Trumbull commissioners agree to buy body scanner for jail, impose jail fees, hire analyst

WARREN

There’s a serious drug problem in Trumbull County, but Sheriff Paul Monroe wants the problem to stay out of the county jail.

One solution is to purchase a full-body scanner and use it during the booking of prisoners.

Such scanners work a little like ones used at airports to detect weapons that someone might try to bring onto an airplane, or X-ray machines used at hospitals.

But the one used at the jail in Stark County uses a dose of radiation 400 times lower than a medical chest X-ray, the Stark County sheriff told The Canton Repository last year.

Monroe said such scanners, which cost between $115,000 and $250,000, can detect metal things like you would expect, but they also can find drugs and other contraband that are not metal, even when it’s in the inmate’s digestive system or elsewhere.

Today, the county commissioners agreed to advertise for bids for a scanner.

Commissioners also approved a resolution that allows the sheriff to begin charging an inmate reception fee of $40, authorized a fee of $5 to $10 to non-indigent inmates every time he or she uses medical care from a doctor, eye doctor or nurse in the jail and hired Christa A. Bennett as intel analyst with the sheriff’s office.

Read more about the matters in Thursday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.