafficking in contraband is one of the major security challenges experienced in correctional settings, and over time in Jamaica’s prisons, there appeared to be a culture of accommodation with these things without any proper documentation or controls,” explained Reese.

In years gone by, said Reese, disaffected staff of the institutions would either participate in the smuggling or turn a blind eye, or even give in to the whims of prisoners for fear of some form of retribution. Now, the Correctional Services says it is taking steps to eliminate that culture of accommodation, mostly by institutional reform and upgrading of resources, but also, critically, by improving staff morale and thereby reducing the temptation to do wrong.

“We have improved our communications, we have improved our surveillance and response, and we have improved our skills set and training so that we are more effective and have better commitment from the staff,” said Reese, “because if you don’t have commitment from the staff, no amount of equipment, training or systems can make a difference.”

Since 2003, said Reese, the Correctional Services has instituted a number of systems and procedures to regulate the flow of traffic into and out of penal institutions, particularly a visitor registration database system that requires every visitor to be screened, approved and subject

to search.

“All visitors, even those from churches and volunteer organisations, must apply for visitation, and we reserve the right to refuse visitation,” explained Reese. “We screen persons who visit, and those who submit false information forfeit their visiting privileges.”

But the most significant improvement to the prison system, said Reese, is the investment made in the training of Correctional Services staff to conduct systematic searches. Since the 2001 introduction of the Caribbean Search Centre, which executes searches and trains Correctional Services staff, the police, the Jamaica Defence Force and Customs officials in systematic search techniques, there have been noticeable results, Reese said.

“So far, the search centre has trained over 200 Correctional Services employees, the most from any of the organisations that participate, and we have also trained a number of officers as Special District Constables so that they have powers of arrest. Now, systematic search forms part of the basic training requirement for all officers,” the commissioner said.

All prisons are searched routinely and randomly; daily searches and gate searches are done by on-duty Correctional Services employees, while a special team is assigned to conduct random searches that not even Correctional Services staff know the timing of.

With the improvements in searches and increased frequency, the Correctional Services has achieved some success in arresting those visitors and prison employees who attempt to break the rules.

In 2005, for instance, two correctional officers and one civilian were arrested for trafficking contraband, while this year alone, six civilian visitors have been arrested and charged, and 12 Correctional Services officers have been arrested, charged and terminated.

“It is to be determined whether this is to be attributed to increased vigilance on the part of the correctional officers assigned security duties, or to an increase in trafficking,” pointed out Reese. Still, he said, “it is harder to smuggle things in, and also, the likelihood of getting caught is higher”.

While there seems to be a centralised thrust towards eliminating contraband in prisons, Jamaica’s police lock-ups are a totally different matter.

Police lock-ups – the cells on the compounds of police stations where accused persons are detained or remanded while they wait to go to court – unlike the prisons are not controlled by a central authority, but instead are administrated locally by divisional commanders.

Those divisional commanders, according to police force orders, may assign sub-officers to manage the day-to-day operations of the lock-ups, with the authority and the responsibility to conduct periodic searches of the cells, to specify lock-up rules and to regulate what and who goes into and out of the cells.

According to the force orders, a “documented security inspection of the physical facilities should be carried out at regular intervals, but at least once weekly”, all visitors to the lock-ups must be thoroughly searched before entering and must be escorted in, and all inmates must be visited and visually observed at least once every hour.

But without a central administration, there is no record of how often or what types of searches are conducted, although occasionally, major searches are conducted on orders dispatched from the police high command, acting on intelligence received.

Last month, for instance, a search conducted at the Freeport police lock-up in Montego Bay, after District Constable Noel Mason was apprehended for allegedly trying to smuggle ganja to an inmate, revealed startling results. From that lock-up, built to accommodate approximately 10 persons, came 340 parcels of ganja, 445 wraps of crack-cocaine, two cell phones, a walkman and $900.

That search, like most searches of lock-ups conducted across the island, was reactive, done based on intelligence received rather than a proactive, routine, systematic search process, conducted by officers reasonably distanced from the day-to-day operations of the lock-up.

Efforts to contact the head of police operations, acting Deputy Commissioner of Police Linval Bailey to determine what the constabulary was doing to combat the problem of contraband proved futile, as he did not return numerous phone calls or respond to messages.

Also, when the Sunday Observer visited four of the largest lock-ups in Jamaica, very few cops were willing to speak about their lock-ups and none would allow this reporter access to the cells.

Deputy Superintendent Oswald Eyre, head of operations at the St Andrew South police division, denied that contraband was a massive problem in that division, which has lock-ups at its Duhaney Park and Hunt’s Bay police stations.

“We have a rigid search policy, we search the cells thoroughly and we search everything that goes in,” said Eyre, adding that cells were searched once per duty shift, which amounts to three times every day. Occasionally, contraband was found – usually during searches of items being brought to prisoners – and confiscated, but officially, nothing can be done to stem the flow of items people attempt to smuggle in.

“That’s a problem for us. If a person attempts to smuggle illegal items such as ganja into a lock-up, we can arrest and charge them, but if they are trying to pass something like cigarettes, or matches, the most we can do is confiscate the items and send that person away,” complained Eyre.

At the Denham Town police lock-up in the Kingston Western division, where the cells face the open parking lot used by police personnel and civilians alike, DSP Pinnock said that items for inmates were received only at certain times, and that searches were conducted “randomly, but regularly”.

“We have a small lock-up, so it’s not too hard to know what’s going on,” said Pinnock.

Security at Jamaica’s largest police lock-up, located at the Kingston Central Police Station with 36 cells and the capacity to accommodate 176 inmates, was so tight, that non-police personnel weren’t even allowed through the gates of that compound. That lock-up, which serves both the Kingston Central and Kingston Eastern division, accepts visitors only twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays, and then only between the hours of 11:00 am and 3:00 pm.