A new series of reports documents how a massive amount of drugs is flowing into Ohio’s prisons, often through the use of drones. The reporting comes from The Marshall Project-Cleveland and USA TODAY Bureau Reporter for Ohio, Laura Bischoff.
WYSO’s Jerry Kenney spoke with Bischoff about the year-long reporting effort.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Bischoff: The data showed that shift officers since 2020 have logged in 56,000 suspected drug seizures. And in most cases on the spot, they don't know where it came from, like in less than 5% of the time. And it's really unclear through the investigative process if they nail it down for a higher percentage of where these drugs are coming from.
One of the things that's going on in Ohio and in other prison and jail systems across the country is what they call K2 or Tune. It's chemicals — synthetic cannabinoids — that are sprayed onto paper. And then smuggled in. Now these are hard to detect. The drug dogs can't necessarily sniff out the compounds. They're very easy to smuggle and they're also easy to hide. One sheet of copier paper — 8.5 by 11 inch pieces of paper — is worth maybe $6,000 inside if it's been soaked with drugs. And each piece of paper is cut into postage stamp size pieces and then that postage stamp is then further cut down. So there's about 1,500 hits on a single piece of paper. So one sheet of paper, $6,000. Imagine if you're smuggling in a couple of sheets of paper either through drone drops or you're walking it right through the front door. It's incredibly lucrative.
Kenney: The articles and short documentaries that accompany it on the Columbus Dispatch website are pretty eye-opening. What are officials saying about this?
Bischoff: Well, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction notes that it's taken a lot of steps to try to address this problem. Like I said, a lot of the drugs are coming through as soaked in on paper, and they were seeing a lot of it comes in through the mail or disguised as legal correspondence between an incarcerated person and their attorney. And so the state opened up a mail processing center, and they process about 158,000 pieces of mail each year.
They scan all of that and they deliver it to the incarcerated people via their tablets. They have tablets in prison for emails, text messages, listening to music, things like that, and video visits.
They opened this mail center and that's going to hopefully shut down a massive pipeline.
"There's such a huge volume of communication going on that it's difficult for prison officials to keep up."
They added drone detection technology to most of the prisons, although they won't know which ones or how good the technology is there's some limitations to that because there's FAA rules and then they've added like these really tall fencing to some of the prisons.
It almost looks like a top golf facility. The fences are that high, and so ORC has taken a number of steps.
But still this is a massive problem and there's so much money to be made that they're really kind of up against it
Kenney: It still seems that there is, if prisoners have tablets, it seems there is a certain amount of freedom and autonomy to kind of help facilitate this problem.
Bischoff: Yes and no.
I mean, all the communication on the phones and the tablets and the mail, it's all monitored. However, there's such a huge volume of communication going on that it's difficult for prison officials to keep up. And I would say also incarcerated people who are dealing drugs, they're going to speak in code. And as soon as the investigators catch onto the code, the people change the code words about what they're talking about.
Ohio DRC has added AI just recently to monitor a lot of this communication, and we'll see it's successful if they expand that.
They could get caught if they're doing it on the monitored stuff. One of the other big problems is these smugglers are bringing in cell phones, and the cell phones are not monitored, and so they're able to conduct business without being detected.
Kenney: I think many who read the articles and watch the short films will be surprised by what's happening, but any surprises from your perspective as a reporter and what you've learned over the last year?
"Just those 218 full pages are valued between $1 million and $4 million, and to me that's pretty surprising how much money there is to be made in this black market."
Bischoff:The patrol does the investigations on all crimes on state properties. And in 2023 and 2024 prosecutors charged us 20 state employees for collectively smuggling like five pounds of tobacco, two pounds of marijuana, half a pound of meth, half an ounce of cocaine, 1900 strips of Suboxone. 619 pieces of drug-soaked paper, including 218 full pages.
Now I said that full page is worth on average about $6,000 and so just those 218 full pages are valued between a million and $4 million and to me that's pretty surprising how much money there is to be made in this black market.
