No place to hide for prisoners and their contraband in new jail?

"Do you think the County Council would go for that?" Madison County's sheriff asks, laughing heartily.

While rhetorical, the problems at the heart of his joke are all too real.

Drug use at epidemic levels and chronic overcrowding are keeping county sheriffs like Mellinger awake at night across Indiana and the nation.

Inmates are willing to risk swallowing drugs and other contraband or hide them in body cavities because they know there's an insatiable demand in jails and prisons.

Full body scanners, imaging devices similar to ones used at airports across the nation, are becoming widely available and are helping sheriff's departments and jail officials sharply reduce the amount of drugs and other contraband entering their facilities.

And Mellinger wants one.

He's certain people scheduled to report for detention, for example, stock up on drugs before reporting, and begin sales once inside.

And he's equally sure prisoners transported to the Madison County Jail from the Pendleton Correctional Facility for court hearings are bringing drugs in.

"What most people don't understand is that the drug problem is much worse now than it was 20 years ago," Mellinger said in an interview this week. "The big difference is we're dealing with a lot more desperate and addicted inmates."

Officials in Hamilton County struggled with those same issues. In 2015, however, the Hamilton County Council agreed to buy two of the new imaging devices at a cost of $200,000 each, said Capt. Jason Sloderbeck, commander of the Hamilton County Jail.

Sloderbeck's facility become the first local jail in Indiana to be equipped with such a scanner; the second device was installed at Hamilton County's community corrections facility.

"What made me venture down this path was the amount of people that were getting into my facility that had contraband on them," Sloderbeck said. "It wasn't just drugs; it was any and all types of contraband we don't allow inside this facility.

"People were smuggling in coffee, cigarettes, but the drugs were obviously my number one concern. I would literally have people overdose in my holding tanks when they were coming from other facilities. Enough was enough," he said.

"We've had a drastic reduction," in the amount of contraband that gets into the jail, Sloderbeck added. "If I had to throw a number on it, I'd have to say there's been a 90 percent reduction of contraband inside this facility."

Another issue the new imaging systems solve is one dealing with probable cause.

Correctional officers can perform strip searches under Indiana law, but there are limitations, Sloderbeck said. People who know they are scheduled to turn themselves in can be strip searched, for example; so can inmates arriving from another facility.

For most offenders, however, clear probable cause is necessary before a strip search can be performed, but "if you can't see it, how do you know they have it?" Sloderbeck said.

Anyone else picked up off the street and booked into the county jail for, say, driving on a suspended license, is not strip searched.

"There's no reason for you to believe they have something on them because they didn't know they were coming to jail," Sloderbeck added. "This has all been handed down through the courts."

What's more, strip searches are time consuming and not accurate or thorough, Sloderbeck said.

"We're not being as thorough as we can be because we can't peer inside the body, Sloderbeck said. "This body scanner allows us to peer inside the body.

"Best of all, at least from a law enforcement perspective, a body scan isn't considered a strip search because they are non-invasive, and the scanner operators don't see a person naked," Sloderbeck said. "It's truly like a medical grade X-ray that you are looking at."

Mellinger, meanwhile, is hopeful the Madison County Council will see the value of purchasing a scanner.

"This particular county council is very public safety-minded," Mellinger said.