Pubdate: Sat, 06 Jan 2007 Source: Newsday (NY) Copyright: 2007 Newsday Inc. Contact: http://www.newsday.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/308 Author: Zachary R. Dowdy, Newsday Staff Writer Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Marijuana) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) BARRED IN PRISON Following Charges That Pot-Filled Cannolis Were Sent to a Nassau Inmate, Correction Officials Renew Quest for All Contraband Tobacco and postage stamps are, outside of a jail or prison, perfectly legal. But on the inside of a correctional facility, even the most mundane items acquire inflated value, if only because they are scarce and banned, and they give their owners relatively enormous power in the unique barter economy behind cinder block walls. "Contraband is a serious matter in correctional facilities," said Lt. Michael Golio of the Nassau County jail's Legal Affairs division. "Things that would be innocuous are of serious concern inside the facility." A pack of cigarettes, Golio said, can be used as a powerful bartering tool in a jail's closed economy, where money is not legal tender for transactions, and where inmates scramble for advantage over their fellow inmates. "People who can get things in tend to have higher status among inmates," Golio said. Sometimes, the items brought into a prison or jail are illegal almost anywhere, such as the marijuana-packed stack of cannolis that jail officials and Nassau County police said a correction officer tried to bring into the facility last month. Rocco Bove, 24, of Westbury, was arrested Wednesday for trying on Dec. 24 to deliver the package to an inmate. He was charged with five counts of first- and second-degree promoting prison contraband and unlawful possession of marijuana and faces up to 1 1/3 to 4 years in prison. In Suffolk in February, a Central Islip man, Bruce Maldonado, was charged with trying to bring into the Suffolk jail 30 bags of heroin and marijuana by stuffing the stash into his rectum, a common method of transport. Suffolk Sheriff Vincent DeMarco said people try to tack tobacco and drugs to pages of magazines mailed to inmates. He said even delivery trucks are screened by dogs and inspected. "Rolling papers and even matches in here become bargaining chips," he said. "It's a whole 'nother world." Golio said that 58 people, 34 of them inmates and 24 visitors, were charged last year with possessing or smuggling in banned items. As many as 19 visitor arrests were for drugs, and five for other items, such as tobacco and stamps. In Suffolk, there were 75 arrests for contraband last year. Half the arrests were of visitors, and the other half inmates. Besides illegal drugs, money, tobacco and handcuff keys were among the catches. Some contraband were items that people who are unfamiliar with a correctional environment might not know are illegal in jail. "Not everything that comes in is sent in with an evil intention," Golio said. "Sometimes people don't know. Some of it is innocent and some of it is not innocent." In both jails, visitors and staff members are screened by walk-through and handheld metal detectors. Drug-sniffing dogs examine property. Some materials become illegal when they are manipulated, such as when inmates fashion weapons from a toothbrush, pencil or a comb. Even soap can be transformed when molded into a ball and placed in a sock to be hurled with force. "If it's been modified from its natural function, then it can be contraband," Golio said. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake