Herald-Leader investigation: Sex and drug smuggling inside Kentucky prison walls
They flirted when they thought nobody was watching.
They secretly hashed out illegal transactions and exchanged romantic after-hours texts.
And sometimes, they had sex inside state prison walls.
Over a 16-month period ending in November 2023, the Kentucky Department of Corrections discovered at least 30 of its employees were involved in inappropriate relationships with prisoners, probationers and parolees under their supervision.
At least 14 more were caught smuggling contraband into prisons for inmates, usually drugs, such as suboxone and meth, or taking money from inmates or their relatives in exchange for smuggling.
These findings emerge from a Herald-Leader analysis of more than 800 pages of internal affairs investigations obtained from the Department of Corrections under the Kentucky Open Records Act.
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One of the employee-inmate sex cases resulted in pending sodomy and sexual abuse charges against the chaplain at Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex in Morgan County, 56-year-old Todd Steven Boyce, according to court records. That case is set for trial later this year in Morgan Circuit Court.
A federal lawsuit filed June 29, 2023, by Boyce’s alleged victim in that case claims prison officials knew the chaplain sexually molested inmates in the past, but they made no effort to stop him.
“Boyce bragged to plaintiff that he had been previously accused of sexual abuse by other inmates and nothing happened to him, so no one would believe plaintiff if he reported him,” the suit alleges.
In their response to the lawsuit, prison officials denied knowledge of any earlier sexual misbehavior by Boyce as well as any responsibility for his current criminal charges.
In a different case, police charged Correctional Officer Trista Fox, 39, with third-degree rape in December 2022 after colleagues walked in on her having sex with an inmate at Kentucky State Penitentiary in Lyon County. Fox has pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing in April.
That inmate told investigators that his sexual relationship with Fox was consensual — he said he “pursued her” — but under the law, inmates cannot consent to sexual contact with corrections staff.
Less frequent employee problems identified by investigators included racial and sexual harassment; dereliction of duty; excessive force; and abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs. There also were findings of assorted misconduct, such as horseplay on duty, falsifying reports, indecent exposure and sharing confidential information with inmates.
But the most common trouble the Department of Corrections faced is employees crossing the line by getting too close to inmates, either through inappropriate relationships or smuggling.
Experts say this isn’t unique to Kentucky state prisons.
“Being a correctional officer is a very challenging job,” said Judah Schept, an associate professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University, who teaches about criminology and prison culture.
“In the popular imagination, we think of these jobs as being exposed to extreme forms of violence, and of course, that can happen,” he said. “But more often, I think what you’re dealing with are mundane daily tasks and being unappreciated and underpaid and feeling isolated and overworked.”
“Given where you’re working, this can lead to some problems,” Schept said.
The Department of Corrections runs 13 state prisons and a minimum-security prison camp in Bell County that together house more than 11,300 inmates.
As a result of the 140 investigations included in the internal affairs records reviewed by the Herald-Leader, 62 corrections employees were fired or quit. In 29 cases, employees received written reprimands, verbal counseling or additional training, according to the state Justice and Public Safety Cabinet, which oversees the department.
In a brief 10-minute interview granted to the Herald-Leader, Department of Corrections leaders would not directly respond to questions about inappropriate relationships or smuggling inside the state’s prisons.
But they said the department takes seriously any allegations of wrongdoing by employees.
“We handle every piece of information the same, whether that be contraband or a relationship or whatever. The truth of the matter is, if we were not handling these situations in a very aggressive manner, the numbers would not be what they were,” said Scott Jordan, deputy commissioner of adult institutions.
“The reason the numbers are high is because we’re doing what we’re supposed to do,” Jordan said.
‘A huge problem’
James Wells is a prison and jail consultant and former Ohio prison correctional officer who recently retired after three decades of teaching at EKU’s School of Justice Studies.
Wells told the Herald-Leader that inappropriate relationships and smuggling happen inside a prison when guards don’t maintain a professional distance from inmates, who are looking for the weakest link in institutional security.
Sometimes inmates exploit the staff, Wells said, and sometimes the staff exploit inmates.
“It’s a huge problem,” Wells said. “And it certainly goes both ways.”
“Staff have complete control over inmates’ lives. They decide if you get extra toilet paper or extra toothpaste or if you don’t. If you’re in an environment where you have nothing to bargain with but your body when you’re dealing with people who hold all the power, then you might be forced to do things you wouldn’t ordinarily do,” he said.
There should not be sexual overtures between staff and inmates, Wells said.
Under the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act, the Department of Corrections has adopted “a zero tolerance policy toward all forms of sexual abuse and sexual harassment,” and it requires that all violations by employees or inmates be reported.
