Prison workers smuggle drugs into Ohio facilities but are rarely prosecuted

By early May 2024, multiple people had accused a teacher at a state prison in Dayton of dealing drugs and sexually preying on women. A hidden camera finally installed in August captured the teacher — who had previously served time for trafficking — passing drugs across his desk, shaking his genitals at students and rubbing up against a woman while dancing in class. One afternoon, he summoned a woman to his empty classroom and took her into his darkened office. He emerged after a couple minutes, sniffing his fingers and grabbing his groin. The student later alleged that he digitally raped her. Despite video evidence supporting the woman's story, prosecutors declined to charge the teacher, calling it a "he said, she said case," according to an investigative file. Instead, prosecutors charged two incarcerated women with felony drug possession after they told investigators that the teacher, who simply lost his job, was their dealer. Workers suspected of smuggling drugs into Ohio prisons are seldom charged. Many often resign. Some, like the teacher, are fired, but most never face prosecution, according to a yearlong investigation by The Marshall Project - Cleveland, Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and Canton Repository. "We're the ones that are punished," said one woman, who was charged after filing a sexual assault claim against the teacher, "and everything is blamed on us, and yet staff get no type of punishment, consequence, nothing. They just lose their job, and that's it." The lack of accountability has allowed a multimillion-dollar underground economy to flourish — breeding addiction, violence and death, and undercutting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars thrown at the problem in recent years. Ohio prisons Director Annette Chambers-Smith and other top administrators blame visitors and people who throw packages over fences for most drug smuggling cases. Meanwhile, dozens of incarcerated people, as well as some current and former employees, say leaders refuse to admit that corrupt staff and vendors are flooding the facilities with drugs. They can deliver larger quantities of drugs each day, hidden inside water bottles, lunch boxes, chip containers and backpacks. Like other states, Ohio is struggling — and failing — to stop the prison drug trade. Incredible profits are fueled by high concentrations of desperate people with untreated addiction. Cash App, Venmo and other money exchange apps are used like virtual cash registers for the deals. Friends and family of incarcerated users deposit money into the accounts, which are controlled by incarcerated dealers with illegal cell phones or collaborators on the outside, according to interviews with prisoners and state investigations. The State Highway Patrol, which investigates all crimes in state prisons, confirmed that prison officials failed to report most workers who lost their jobs for suspected smuggling. Workers who were charged almost always pleaded guilty, receiving sentences that ranged from probation to three years in prison. Many of them told investigators that they had been paid by incarcerated dealers to smuggle for weeks or months before getting caught. Meanwhile, the prison system itself has doled out significantly more punishment. Incarcerated people received nearly 20,800 tickets for drug possession or use in 2024 — more than the prior two years combined, according to state prison records. The tickets can result in solitary confinement, transfer to higher security prisons, or loss of privileges like visitation or phone calls. Prison officials attribute the spike to new drug detection methods. State tracking is exceptionally poor at determining how drugs get inside prisons, the news investigation found. Officers logged more than 56,000 drug confiscations since 2020. The source of the drugs was listed less than 5 percent of the time. The tracking system, however, is not updated if investigators later identify how the drugs entered the prisons, said a spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Prison officials said officers are looking for "K2" or "tune" — paper sprayed with potent chemicals. Users can react violently or suffer heart failure after smoking pieces smaller than a pinkie nail. "We've had a lot of jail and prison deaths in the last couple years," said Alex Krotulski, the director of the Center for Forensic Science Research and Education in Philadelphia, whom coroners across the country turn to for answers. K2 is driving the deaths, Krotulski said. Five people might smoke pieces of the same sheet of paper, but only the one who hits a "hot spot" — a heavy concentration — dies. Some incarcerated people said users chasing more intense highs will seek out the same product that just killed someone. Krotulski compares it to Russian roulette. "It really is a chaotic and crazy drug use scenario." In Ohio, prison officials added netting so high that from a distance, some prisons look like Topgolf centers. They installed drone detection technology, deployed drug sniffing dogs, banned open-mouth kissing during family visitation, and bought body scanners to check incarcerated people — but not workers. Every corrections officer now wears a camera, and about 6,500 fixed security cameras keep a 24-hour eye on the state's 28 prisons. Incoming mail from the courts — even letters protected by attorney-client privilege — are opened and inspected for drugs. Everything else is routed through a processing center in Youngstown, where a dozen employees read and scanned 158,000 letters in 2024. The mail, once a preferred vehicle for smuggling drug-soaked paper, is now sent electronically to digital tablets issued to each incarcerated person. And yet the amount of drugs flowing into Ohio prisons is ballooning. "We are certainly not satisfied with where we are," Gov. Mike DeWine said in an interview. "And we know we have to continue to work on it." Death by paper Prisons Director Chambers-Smith said a single sheet of easy-to-smuggle