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Coffee County Sheriff’s Department recently purchased a body scanner using funds from a non-matching federal grant that will help limit contraband introduced to the jail population.

The grant is connected to Covid-relief dollars, yet the scanner is an approved purchase as a tool that reduces close contact between intake officers and inmates.

Chief Deputy Frank Watkins explained that there are up to six settings on the body scanner, but the department uses the lowest setting.

That setting still provides enough resolution to clearly identify foreign objects on or in an inmate’s body.

The Tek-84 scanner costs $207,000 as setup for the department. That price tag includes training for employees and six years total of maintenance.

“The company came in and trained our people and trained some of our people to be trainers for new hires that come in,” Watkins said.

The first day the scanner was put to use a female inmate was found to have a suspicious item on board.

“What we do from that point is take them segregate them from the general population until they either pass the object, they give it up to us or it is introduced through the toilet,” Watkins explained.

He said the purpose is not initially to charge people with crimes, but to keep those items out of the facility.

The machine is essentially a high-resolution, digital X-ray machine. Scans can be filtered and zoomed it for greater detail, yet according to Tek-84 training sessions, exposes those being scanned to less radiation per scan than they would get from eating a banana.

“The device keeps exposures logged, and monitors (individual) dosage limits for the year. On its setting right now we can scan everybody that comes into the facility every time throughout the year and not meet the dosage limit that radiological personnel have set,” Watkins said.