Colorado Department of Corrections officials say there is a scourge of narcotics flowing into the state’s facilities, including ultra-potent, hard-to-detect synthetic drugs that can be absorbed into paper and mailed to inmates.
Prison staff had no idea what was happening when an inmate suddenly lost consciousness at the Limon Correctional Facility in May.
The inmate’s overdose was fatal, and an officer who responded to help him was exposed to the fentanyl and became extremely ill. The officer was given Narcan, an opioid-overdose reversal medication.
“We are so, so thankful that the officer survived,” said Sherrie Daigle, the state DOC inspector general, whose office is tasked with investigating crimes within the state’s prison system and keeping drugs out of its facilities.
“It could have been just as bad as the offender.”
The Limon case, which came before the arrests of five prison staff accused of smuggling drugs into the facility, was one of at least three fatal drug overdoses inside a Colorado prison in the past 13 months. The deaths underscore what the CDOC says is a scourge of narcotics flowing into the state’s facilities, including ultra-potent, hard-to-detect synthetic drugs that can be absorbed into paper and mailed to inmates.
“We have found more drugs in the past two, two and a half years than they have in the history of the Inspector General’s Office,” Daigle said.
Data from the Department of Corrections shows a steep increase in the amount of drugs seized in state prisons over the past four years.
In the first six months of this year, for instance, the agency seized more than 400 grams of cocaine. In 2018, the agency seized 48.4 grams of the drug.
In the first six months of 2021, more than three times the amount of heroin was seized than in all of 2018. Methamphetamine, suboxone and prescription drug seizures, meanwhile, were set to exceed their 2018, 2019 and 2020 levels.
The amount of drugs seized in the first six months of this year represents tens of thousands of potential doses, according to prison officials.
Daigle said it’s difficult to tell if her office is getting better at finding contraband drugs smuggled into state prison or whether more are finding their way into facilities.
“Honestly,” she said, “I don’t know. I wish I could answer that question.”
How the drugs are getting in
The Colorado Department of Corrections takes a number of steps to stop drugs from entering the state’s prisons, including routine urine testing of inmates, monitoring phone calls and screening all mail.
But there are gaps in the system that inmates have found and exploited.
Daigle said prisoners have been instructing their family members to buy a special kind of paper with high cotton content and then spray it with an oil containing synthetic cannabinoids, colloquially known as “spice.” The oil is colorless and odorless and can’t be detected during the mail-screening process.
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