K2 paper is worth $6,000 or more if ripped into pieces and sold as individual hits. "It's an economy," said Chambers-Smith, who is stepping down to take a job in the governor's office. "So, one of the biggest misconceptions, I think, is that we're looking for recognizable drugs. … We're looking a lot of times for paper that's been adulterated." Incarcerated dealers use the photos on their ID badges as a guide to cut each page into 88 1-inch squares called faces, which typically sell for $75 to $100 each, depending on demand. Faces are chopped into as many as 16 confetti-sized hits that each go for $2 to $10. At roughly 1,400 hits per page, snowballing profits lend credibility to claims that some people intentionally go to prison just to deal drugs. "I know millionaires in prison, like actual millionaires, who had nothing on the street, who came to prison, and became rich," said Tim Wade, who has served time in six state prisons in the past decade. "So I don't think it's ever going to stop." And the drugs they push are highly addictive, according to Wade and others who've used them. Inside prisons, customers exchange favors or items purchased from the commissary for drugs. But more commonly, they ask loved ones on the outside to send money to accounts on money transfer applications. A prison drug dealer gets confirmation that the money is deposited and releases the drugs. A mother, who asked that her name not be used to protect the safety of her incarcerated son, said she no longer deposits money to his commissary fund or a Cash App number, knowing it might feed his addiction. "I'm scared he might not come home next year," she said. "There's a lot of people dying." The drug use also undermines rehabilitation, with more than 18,000 of the approximately 46,000 prisoners released from Ohio prisons each year. "We got inmates that go to prison who were straight arrows and clean, and when they leave prison, they're addicts," said state Rep. Mark Johnson, R-Chillicothe, with two state prisons in his district. "There is something wrong with this puzzle." He's sponsoring a bill named after corrections officer Andy Lansing, who was killed on duty on Christmas Day 2024. Johnson said the suspect's drug use was a factor in Lansing's homicide. The bill would increase penalties for assaulting workers or smuggling, and further restrict privileges for people held in higher security prisons. "The whole system needs to be held accountable. It's more than just justice for Andy. If we don't hold this system accountable, it could happen again to someone else's husband or wife," he said. Women say officials ignored warnings as alleged abuses escalated The former teacher at Dayton Correctional Institution learned how to operate boilers and furnaces while serving a mandatory prison sentence for his third felony drug conviction in a decade, according to his personnel file and court records. Prison officials, who hire formerly incarcerated people on a case-by-case basis, employed him 93 days after his release in 2014. He worked in water treatment and power plants at multiple prisons. A manager called him combative and contemptuous in 2019, but he otherwise received satisfactory job marks, according to his personnel file. In October 2023, he took a position at the women's prison that paid $31 per hour teaching HVAC classes. Months later, his manager wrote that his interactions with students and decision-making skills "were questionable on numerous occasions." By early May 2024, several people had complained that he was coercing the women to sell his drugs and pressuring them for sexual favors. It's a felony for workers to engage in sexual acts with imprisoned people. And selling drugs is as illegal in prison as it is on the streets. State officials bungled an investigator's request for a hidden camera in the teacher's office, allowing the alleged abuses to continue from May until August, when footage confirmed what multiple prisoners had already reported. Three of those incarcerated women spoke to a reporter on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. One woman said the teacher taught her how to smoke drug-soaked paper. He left her passed out on the bathroom floor after she smacked her head on the sink, she said. Alarmed at the number of women overdosing throughout the prison, she decided to confront him, she said. "Hey," she told him in his classroom, "You tryin' to kill us. Let's be real. Let me speak frankly. You brung some shit into the institution, and you tryin' to kill a bunch of women." He threatened her with discipline for violating prison rules if she didn't return to her cell, the woman said. Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias Heck Jr. declined multiple requests to explain why the two women, but not the teacher, were charged following an investigation by the State Highway Patrol. One of the women took a plea deal for six months' probation after a corrections officer caught her with nearly 200 scraps of drug-soaked paper that she said she got from the teacher. The other woman charged in the case said the teacher made threats to pressure her into keeping quiet and continue dealing drugs. "He actually pulled my mom's house up on his phone," she said. She said she made him $50,000 in a couple months of selling his drugs. She told authorities about the drug dealing as part of a sexual assault complaint against the teacher. Initially, the woman was reluctant to detail the sexual misconduct to investigators. When troopers interviewed her, she broke down, crying and hyperventilating. Worried that the teacher knew other prison staff, the woman said she didn't feel safe and wanted to be transferred to a different prison. Instead, she has pleaded not guilty and is still incarcerated at Dayton Correctional Institution. Officials fired the former teacher in October 2024, six months after the prison investigator first asked for the hidden camera, for "an egregious offense." The teacher, who initially agreed to a polygraph but changed his mind after hiring a lawyer, is not being named in this story