Prison officers are accepting cash to walk drugs and illegal contraband into prison, sources have told The Royal Gazette.Meanwhile would-be whistle-blowers keep quiet for fear of being transferred to undesirable shifts or posts, prison officers who spoke on condition of anonymity said.Commissioner of Corrections Edward Lamb admitted he has had to dismiss officers for illicit conduct in recent years. He would not say how many.“This is a relentless pursuit,” said Mr Lamb. “If there are officers, or anyone for that matter, who are absolutely certain that others are engaged in nefarious activities as you have stated, I encourage them to have enough courage to report them.“They can be assured that the appropriate disciplinary actions will be taken without any ramifications for them.”Officers however insisted they risk unofficial sanctions if they “prick” on their colleagues to “white shirts”, or ranked officers.Said one: “Money talks and nothing is done about it because whistle-blowers get punished for trying to make the ‘white shirts’ look bad.”Another officer said: “I know it happens, I don’t know who is doing it, but there are certain things that I won’t say that get into maximum security that we know the inmates cannot get through visits. We’ve had officers go from Westgate, to CoEd, to the prison farm, back to Westgate and then back down the East and then you have officers at Westgate who have never been transferred at all — you can’t tell me it’s not biased. Most officers know if they start talking, they start walking.”Sources told this newspaper that a package of loose tobacco that sells for $4.85 in stores can fetch as much as $400 at Westgate Correctional Facility; a cell phone can cost $1,5000 behind bars.A jury found on Monday that 37-year-old prisoner Kino Outerbridge died of a heroin overdose in October 2009. [See separate story]Only one prison officer has been convicted for smuggling drugs into Westgate in recent years. Luvoney Smith, 39, was jailed for six months and received a 12-month suspended sentence after he admitted carrying cocaine and cannabis into prison in a hollowed-out shoe.Lawyer Ricky Woolridge was an officer at the former Casemates prison from 1982 to 1989.He insisted there was “nothing new” about “officers on the take” or drugs in prison.“There were officers bringing drugs into Casemates,” he said. “Those officers, when found, were dealt with. Wherever there is human behaviour there is human frailty and there has to be more than just the one officer who was charged.”The attorney said it didn’t take “rocket science” to work out that people would especially try and profit in a period of recession.“When you see police and prison officers having to work extra jobs to make ends meet, that’s a problem,” said Mr Woolridge.“They should make enough money on their main jobs so when they knock off they can rest; they can come to work alert, fit and ready. That’s not happening.“Guys are leaving work having to drive taxi or do security. I know a Customs officer who’s a bartender on the side. That’s nonsense, because of the money they need to make to earn a living to support their families, they need more than one job.”A current prison officer also highlighted the money problems as a possible cause for the alleged behaviour.“We haven’t had a raise since 2009 but the prison hierarchy sees fit to bring in retired officers who are already getting fat superannuation pension cheques plus another pay cheque to cover shifts.”Defendants who end up in Bermuda’s criminal courts often give the same excuse for their behaviour, Mr Woolridge said.“The sad part is I hear it firsthand. Mothers say, ‘My little Ricky comes home, he drops $10,000 a month on the table and I pay all my bills’. That’s really what it is; she even brags about shopping trips abroad and even takes one of her girlfriends.“We call ourselves an affluent society, the affluence of a society could only be measured by the standard of living of its inhabitants, if our people aren’t living well then we have no affluence.”He continued: “We need to identify exactly where it’s going wrong — start from the security aspect and move inward.”Mr Woolridge cited a case handled where a client of his was remanded into custody while awaiting sentencing for drugs.“That was on a Friday; that same inmate called me on the Sunday afternoon from Westgate on an illegal cell phone. He called to tell me, point blank, that he had a joint of herb and two rocks of crack cocaine and laughed when he told me the drugs would be in his head before I could call somebody to stop him from using them.“That was two years ago. Nothing’s changed since then. Why don’t they use the equipment that they have to disable cell phone signals?“The question is can and how do we fix it? The solutions are not simple, and there is no one answer.“There will have to be a multi-pronged approach, the schools, the family, the church, the Government, our law enforcement all have to be involved. And even then there’s the issue of economics.”