Over the past five years, the department confirmed 59 cases of employee-on-inmate sexual offenses in Kentucky prisons in violation of the federal law, with 35 cases forwarded to prosecutors for possible criminal charges.
Most recently, in February, Kentucky State Police charged a correctional officer at Green River Correctional Complex in Muhlenberg County, Amanda Kulka, 42, with third-degree sodomy. Internal affairs investigators alleged Kulka was having sex with an inmate half her age who is serving a lengthy sentence for burglary, assault and theft.
Professional barriers break down faster when prison staff are overworked and stretched thin, Wells said.
During the 16-month period covered by the investigations, the Kentucky Department of Corrections said that more than half of its correctional officers jobs were vacant, with 917, or about 47%, of 1,955 positions filled. That forced the department to pay millions of dollars in overtime to staff working extra shifts, sometimes 72 hours a week.
“Our inmates are pretty keen observers of the environment that they’re living in. They know when we’re short-staffed in a severe way, as we are now. And of course, some of them are going to try to take advantage of that in nefarious ways,” Justice and Public Safety Secretary Kerry Harvey warned lawmakers in July 2022.
‘Live in the moment’
Typical of the employee problems that internal affairs investigators said they uncovered:
▪ A correctional officer at Western Kentucky Correctional Complex in Lyon County resigned in September 2023 after investigators questioned her about her inappropriate relationship with an inmate. She gave the inmate small gifts in prison and, when she was off-duty, chatted with him about private matters through a JPay prison email account that she created under a fake name.
(Creating a JPay account, usually under an assumed name, is a popular move for corrections employees who want to communicate privately with favored inmates, although the messages can be monitored and retrieved by prison authorities. A medical assistant at Southeast State Correctional Complex in Floyd County kept sending JPay messages last year to an inmate she had grown close to even after the warden and internal affairs investigators confronted her about the messages, according to the report in her case.)
Asked why she developed personal feelings for an inmate despite her job, the Western Kentucky officer told investigators, “He just caught me at the wrong time one day. I mean, I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
For his part, the inmate told investigators he wasn’t in “a relationship” with the officer, it was “a situationship ... I’m saying that I just live in the moment.”
▪ A probation and parole officer in Owensboro moved in with and became pregnant by a criminal on probation in 2023.
Although the probationer wasn’t part of the officer’s caseload, he was assigned to her district office, and it’s a violation of policy for corrections officers to fraternize with, live with or have sexual contact with offenders.
The officer told investigators she used her office’s Kentucky Offender Management System to learn more about her boyfriend’s criminal case, also a policy violation.
The officer was fired.
“General consensus was that she did good work, she’s a good officer, that sort of thing, but (she) had a little bit of relationship drama,” a supervisor said of the officer.
▪ A correctional officer was fired from the Little Sandy Correctional Complex in Elliott County in October 2022 after the prison received a tip that she was developing a romantic relationship with an inmate. An internal affairs captain observed as the inmate ran in and out of different dorms one morning to meet with the officer a total of 25 times in just a few hours, which seemed suspicious, investigators said.
▪ In 2022, a probation and parole officer in Western Kentucky sent flirty texts and gifts to a woman briefly assigned to him for supervision, calling her “babe” and “doll.”
His personal messages included, “Good morning, beautiful,” and, “Hope you have a great day.” He asked her to send pictures of herself. And he used the Department of Corrections’ computer system to track her after she transferred to another officer and advised her to delete his texts.
“She began to think it was weird,” investigators wrote.
“I’ll tell you this, it was probably not professional,” the officer acknowledged to investigators in an interview. “I think that’s me being too flirtatious. ... I think I was looking to get my ego stroked.”
▪ A worker inside Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex pleaded guilty in June 2023 to the criminal charge of promoting contraband after investigators determined he was smuggling the drug suboxone into the prison. He was sentenced to five years of probation.
Urine testing of inmates at the prison from January to October 2022 showed 245 positive results for the drug that largely corresponded with the dates the worker made his “drops” at the prison, investigators wrote.
The prison worker claimed a degree of ignorance, telling investigators he simply picked up several packages from a woman in Winchester and brought them inside to an inmate in exchange for an offer of money.
“I am just too nice to people,” the worker said.
▪ A correctional officer at Green River Correctional Complex pleaded guilty in Muhlenberg Circuit Court in November 2022 to the criminal charge of promoting contraband after investigators determined he worked with inmates and their associates to smuggle suboxone and creatine, a sports supplement, into the prison.
The officer, who was fired, spent 90 days in jail and then was sentenced to five years on pre-trial diversion.
Asked why he went into business with the inmates, the officer told investigators “he was having money problems, and he stated that he didn’t have diapers for his kid at the time,” according to their report on the case.