because he was never charged. He declined to comment when reached by phone. Workers allowed to quietly resign Short of pulling hundreds of investigative files, there's no telling how many prison workers have been fired for smuggling drugs. Since 2020, prison officials have banned 390 contractors from prisons and put 335 former employees on a do-not-rehire list. The vendor list often gives a two or three-word reason for why they're banned. But the spreadsheet of barred employees doesn't have a column for why they're on the list, said JoEllen Smith, the longtime spokesperson for the prison department. "Although this information does not exist in list form, background on why an individual was flagged as 'do-not-rehire' can be located in their investigative reports," she said. Collecting those reports could be time-consuming. State prison officials sometimes take several months to respond to public records requests. And the lists are hardly foolproof. The news outlets' investigation found at least one contract food service worker banned for an inappropriate relationship at one prison, before being hired by another company and put on the banned list at a second prison for the same alleged behavior. State prison officials would not say how many former workers have been investigated by outside law enforcement. The news outlets' investigation of state and court records found at least 182 workers suspected of smuggling since 2020. State Highway Patrol records show that up to 78 prison smuggling cases since 2020 have involved state employees. And only 30 of the 104 vendors suspected of smuggling drugs or contraband were investigated, the patrol confirmed. In case after case, the news outlets found that staff, like the teacher, were allowed to resign without facing charges. No single agency took responsibility for allowing scores of suspected drug smugglers to go unprosecuted. Prison officials insisted that troopers are notified of all drug confiscations and suspected smuggling. The Highway Patrol said it opened no investigations into dozens of workers who lost their jobs for smuggling. And prosecutors said they can't file charges if no one brings them cases. "I don't think anyone thinks that there's a free pass," Chambers-Smith said, referring to the prison system's zero-tolerance policy on drug use. As for the dearth of criminal cases against staff, that's between the State Highway Patrol and the prosecutors, she said. The numbers tell a different story about how agencies pass the buck on holding alleged smugglers accountable, about how investigations end with prison officials and never make it to the highway patrol. Since 2020, officials in Pickaway County have criminally charged just one former prison vendor — for gross sexual imposition — despite 13 others accused of rape, drug smuggling or inappropriate relationships with incarcerated men. Patrol spokesman Sgt. Tyler Ross said there were no investigations for the 13 other vendors. "These workers were most likely walked out/terminated, and there were no criminal charges," Ross said. County Prosecutor Jayme Fountain said the Highway Patrol conducts solid investigations, but she can't bring charges on crimes she never hears about. Privately run state prisons share even less information about employees and operations. In Mahoning County, 20 Northeast Ohio Correctional Center employees resigned in 2024. The only reason given: "under investigation." CoreCivic, the private company that runs the Ohio prison, refused to provide personnel records or explain why the cases were not referred to the Highway Patrol for investigation. "What I can share is that we take the safety and health of every individual in our care seriously," CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin said in an email. "To that end, we have a zero-tolerance policy for the introduction of contraband." Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell, who has two adult prisons and a county jail in his jurisdiction, has prosecuted 235 smuggling cases at the facilities since 2020. That's significantly more than many of his peers. Fornshell said it's a matter of workplace safety and deterrence. "How much of a deterrent? I don't know, but if you don't do it at all, then you're going to get more of it," he said. Inside the smuggling economy Workers and vendors have the best opportunity to deliver payloads of drugs each shift, right through the front entrance, according to incarcerated people and convicted smugglers. "It's not just the prisoners that's getting rich off drugs being in prison," Steven Grant, a 48-year-old man incarcerated since he was 16, said during an interview inside Richland Correctional Institution. Grant and others said state prison officials have failed to acknowledge or fix the employee problem. Vendors and state employees caught smuggling confessed to investigators that they earned up to $5,000 per drug drop — dwarfing their take-home pay. In 2023 and 2024, prosecutors charged 20 state employees for collectively smuggling 5 pounds of tobacco, 2 pounds of marijuana, a half pound of meth, a half ounce of cocaine, 1,879 Suboxone strips and 619 pieces of drug-soaked paper, including at least 218 full pages — alone valued between $1 million to $4 million inside. Most of the prison workers told investigators that they were motivated by money. Others said they accepted sexual favors, feared for their personal safety, or wanted incarcerated people to not cause trouble for them at work. Former corrections officer Jordan Bush got two years in prison for smuggling cocaine, Suboxone, methamphetamine, LSD and psychedelic mushrooms into Chillicothe Correctional in June 2023. The drugs were hidden under spaghetti in a lunch container provided by an incarcerated man's girlfriend. Investigators had Bush on surveillance in a Walmart parking lot, exchanging text messages about getting paid in sexual favors. In an interrogation, Trooper Sherri Wells scolded Bush, noting how another worker got attacked by someone high on smuggled drugs. "Do you know how many officers would have got their