Two dogs will soon be patrolling the state’s correctional facilities for illegal drugs as part of a broader effort by lawmakers and prison officials to clamp down on the flow of hidden contraband to inmates.
Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan and the Executive Council authorized Wednesday the expenditure of $74,440 to implement the new program. The New Hampshire Department of Corrections was awarded a grant for that amount by the state’s Department of Justice this summer. The money is derived from federal funds.
Officials are hopeful the canine program can launch before year’s end, department of corrections spokesman Jeff Lyons said.
The dogs will be selected next week and trained to detect illegal drugs and cell phones. Two correctional investigators will be their handlers and, together, the teams will take part in a nine-week state police training program scheduled to start in early October.
“The trained canines will enable the search of any inmate housing area within our correctional facilities to include the mail room and the visiting room,” said Commissioner William Wrenn in a statement. “They will also assist probation/parole officers who search the residences of offenders under their supervision to detect illicit drugs.”
The dogs will be stationed at two of the state’s three prisons: the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in Berlin and the New Hampshire State Prison for Men in Concord. (The women’s prison, now in Goffstown, will be relocated to Concord once construction of a new facility is complete behind the men’s prison.)
The state has 11 district probation/parole offices statewide, which the dogs will also patrol.
The department is in the process of developing new policies and procedures for the program. Officials are looking for guidance from correctional authorities in other states where similar initiatives were successfully implemented.
Lyons said there has been discussion of establishing a canine unit for some time, but the idea was always put on the back burner because of a lack of funding. He noted that state police dogs have patrolled the prison from time to time, but not on any regular schedule.
The new canine program is one of many efforts the state’s corrections department is undertaking to address concerns about the presence of drugs behind bars. Officials say the drug trade behind prison walls is active but difficult to track.
In June, Hassan signed a $2 million bill that funds the placement of six full-body scanners in all three state prisons and gives grants to counties that want to install them at jails. The law requires staff, visitors and inmates to pass through the machines.
Lyons said Thursday the scanners will very likely not be purchased and placed at the prisons until sometime in 2017. The department has yet to draft a request for proposals.
Even with body scanners, Attorney General Joseph Foster said there is a need for dogs who can detect contraband.
“Certainly with the opioid crisis in our state, it’s something that I’m personally in support of,” he said. “It gives you a lot of versatility in the corrections realm. . . . There’s a concern that the body scanners can be defeated. You can’t defeat the dogs. Plus, they can move around, go inside or outside.”
For more than a year, officials have not allowed inmates to receive greeting cards, drawings and stationery with stickers, which had been used to conceal drugs, largely Suboxone, in the mail.
Suboxone, a narcotic, is easily hidden because it is manufactured in thin, flat films that look like breath strips. While Suboxone is most often used to treat heroin addiction, because it helps to suppress withdrawals, inmates use it behind bars for a high, officials said.
The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the mail policy in a civil lawsuit it brought against the department of corrections in federal court in December. The organization argues the ban infringes on the free speech rights of families with loved ones in prison. A trial is tentatively scheduled for next summer.
Lyons declined to discuss the pending lawsuit, but said, “We do know we’ve seen a decrease in the amount of contraband being smuggled into the prisons by mail. The visiting rooms remains our biggest challenge.”
(Alyssa Dandrea can be reached at 369-3319, adandrea@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @_ADandrea.)