‘Protecting inmates to death’: Weak scanners blamed in Thurston County Jail overdoses
Sep 23, 2025, 5:57 AM | Updated: 6:17 pm
Two inmates likely died from overdoses this month in Thurston County Jail. Not from violence. Not from medical emergencies. But from drugs that were easily smuggled in.
The drugs were hidden in body cavities, tucked under breasts, pressed between folds of fat. The jail’s body scanner could have detected them until January, when the Washington Department of Health (DOH) decided that inmates needed protection from radiation.
Not from fentanyl. From radiation.
Here’s what the state is protecting inmates from: radiation equivalent to less than half a dental X-ray, or five cross-country flights. Less than a single mammogram.
To avoid this microscopic risk, the DOH forced jails to reduce their scanners’ power to one-eighth. What used to show clear images of hidden contraband now shows, in Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders’ words on Facebook, “messy, indiscernible blobs.”
The inmates know it.
In March, an obese inmate smuggled fentanyl between layers of body fat. Another inmate overdosed. Corrections staff saved his life. Same day, another overdose. A sergeant spotted an inmate acting oddly. By the time medical help arrived, the inmate was unconscious. Ten minutes of CPR. Narcan deployment. They found drugs hidden under another inmate’s breast.
Those inmates lived. Two this month did not. We’re still waiting on toxicology reports, but these look like overdoses.
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Sanders believes drugs are being smuggled into jails
Sanders is clear about what’s happening. The drugs come in with the inmates, and the state just made it nearly impossible to stop them. Not one deputy has been accused of supplying drugs.
Under the old scanner settings, the settings that worked, an inmate would need to be booked 125 times in a year to reach the FDA maximum radiation exposure. Under the new rules? A thousand times.
We’re protecting people from a risk that doesn’t exist while exposing them to poison, fentanyl, that’s killing them.
Before January, no state regulations existed for these scanners. They worked. Nobody was getting radiation poisoning. Inmates were alive.
Now? New inmates can choose between submitting to a weak scan that won’t detect what they’re hiding, or sitting in a “dry cell” with no flushable toilet. Most choose the useless scan. The drugs walk right in.
Sanders puts it plainly: deputies can’t protect inmates from fentanyl when the state won’t let them use tools that work. They’re stuck giving CPR, deploying Narcan, and watching inmates die from drugs they couldn’t detect because someone in Olympia worried about radiation that would require more than 100 bookings a year.
The state legislature unanimously passed the 2022 bill that led to these regulations. So they have an opportunity here. They can work with DOH, sheriffs, and public health experts to adjust these regulations. Perhaps different settings for different situations. Maybe enhanced screening for high-risk bookings. There are solutions that protect inmates from both radiation and fentanyl.
Because the inmates hiding drugs in their body cavities and folds of fat aren’t worried about radiation exposure. They’re counting on our bureaucracy. And right now, they’re right to count on it.
Guys, we’re not protecting inmates from radiation.
With fentanyl, we’re protecting them to death.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
