Keeping drugs and contraband out of the Greene County Jail

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) - The fight to keep illegal and potentially lethal drugs out of inmates’ hands in Greene County continues.

“You basically just have to have the clothes on your back and nothing else,” said Deputy Paige Rippee.

Deputies have some systems in place to keep illegal items, like drugs, paraphernalia, and weapons out of the lockup. It all starts in the inmate booking center.

In addition to confiscating personal items and visually looking over an arrestee deputies utilize a body scanning machine.

“People know that it’s here. So it’s a deterrent right off the bat,” said Lieutenant Danny Smith.

First, the machine takes a picture of the arrestee. Next, it registers their body temperature. The arrestee steps into the machine and a full X-Ray type picture is taken, revealing everything inside and out.

“You have a 3-D. Then you have the details. Then you can move and really get detailed down there. We can pull it up in the system’s reports. We can download it onto a thumb drive in case we filed charges on the person for bringing contraband into the jail,” explained Smith.

Once booked into the jail everything is controlled including an inmate’s mail.

“We were having issues with paper that was dipped in some type of controlled substance or laced or however, a clever way they would figure it out. It would come into our facility and start a ripple effect from there,” said Rippee.

The mail is received and viewed digitally by staff for approval.

Rippee said, “It actually goes to another location in a completely different state. They send in their letter, their pictures, whatever they’re wanting to send. It gets scanned in and then sent to our facility. "

Inmates then view their correspondence on a computer tablet.

It’s just one more step to keeping everyone safe.

“We have to make sure that that percentage of contraband introduced in our facility is close to zero,” said Rippee.

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