By
The Associated Press
TUCSON - Drug use by inmates in some area prisons has dropped since officials began using a device to check visitors' hands and pockets for traces of narcotics, authorities say.
However, some inmates' relatives and friends and civil rights organizations are also complaining that the devices can keep law-abiding citizens from visiting loved ones.
Officials at the prisons use hand-held vacuums to vacuum visitors' hands and pockets. They then remove the vacuum's filter and put it into a machine called an ion scanner, which can detect as little as one-billionth of a gram of narcotics. Officials say a clean filter is used every time.
John Byler, spokesman for the federal prison in Tucson, said the machines stop visitors from smuggling in drugs.
That not only reduces illegal behavior, but also improves safety for corrections officers and for the federal prison's 751 inmates here, officials said.
In 1997, before the machines were used, roughly 1,000 random drug tests were conducted among inmates at the Tucson federal prison. Of those, 169 tests came back positive.
Last year, with the scanner in use, 57 tests came back positive out of roughly 1,000 random tests.
At the state prison in Perryville, which is testing several scanners, the number of positive drug tests among its roughly 2,000 inmates dropped to 2.5 percent last year from 3.2 percent in 1999.
Visitors who test positive at federal prisons are turned away for at least two days and can be barred for longer periods if drugs are detected on them repeatedly.
Visitors are not charged with a crime if there is a positive reading, Byler said.
"Nobody is ever accused of drug use. The Bureau of Prisons wants inmates to keep contact with their families," he said. "That's a very positive thing. It's an essential part of their rehabilitation and part of their reintegration into society."
Eleanor Eisenberg, executive director of the Arizona Civil Liberties Union, complained that the technology may be too sensitive.
"Across the country, there are people being tested positive who have had absolutely no contact with narcotics contraband whatsoever," Eisenberg said. "There's no process for disputing the results of these mysterious machines. It impacts families that travel very long distances to see their kinfolk who are in prison."
Eisenberg said there is no way to ensure the ion scanners are being properly calibrated or cleaned between readings.
Critics also say they machines could pick up minute traces found on public door handles, gas pumps or dollar bills that someone else rolled up long before and used to sniff cocaine.
