Texas senator says prisons need to be tougher on contraband
Cellphones just one example of items taken daily from inmates
11:59 AM CDT on Friday, October 24, 2008
By DEBRA DENNIS / The Dallas Morning News
debdennis@dallasnews.comTexas state Sen. John Whitmire, longtime chairman of the Criminal
Justice committee, has known cell phones were being smuggled into
Texas prisons for years. He’s raised the issue in public hearings;
he’s raised it in private meetings. It’s one of the reasons the state
is about to allow inmates access to pay phones.
But nothing quite prepared Sen. Whitmire for the calls he received
recently from a murderer on death row.
“I had no idea the extent of it,” he said.
He was so dismayed by his experience, in which confessed killer
Richard Tabler was so brazen he called and left messages with Mr.
Whitmire’s senate staff, that he convened an emergency meeting of the
criminal justice panel to discuss the prison system’s “lax attitude
on contraband.”
In response, prison officials began a massive lockdown and sweep of
the entire system, the first in almost a decade.
But Mr. Whitmire says much more is needed. For instance, only 22 of
the state’s 112 prison units have walk through metal detectors. “This
is an opportunity,” he says. “Tabler was dumb enough to call me,
which now has brought the full focus and attention of state
government on the problem of contraband.”
Phones are just one of countless forbidden items prison officials
discover every day — even on death row where inmates are locked alone
in spartan cells 23 hours a day.
Minutes before Ponchai Wilkerson was executed in 2000, prison
officials watched in stunned disbelief as he spit out a handcuff key
while strapped to the gurney.
Another condemned man, Leon Dorsey, was routinely found with
everything from homemade weapons to alcohol during his eight years on
death row, including 25 bottles of homemade spirits during one search
in the months leading up to his August execution.
Weapons are the biggest concern for prison officials — with good
reason. When inmates get their hands on weapons, death or injury
usually follows.
In 1974, several inmates led by drug kingpin Fred Carrasco took 11
people hostage and held prison officials at bay for 11 days with the
help of guns smuggled into prison in a hollowed out ham and bullets
sneaked through in a can of peaches. Two hostages and two inmates
died in a shootout.
Other officers and inmates have died after materials such as
typewriter rods were sharpened into knives known as shanks.
At the Texas Prison Museum, a display case includes three fake
pistols made by inmates planning to escape in the 1960s. The weapons
are carefully crafted out of wood to look real, but “I guarantee you
if somebody pulled one of these and stuck it at you, you’d raise your
hands to the ceiling,” said director Jim Willett, a retired warden.
Alcohol, like weapons, often is not smuggled in but manufactured
behind bars.
Mr. Dorsey’s stash of alcohol “was not, obviously, a bottle of Bud
Light,” says Michelle Lyons, Texas Department of Criminal Justice
spokeswoman. “He probably filled some sort of bottle with an
alcoholic beverage — it could have been any type of bottle we’re
talking about, a container of baby powder or a container of lotion.”
And the alcohol wouldn’t be quite the tasty brew found in the free
world.
Ms. Lyons recalled one inmate’s recipe using orange juice and
peppermint sticks. “It’s drinkable,” she said and it could make the
imbiber drunk.
But, she added dubiously, “I don’t know how tasty it is.”
Mr. Willett, who worked for TDCJ for 30 years, said he always had his
staff search for alcohol, particularly around the holidays.
“Look around the Christmas, New Year’s season,” he said. “If you got
any sense about you, you better start checking your unit for alcohol.”
Though prison officials take contraband seriously, particularly
weapons and cell phones which may be used for criminal activity, not
all of it is dangerous. Common contraband includes personal clothing,
personal hygiene items and excess food.
Not long ago, Ms. Lyons says a pet mouse was confiscated from an inmate.
“He had gone to the infirmary and said he had an ear infection and
got one of those little droppers you use, so he could feed the
mouse,” which he kept in a box, she said.
More unusual was a jar of brown recluse spiders kept by another inmate.
Apparently, “He was trying to figure out a way to extract their
venom,” Ms. Lyons said. “We don’t know where he got them. Don’t know
if he got them outside during recreation, don’t know if spider eggs
were smuggled in. We don’t know.”
Mr. Willett said experience taught him never to underestimate the
ingenuity of people with endless hours on their hands and nowhere to go.
One of the favorite items among visitors to the museum is an
intricately crafted board game dubbed “Prisonopoly.”
The game was made with cardboard, tape and colored pencils and while
it looks remarkably like its inspiration, Monopoly, the names of the
game spaces were changed to reflect prison life. Instead of going to
jail, the player goes to “ad seg” (solitary confinement); instead of
starting at “Go” the game begins at “The Walls,” the unit where
inmates are processed; and the spot known as Boardwalk in the real
game is labeled Death Row.
The board game, confiscated about four years ago, wasn’t dangerous,
Mr. Willett said, but “you’ve got certain ways that inmates are
legally allowed to have things — and this would not be one of them.”
That’s not to say officials weren’t impressed.
After it was discovered, the inmate begged the warden not to destroy
it. “It took me forever to make it,” he said. “Can I send it to my
mother?”
The warden agreed — on the condition that he make a second one for
the prison museum.
He did, and Mr. Willet said after the inmate was paroled, he dropped
by the museum to admire his handiwork.
Criminal contraband
The Texas prison system does not keep comprehensive data on all
contraband seizures, but here are the cases where such discoveries
were so serious that criminal investigations were opened. The actual
number of contraband seizures would be much higher.
Item 2007 2008*
Prohibited alcohol 2 8
Prohibited cell phone 484 743
Prohibited drugs 512 405
Prohibited money 80 105
Prohibited tobacco 111 99
Prohibited weapon (such as shanks and razor blades)
10 8
*Through Oct. 20
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