heads bashed in because of this?" Wells asked as Bush claimed ignorance. "Look at the last time an officer brought drugs in. A female officer got knocked down and beat the tar out of (her) because of it." Prisoners speak out against dangerous drug use The state's inability to stem the flow of drugs is making life more dangerous for people behind bars and employees. Those who don't use drugs say they are fed up. Some sleep with one eye open, they said. They risk more time in prison if they swing back when an intoxicated person attacks. The contents of their commissary boxes are raided and sold for drugs, they said. Multiple people, including a corrections officer, said incarcerated people at some facilities will blow electrical breakers and disrupt the Wi-Fi signal if not kept high. Every day at the prison in Dayton, people on K2 scream, fight, bite and lash out, multiple women incarcerated there said. When users sober up, they have no memory of it. "It really has an impact on those of us who don't use," said one woman, who didn't want her name used for fear of her safety. "We're on lockdown more, and it has everyone on high alert and the COs on edge." Last April, three men incarcerated at Mansfield Correctional staged a weeklong hunger strike to protest the prison administration's failure to stop the smuggling and use of K2. One of the hunger strikers, Michael Vaughn II, said: "They sweep everything — seriously — up under the rug. Overdoses, gangs. And they hate it when it gets out there." Rooting out bad actors Each prison has only one investigator and at least one trooper who takes calls for crimes inside. State officials gave conflicting statements about whether the patrol is notified of every scrap of suspected K2 paper. What's clear is that the focus is on shutting down major pipelines. Investigators listen to phone calls, read mail, watch cameras and talk to informants. Acting on intel, they may stop an employee at the front gate, stake out their movements in the community, or watch and confront visitors when they see something amiss. At Lebanon Correctional Institution, a contract nurse exchanged Instagram messages with an incarcerated man, who was found with an iPhone, Suboxone strips and 130 hit-sized pieces of drug-soaked paper, according to a prison investigation. The nurse still holds a state license, isn't banned from prison property and hasn't been charged with any crimes. Workers are generally only charged when caught red-handed. In those cases, troopers arrive at the prison, collect the evidence, frequently get a confession and refer the case to county prosecutors. The patrol sometimes spends months investigating drug rings or turns over more complex cases to federal agents. But staff, administrators and incarcerated people say there aren't enough inspectors, investigators or troopers. County prosecutors, judges and public defense systems handle prison crimes on top of everything else happening in their communities. That can be a burden that stretches limited resources. In the current state budget, lawmakers added $250,000 per year to defray the costs of prosecuting and defending indigent people accused of crimes in prisons. But that is spread across the 20 Ohio counties that have prisons. "I'm not sure that would even cover my county," said Warren County Prosecutor David Forshnell. He estimates 10 percent of all felony cases in the county originate in the two prisons there. 'A Joe Friday operation: Just the facts' For nearly half a century, the state Legislature's Correctional Institution Inspection Committee, known as CIIC, and its staff took complaints, inspected prisons and examined big picture issues. In their 2025 report to lawmakers, CIIC staff recommended studying the long-term effects of K2 on incarcerated people and workers, who inhale secondhand smoke daily. The committee found that K2, while increasingly evading detection in random drug tests, had quickly overrun prisons. In surveys conducted from 2023 to 2024, the proportion of incarcerated people who said they could easily get drugs behind bars soared from 12 percent to 88 percent. While prison officials could not provide the number of people treated for intoxication, CIIC inspectors recorded 250 cases of prisoners receiving medical care after smoking drug-soaked paper in just one month at just one prison — often the same people multiple times a day. The inspection committee's surprise visits shed light on potential underreporting by individual wardens. Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, the CoreCivic prison in Youngstown, reported just 13 drug confiscations in 2023 — fewer than any other men's prison in Ohio. Yet, "drugs were smelled throughout the institution," CIIC inspectors reported during a surprise visit in 2023. "Multiple cells had direct odors of illegal substances, and most units had odors of burnt toilet paper, often used to cover up other odors." The alarming report led to a facilitywide shakedown that uncovered "large amounts" of marijuana, Suboxone, tobacco and illegal cell phones, according to the inspectors. Those confiscations, however, were not reported to state prison officials. And the next year, inspectors found that CoreCivic had suspended drug testing at the facility for months due to low staffing. Last year, lawmakers ceded their long-held inspection authority to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who will give wardens up to 24 hours to prepare for inspections. The CIIC performed a mix of announced and surprise inspections, giving as little as an hour's notice. But Yost's team won't recommend changes to state law or policies. "I view this as a Joe Friday operation: Just the facts," said Yost, who added that he never asked lawmakers for prison oversight authority. "Quite frankly, they can have this project back whenever they would like it." THE MARSHALL PROJECT Second in a four-part seriesThis story was produced in collaboration by The Marshall Project - Cleveland, The Columbus Dispatch, The Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and Canton Repository.