Body scanner makes fiscal, safety sense

Here’s the good news: Over the past three years, more than 100 cases of prisoners trying to smuggle drugs, weapons or other contraband into the Kootenai County jail have been prosecuted.

Here’s the bad news: Nobody knows how many others got away with it.

And back to some good news: For a relatively small price, the county can cut dramatically into the problem, if not wipe it out completely.

A full body scanner costs about $150,000. These scanners can detect hidden weapons and drugs, items as small as pills or paper clips, even if the prisoner has hidden them in a body cavity or ingested the contraband.

Overall cost would have to include personnel to man the scanner, but in our view, the investment should be a priority.

If a member of the jail staff were injured or killed with a weapon a prisoner had smuggled in, legal liability could be tremendous, to say nothing of the moral responsibility the county would bear because it chose not to take readily available precautionary measures.

Further, the presence of drugs in jail increases the likelihood of harm to jail staff and other prisoners. Even one incident blowing up out of control can lead to devastating consequences.

Kudos to Commissioner Leslie Duncan for raising a number of important questions, ranging from personal rights to fiscal impacts. The answers to those questions have led Commissioner Bill Brooks to lobby his colleagues to stop “kicking the can down the road,” as he admitted he too has done, and instead get a full body scanner up and running as quickly as possible.

If the purchase price is too much for a majority of the commissioners to agree upon, leasing a machine, as recommended by former Sheriff Rocky Watson, makes a lot of sense. The lease could serve as a test drive to see how many more incidents of attempted smuggling are detected and prevented.

In our view, this is a behind-the-scenes public safety issue with potential negative impacts that vastly outweigh the costs involved. Let’s not wait for a crisis to prove the point.