Two women survived overdoses at the La Plata County jail four weeks ago after narcotics were smuggled into the facility.
The drugs that allegedly caused the overdoses are suspected to have been brought in by a female inmate who arrived visibly under the influence, said La Plata County Sheriff Sean Smith.
Upon arrival, the women was placed in medical observation and was also screened using the jail’s body scanner, which provides full body X-rays, but no abnormalities were picked up by the scan, Smith said.
After four days of monitoring, she was moved into the general population, where she is alleged to have provided the drugs to another inmate. Both later overdosed and were revived with Narcan before being taken to Mercy Hospital.
The incident was discussed during the La Plata County commissioners’ annual tour of the jail in the days immediately following, where they noted that the overdoses highlight the urgent need for increased community resources to better address drug addiction outside of the jail.
While overdoses are, according to Smith, “few and far between,” last month’s incident mirrors a similar case from roughly the same time last year, when two women overdosed after narcotics were smuggled in during intake.
Since August 2024 there have been five overdoses at the jail, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The jail uses multiple layers of screening and observation during intake, Smith said. New arrivals are first taken to a restroom with an amnesty box, where they can surrender any contraband with no questions asked.
All inmates are also scanned using the Tech 84 body scanner, which according to Smith, is among the best units on the market – although it struggles to detect small, nonmetallic items. Reading the scans is somewhat interpretive: Some officers are skilled at spotting subtle irregularities, while others may miss them, he said.
“Staff training is not going to solve seeing something inside a body cavity,” Smith said. And even when drugs are discovered internally, they cannot be removed without invasive medical procedures, which local providers are unwilling to perform.
Smith and other county officials say the overdoses are a symptom of a larger public health problem addiction poses.
More than half the people who arrive at the jail are under the influence of some substance.
“The jail is being asked to serve as a medical detox facility,” Commissioner Marsha Porter-Norton said during the tour.
Because inmates arriving under the influence are more likely to have drugs hidden on their persons, a safer option would be to keep them in a separate facility equipped to handle detox for extended periods.
That would create a buffer between intake, detox, and entry into the general population, Smith said, likely reducing the amount of contraband entering the jail.
County officials and members of the Southwest Opioid Response group have explored establishing a medical detox facility in the region. But such a facility, which would be required to meet standards set by the American Society of Addiction Medicine, would be costly and difficult to sustain.
Smith said early estimates suggest a small, six- to eight-bed facility could cost around $5 million to build and would likely need to operate as a community service rather than a profit-generating enterprise. It seems like a far-fetched solution.
An intermediate option – a secure, medically focused detox unit for justice-involved individuals – has also been discussed.
“We’re exploring other opportunities,” Smith said. “The SWORD group has reached out to a lot of people, but most jails are dealing with this, including rural settings. It’s a challenge, and there aren’t easy answers.”
jbowman@durangoherald.com
