The Design and Development of Facility Interdiction and Search Teams

Contraband is power. The ability to obtain, possess, manufacture, and market contraband in any county jail is one of the greatest threats to any jail plagued by the unchecked flow of contraband within its walls. The war on contraband is as old as incarceration itself. Decades of different approaches, policies, and practices aimed at eliminating the presence of contraband within our jails have been met with varying degrees of efficiency and effectiveness. This course offers a look at a contemporary and verifiable contraband initiative called Facility Interdiction Teams or FIST. This initiative is based, not on massive or sometimes cumbersome shakedown operations, but rather on an agency search initiative focused on flexibility, plausible intelligence, stealth, and speed.

FIST consist of 10 to 12 vetted search officers. These operators independently develop their own intelligence based on the study of their assigned post(s), areas, or other assignments. They receive training in proxemics and in advanced interpersonal communications. They are highly detail-oriented and naturally curious and suspicious. They also have advanced training in the inmate hierarchy/power structure and associated subjects, in addition to the long and intense study of the nature, economics, purposes, and power of contraband to jail prisoners. Only then are these operators ready to study and train as a team in the "Principles of Interdiction."

Team members develop, study, and analyze prisoner activity wherever assigned. They are trained to unobtrusively develop sources and leads, whether they are inmate, officer, civilian, or otherwise. These operators need access to the current jail technology; i.e., the surveillance array, phone system, intercoms, and mail (outside of privileged). They keep their information and their suspicions to themselves and report them only to the team commander.