Justice reform has led the public to believe that we need to focus on who's leaving our nation's correctional facilities. If the last few weeks prove anything, it's that the nation's prisons are porous; we need to worry about what's going in, not who's going out.
The past few months have been a contraband searcher's bonanza in correctional facilities: a guard from Rikers was sentenced for smuggling drugs into one of New York's most troubled facilities, an Iowa prison guard admitted to extorting money from inmates for cellphones he snuck into the facilities -- along with drugs he used with prisoners -- and a correction officer in Pennsylvania was sentenced for importing prescription drugs for an inmate. Aside from those incidents, another New York prison guard was caught smuggling a credit-card sized blade into a prison -- he was the seventh one caught in five weeks.
If contraband is still entering correctional facilities like this -- as in all misconduct, the ones who've been caught are just a minority of the transgressors -- then we won't get anywhere at all without universal policies and equipment that searches correction officers for contraband as they enter their workplaces. In fact, not having such procedures in place calls into question any prison's commitment to safety.
Officers step through a metal detector on their way into most facilities − that's how one New York guard was caught with a knife -- but even in these places they can place their bags, lunches, etc., next to the machine as they walk through. Besides, weapons and cellphones can set off a detection device, but drugs won't.
Because non-metallic items are smuggled into prisons often, it would make sense that all prisons would search incoming officers with more than metal detection but a majority do not. The State of Vermont enacted a policy just this year that requires all prison guards reporting to work to be searched with the same technology used in airports, machines that search for all hidden items regardless of what they are or where they're obscured.
Searching correction officers is such a sure-fire solution to the problem of contraband in prisons I wonder why more prisons haven't already done it.
The most likely reason why prisons don't have comprehensive search protocols may be union resistance. Instead of agreeing with a policy that will make them safer, correction officers' unions fight comprehensive search policies.
I think this makes the corrections officers' unions lose credibility, not only because what they are opposing is appropriate and reasonable, but because some unions insisted on prisons' buying their members stab-proof vests as part of their collective bargaining agreements because the risk of imported weapons is so severe.
Legitimate safety measures are not supposed to feed punitive systems; they're supposed to starve them. But, because the end-goal of any type of policing in modern America is penalty, our prisons are overcrowded and the people who run the facilities are actually fighting for policies and conditions that enable bad behavior.
The fact that a safety system is connected to a punitive result doesn't make the system illegitimate, but it does introduce questions of fairness and consistency. Will the guard who keeps forgetting to stow his keys face termination but someone who hides drugs in a prosthetic limb get a verbal warning?
This is what has been happening in prison security: we scrap safety goals because correction officers fear that the way internal justice is meted out might be inconsistent.
Ironically enough, one way to be consistent is not to punish any guards who have contraband on them when they're searched. Eliminating any threat of punishment will deflate any objections from the unions since that is their only gripe with a comprehensive search policy.
Searching them thoroughly and confiscating anything carried by the officers that isn't allowed inside the prison will eventually cause guards to leave contraband outside the facility because they won't get it inside to the inmates and they won't get to take it home once they lose it to the search. Eventually, prisons will become safer and none of the officers will lose their pensions after being fired for smuggling.
People might object to this idea, citing the fact that correction officers will "get away with" bringing things in or at least attempting to do so. Such an objection underlies what's wrong with our entire system: we are so worried that someone will "get away with" an act that we forget the potential in non-punitive systems.
Discipline is designed to curb bad behavior, not to ruin the offender. To the extent that a search policy catches contraband but not the carrier, it can keep a prison safer and cause attempted smuggling to decline eventually, keeping the guards behaving better. And still working.
After all, when guards aren't searched and are still caught smuggling items inside a prison, they get punished: fired and turned over for criminal prosecution. Searching them thoroughly without the threat of punishment can prevent all of that.
Officers' unions have a choice. By agreeing to be searched, prison staffers can assure their safety and encourage better behavior. By fighting for looser controls on themselves, unions are setting up their members to be shanked or sacked because their smuggling doesn't stop at the sally port.