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MIDDLETON, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) —The Essex County Sheriff's Department has taken a major step to stop illegal drugs from getting into the county's jails.
Inmates at three Essex County jails won't directly receive letters and many other types of physical mail starting on Thursday.
The Sheriff's Department will switch to a digital system to help put a stop to drugs getting smuggled in through the mail.
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The mail will first be delivered to an outside provider that will open and scan the inmate's mail into digital files. "We will print it out and then deliver it to the inmates," said Sheriff Kevin Coppin-Juhr.
He added, synthetic marijuana known as K-2 is one of the more common drugs smuggled in through letters.
"They soke regular writing paper in it, then they let it dry and then they write a letter on it and inmates take it and they sometimes smoke it and ingest it which gives them a high," said Coppin-Juhr.
Any legal correspondence will bypass the digital step and be delivered directly to inmates, along with publications sent directly from a publisher or retailer.
WBZ NewsRadio's Shari Small (@ShariSmallNews) Reports:
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