Mississippi Department of Corrections officers found fewer, but much of the same kind of contraband items during an unannounced shakedown at Winston-Choctaw County Correctional Facility in Louisville Thursday morning.
The department’s 14th shakedown in 15 weeks turned up nine cellphones, seven phone chargers, three cellphone batteries, 11 ear buds, one shank, four packs of tobacco, three packs of spice, one bag of crystal meth, three bags of chewing tobacco, several pairs of free world shoes and a large amount of canteen.
“Getting rid of all contraband in a prison system with nearly 19,000 inmates may seem impossible,” Commissioner Pelicia E. Hall said. “However, stemming the flow definitely is possible. I think we have been decreasing the amount, and will continue to do so with these shakedowns.”
Winston is the eighth of 15 regional facilities to be searched and occurred a week after MDOC made one of its largest contraband seizures during a shakedown at Bolivar County Regional in Cleveland. The facility currently has 220 inmates; its maximum population is 280 inmates.
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All facilities will be searched in the contraband crackdown, dubbed Operation Zero Tolerance. Other shakedowns, starting in March, have occurred at Washington County Regional Correctional Facility, Stone County Regional Correctional Facility, George County Correctional Facility, South Mississippi Correctional Institution, Hinds County Restitution Center, Carroll-Montgomery County Regional Correctional Facility, Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, East Mississippi Correctional Facility, Marshall County Correctional Facility, Yazoo County Regional Correctional Facility, and Holmes-Humphreys County Regional Correctional Facility.
