In this edition of the “World’s Dumbest Criminals”, we examine the story of a Detroit man that is facing felony charges after being caught in the act of attempting to toss a football filled with drugs, cell phones, chargers, and other contraband into the yard of a state prison in Lansing, MI. The football ended up between two fences, the man ended up in jail.

USA Today reports:

A prison officer who was in the parking lot saw the man throw the football — which contained heroin, marijuana, tobacco, three cell phones and chargers — and he was apprehended at the scene. “After observing the passenger exit the vehicle and throw the football, our officer ran towards the vehicle and drew his Taser and told the driver to stop, which he did,” said Russ Marlan, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections. Christen Deon-Sterling Moore, 32, is charged with crimes related to delivery of heroin and marijuana and smuggling cell phones to prisoners, Jackson County Prosecutor Jerry Jarzynka said Tuesday. Each is a five-year felony. A conference will be held Friday on how to proceed with the case. Moore has been arraigned but it was not clear whether he is free on bond. “We take very seriously the security of our prisons and will prosecute any violations of contraband that occur,” Jarzynka said. Corrections officers have complained it’s easier to throw contraband over prison fences after the department stopped manning gun towers and ended regular perimeter patrols at state prisons.

The prison guards appear to have kept the drugs stuffed into that football out of the prison, or maybe they removed them from the football and personally profited from selling the drugs to prisoners. Either way, the arrest of Mr. Moore may generate some nice headlines for the prison, but smuggling drugs jammed in a football are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sneaking illicit drugs into prisons.

Drug use is rampant in prisons across the country. A Washington Times article from 2010 notes that in California roughly 1,000 “drug incidents” are reported annually. These are categorized as seizures of marijuana, heroin, and other drugs. Also in the Golden State, forty-four inmates died of drug overdoses between the years 2006 and 2008.

In Florida the evidence of drug abuse in prisons is significant. Despite the implementation of anti-contraband strategies, such as drug-detecting dog teams, metal detector searches of staff and visitors, and random pat-downs of staff, evidence of drug use by the prison population remains high. 1,132 random drug tests of inmates in 2008-09 came back positive. This equaled the numbers from ten years earlier. Also in 2008 and 2009 officers seized 2,832 grams of marijuana and 92 grams of cocaine from Florida prisons. These were the largest amount of drugs seized from prisons in the past decade.

The facts point to rampant drug usage in prisons and there are a variety of reasons why this is the case. In general, prisons are filled with people who have drug problems. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reports that 49.8% of inmates in federal prisons are locked up for drug offenses. It is probably a good bet that many of these inmates also have drug addictions or at least enjoy using drugs. These inmates provide the demand for drugs to find a way around the prison walls.

Drugs can enter prisons in many ways. They can be hidden in food or gifts, corrupt guards can bring in illicit drugs to sell, or a more intelligent, athletic individual than the individual cited in the headline above could hurl the drugs over a prison fence.

It really doesn’t matter how the drugs get to the prison population. There is plenty of evidence that drugs are finding their way into state and federal prisons. The State cannot stop the flow of drugs.

This serves to remind us of the failure of the stated purpose of the War on Drugs: to eradicate drugs from society. If the State is unable to keep drugs out of prisons, where the occupants are literally locked in cages and every move is recorded, then how can the State claim in good faith that they can keep drugs off the streets?

They can’t make that claim.

Because of this reality, the drug war looks like a losing battle to the outsider. Although, there are many profiting and making lucrative incomes as a result of the hundreds of thousands doing time for drug offenses. To these people, the drug war is going as planned.

Be sure to give a listen to this episode of the Lions of Liberty Podcast with Dr. Mark Thornton discussing many of the disastrous side effects of the War on Drugs.



Check out our past editions of Felony Friday!

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