A female inmate was able to smuggle drugs into the Missoula County Jail, including heroin that she apparently shared with other inmates.

Commander Jason Kowalski said jail personnel noticed unusual behavior in the last few days which was indicative of drug use.

“We noticed that some inmates in the jail started acting like they were using drugs, so we started doing some shakedowns where we searched the cells and the inmates and we found some remnants of drug use,” said Kowalski. “We saw behavior that alluded to the fact that they were trying to flush drugs down the toilet. We caught it, but there were definitely some inmates using drugs.”

Kowalski said one of the drugs was definitely heroin, and came into the jail in an unusual manner.

“The actual drugs that we did find came in a body cavity of a female inmate,” he said. “Sometimes when the inmates know that they’re coming into the jail they may try to hide drugs in those places, which we wouldn’t find in the normal pat-downs or the searches that we do, so we don’t do body cavity searches, so we don’t have a way around that right now.”

Kowalski said the county attorney’s office has declined to prosecute due to the circumstances and the amount of drugs involved.

“However, we do plan some internal discipline charges so we hold them accountable inside the jail.”

Kowalski said another female inmate was also able to smuggle drugs into the jail in an unusual manner.

“One of our female inmates has a leg amputation and they hid the drugs in their prosthetic leg, within the tube that’s inside that prosthetic leg,” he said. “They disassemble their own leg while they’re inside their cell and pull the drugs out of that tube. My staff is just not trained to disassemble that leg to find the drugs, so we’re going to make some adjustments and bring in a professional and maybe take it off-site and checked and then brought back to the jail.”

Kowalski said the inmates are ‘very creative’.

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