Two men standing in the Church of Ascension parking lot are heard showering praise on St. Mary’s Sheriff Tim Cameron for trying to take drug users and petty drug pushers off the streets of Lexington Park -- the “Little Harlem” of St. Mary’s.

But drug addicts can succeed in using drugs inside the correctional centers, substance and drug abuse counselors maintain, adding once behind the bars these addicts get professional mentoring from seasoned players in the field. These counselors emphasize the incarceration of drug addicts or building new jails is a huge drain on taxpayer monies.

“It was little, but it was there,” a former jail inmate told this correspondent about drug use inside the jail. “I saw it happen.”

Cameron rejected the idea drugs are easily available inside the St. Mary’s Detention Center, but said he would not vouch drugs do not get smuggled into the facility at all, as there are a lot of “idle inmates with creative minds.”

St. Mary’s Commissioner President Jack Russell reposed his full confidence in the measures Cameron was taking, though adding in the same breath, “Locking them up is probably not the solution, but they (drug addicts) have to cross this bridge.” The commissioner president pointed out it was up to the judicial system what kind of a sentence a drug or alcohol addict gets.

Russell said the commissioners are cognizant that drugs and alcohol are a serious problem in the county. “Sheriff Tim Cameron will outsource as many of them. I am sure he will try to find avenues for their treatment,” he said.

Agreeing that treatment costs less than incarceration, Russell said institutions like Walden Sierra offer a tremendous avenue for help. “I am sure Sheriff Cameron will work closely with these institutions to help people in the jails,” he told The Bay Net.

“It’s true that drugs get into correctional centers,” said Dennis Logan, executive director of the Jude House, a long-term care facility dedicated to treatment of drug addicts in Bel Alton. “How it comes? Who’s responsible? I do not know,” Logan said at his office.

At one time Cameron himself headed the correctional center and so is well acquainted with the goings-on in there. Last week he directed the new head of the Detention Center, Lt. Michael Merican, to provide him with a comprehensive list of drugs and other contraband recovered from inside the jail. Cameron provided details to The Bay Net Friday.

Both Merican and Cameron caution “contraband” inside the jail should not be confused with the same word of general usage. “Even chewing gum is considered contraband in the jail,” Merican told The Bay Net Friday, but Cameron said smuggling any contraband into the jail was against the law and an important issue.

One age-old policy of the jail was until recently being abused by those trying to smuggle contraband into the facility for a friend or relative. The method of smuggling in contraband was simple: a senior inmate would tell the fresh arrival that some items will be ordered from the outside in his name and ask him to own those items when the visitor brings it. The inmate’s family or friend would then transport the contraband to the new inmate.

“A number of people were arrested,” Cameron said, when they tried to sneak cigarettes for the inmates into the jail. Until January 4, St. Mary’s County Jail allowed friends and relatives to bring in clothing and shoes from the outside within the first 72 hours of a person landing in jail. However, that policy has since been revamped, Cameron told The Bay Net during an interview at his office.

”The stuff would mostly be hidden inside the shoes,” Cameron said.

Cameron said since January 4 all outside stuffs have been outlawed and inmates wanting items have to purchase them from the jail commissary.

Cameron said the only other possible ways contraband can get into jails are via those who go out on work release or inmates who go on work detail. Both kinds of residents are searched - “not necessarily stripped searched” Cameron said - when they return to the jail.

The correctional facility has adopted the policy of keeping inmates restricted to their specific classification as opportunities of mixing even at bible study groups were misused, Cameron said.

The St. Mary's Sheriff said at times the narcotics officer who makes the arrests may wear a mask to conceal his identity.

All three counties in Southern Maryland bring detection dogs inside the correctional center for random checks. “We also do random urinalysis of inmates on work release and work incentive details,” said Cameron.

Drugs are not easily smuggled in through intake, Cameron said.

“The intake area is secure and designed well, they need to be enlarged,” Cameron said, adding that area is segregated from the general population.

The check of a person at the time of arrest out on the streets can possibly not be thorough, sheriff’s officials in all three counties explained. That is the reason a certain class of arrested people are strip searched.

“In fact 13 persons were found with contraband CDS/Illicit drugs on them after the police had brought them in” in 2006 and 2007, Cameron said after browsing through the hand compiled data provided to him by Merican.

Logan, of Jude House, who previously worked for the Walden Sierra, pointed out at a recent public hearing of the St. Mary’s Board of County Commissioners that treating a drug addict costs St. Mary’s just $85 a day and putting him in jail $125 a day. Logan said building jails to incarcerate drug addicts did not make any fiscal sense at all. “Drug addicts rub shoulders with hardened criminals inside the jail,” Logan said, adding they return to the streets with better “professional skills.”

Logan said he was not advocating that all drug addicts should be freed, as some of them probably need to be inside the jail, but that punishment cannot cure the disease of drug or alcohol addiction.

This is the first in a series of pieces looking at correctional facilities in Southern Maryland. Coming soon: An interview with Southern Maryland’s first female head of jail.