NORTH CAROLINA -- The North Carolina Department of Public Safety says despite their best efforts and tight security, contraband manages to get behind bars.
Marijuana. Pills. Phones. Knives. Needles. Shanks. Cigarettes.
It happens in the shadows of security systems. How does it get there? Communications Officer with NCDPS, Jerry Higgins, says there are three ways.
1. Throw-overs.
Some will get as close as they can to the wired fences and throw a variety of contraband over in the yards. This is a problem only at prisons, not jails, seeing as jails do not have yards for outdoor inmate activity.
2. Through the front door.
Security at North Carolina prisons is similar to airport security Higgins said. It's thorough. It's meticulous. Still, visitors or employees sometimes manage to sneak contraband in.
3. Drones.
This is a new method of contraband drop-offs. New North Carolina statues were released in 2017 outlining drone usage near prisons. Drones are not allowed to fly over any correctional facility in North Carolina within a horizontal distance of 500 feet, or a vertical distance of 250 feet.
Guilford County jails do not have to worry about drones because they don't have yards. But that doesn't mean the Guilford County Sheriff's Office isn't worried about contraband getting behind bars.
"Our biggest concern in addition to the drugs, our biggest concern is making sure there aren’t any weapons or telephone in, we have to watch all that." Colonel Randy Powers said.
There's not much law enforcement can do when contraband is in unspeakable places.
"We cannot search body cavities without a warrant, that’s just straight as an arrow," Powers said.
Some inmates take advantage of that knowledge.
"They’ve used balloons to put contraband in, and swallow them, condoms and swallow it, and try to pass it at some other point – sometimes they insert it into their body cavity and try to get it back at some point in time," Colonel Powers said.
Both Higgins and Colonel Powers say they're always adding on to their security measures and do everything they can to prevent contraband from getting behind bars. The downtown detention center in Greensboro has nearly 600 cameras.
"Our search system, pretty much with the exception of body cavity, we’re very thorough in our searches and we don’t get very much past us it’s very seldom," Colonel Powers said.
Colonel Powers says the number one drug they've seen confiscated in Guilford County Jails is marijuana, but the number one contraband in general is cigarettes.