MONROE COUNTY, Tennessee — Monroe County credits new technology with saving lives in the jail. It's a full-body scanner, similar to the ones used to check airline passengers run through at security.
Chief Chris White said it is meant to keep anyone from smuggling drugs or weapons off the streets and into jail. Now, it's a lot harder to smuggle contraband into Monroe County Jail.
"This machine scans people both inside and out preventing them from bringing unauthorized contraband into the jail," said Michael Longmore, a shift sergeant.
Last year, over the span of one month, ten inmates at the Monroe County Jail were given overdose-reversing medicine. Three corrections officers also sought treatment for fentanyl exposure.
Lt. Todd Bible said there were five more overdoses inside the jail by December.
"Illegal drugs, here recently fentanyl has been introduced into the jail," Bible said. "One person overdosing downstairs, then they were like someone else is overdosing, it's upstairs, and then someone else. We had three people in the same pod on the same day."
It's because inmates were able to bring in contraband in parts of their bodies. If contraband is hidden inside the body, they cannot search private areas without a warrant, Bible said. This, he said, led to two to three incidents a week at times.
"We conduct strip searches but obviously we cannot conduct a cavity search without a warrant from the courts," Bible said. "When you show up to a cell and there's someone laying on the floor and they're purple and there's no life in them at all, it's bad."
That's why, now at intake, you'll find a giant $153,000 gadget. It's funded through a federal grant, and deputies said the X-ray body scanner keeps drugs from entering the jail and protects the 340 inmates, 36 deputies and eight jail administrators.
"Since we started using the machine, we've had zero instances of overdoses in our jail," Bible said. "There's been five instances of finding contraband. It's more of a deterrent when we let the arrestee know they're going to be scanned through the body scanner. A lot of times they will go ahead and let us know, 'Look I do have this on my person,' and they will give it up to us."
Added staff is also helping with drug issues inside the jail. Bible said in all his five years working at the jail, it's never been fully staffed until now.