By ALLIE MORRIS
Monitor staff
Friday, May 20, 2016
Citing a statewide drug problem, the Republican-led Senate agreed to spend almost $2 million equipping prisons and jails with full-body X-ray scanners despite concerns from Democrats and the corrections commissioner that the proposal hasn’t been thoroughly vetted.
The bill now goes to Democratic Gov. Maggie Hassan, who hasn’t said whether she will sign or veto it.
As New Hampshire battles an opioid crisis, lawmakers and prison officials are looking for new ways to clamp down on the presence of drugs behind bars.
Two state representatives brought forward legislation last month to put scanners in state prisons and jails that would screen staff, inmates and visitors in hopes of catching drugs and other contraband hidden in people’s clothing or within their bodies. The late proposal only had one public hearing.
Under the bill, six scanners would be installed in the three state prisons at a cost of $1.1 million. A new $740,000 grant program would help put scanners in the county jails. The legislation stipulates that the machines would only create images that “enable the detection of contraband,” but don’t display or record private body parts, similar to images produced by airport scanners.
The House has signed off on the bill, and the Senate did so Thursday in a 14-10 vote along party lines.
Republicans said the scanners are a step in the right direction to get drugs out of prisons. Roughly 85 percent of inmates who enter the state system have abused drugs or alcohol.
“We need to attack the heroin epidemic. This is one part of a comprehensive strategy to try and reduce drug use and abuse in the state of New Hampshire,” said Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, a Wolfeboro Republican. “It’s something we have to go forward with.”
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