The machines, she said, are designed to reduce the flow of narcotics into the prisons. Prison officials hope the new machines, called Itemisers, will help guards more easily detect when drugs are being brought into prisons or used there. Major Daniel Nagy, chief of security for Pennsylvania's Department of Corrections, said the state's prisons have placed Itemiser machines at the entrances of several of their facilities, where visitors and vendors are routinely scanned. It just kind of protects our front door. Tony Jenkins, president of Ion Track Instruments, the Wilmington, Mass.-based company that manufactures the machines, said he began making the machines three years ago, and has since sold them to almost three dozen states.
Violence goes down.
The instances of attacks on guards go down. Usually, Hobbins said, drugs are brought into prisons by visitors or guards. Often, the drugs are wrapped in a balloon or plastic and brought through the prison's doors in a body cavity. It's another world. It's a world that comes from the streets.