The Richland County Courthouse on Thursday, Aug. 15, 2024. (Skylar Laird/SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — A former corrections employee was sentenced to three years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to smuggling drugs, cellphones and other contraband into state prisons through food shipments.
Javaris Da’Sant, a 22-year-old from Columbia, pleaded guilty to charges of trafficking meth, furnishing contraband to a prisoner and possessing marijuana with intent to distribute. His sentencing, which is part of a larger crackdown on contraband in prison, should serve as a warning for other employees bringing drugs, cellphones and other illegal items into jails, said Judge Daniel Coble, who determined the sentence.
Because of the trafficking conviction, De’Sant is not eligible for early release.
“A message needs to be sent,” Coble said.
In recent years, the department has put up 50-foot nets to prevent people from throwing packages over the fences and installed monitors to detect drones sent over the nets. South Carolina was also the first state in the country licensed to use technology that detects cellphones used within prisons, allowing officials to report them to their carriers, which then shut off the service.
The technology is in use at Lee Correctional, but $10 million in this year’s state budget will allow the department to expand the effort to seven or eight more prisons, corrections Director Bryan Stirling has said previously .
Da’Sant’s charges date back to 2022. A manager at the department’s food services warehouse in Columbia, which packages food to ship to all the state’s prisons, noticed Da’Sant leaving the freezer wearing a backpack. Behind him the manager found an open box of frozen chicken containing vacuum-sealed packages of tobacco and marijuana, said Margaret Scott, a special prosecuting attorney for the state.
SC prison guards, inmates charged with sneaking drugs, phones into prisons
When agents with the Office of the Inspector General searched Da’Sant’s car, they found bags of methamphetamine and marijuana, as well as cellphones and chargers, Scott said.
Da’Sant, who had at that point worked for the department for about six months, admitted to attempting to smuggle in contraband for money twice before. Inmates had promised him $5,000 for this round of contraband, he told police officers.
His job at Corrections would have paid Da’Sant, a high school graduate, just under $30,000 if he’d lasted a year.
Da’Sant had been released on bond for another drug-related offense days before his arrest for attempting to smuggle drugs into the prison, though that charge was later dismissed. Otherwise, he had no criminal history, said his defense attorney, Seth Rose.
Da’Sant was struggling with depression after the death of his grandmother a couple years prior, said Rose, who is also a state House member representing Columbia.
DaSant’s parents, both longtime corrections employees, helped get him a job at the food processing warehouse to start out his career, they told the judge Thursday.
“We thought we were doing a good thing, getting him a job at SCDC,” his mother, Nike Da’Sant, said. “We didn’t know he was weak, because you have to be strong” to work at the department, she added.
When Nike Da’Sant started working for the department 27 years ago, she had mentors to guide her in the right direction and keep her away from bad influences, she said. With so much turnover in the department in recent years, much of that mentorship no longer exists, she said.
“It’s young ones training young ones,” she said.
But Javaris Da’Sant should have known better, considering he went through a training about the consequences of sneaking in contraband and had family members warning him against it, Scott said.
“He heard from his own parents, from employees, don’t do this, and he still did it,” Scott, the prosecutor, said.
Bringing contraband, especially cellphones, into prisons can be dangerous, Coble said. Inmates with access to phones can more easily set up ways to sneak more drugs, weapons and other illicit items into prison, as well as order crimes conducted on the outside.
In the past, inmates have been convicted of using phones to order kidnappings and killings of people who interfered with their trafficking of methamphetamines and heroin outside the razor wire. Prisoners have also coordinated contraband drop-offs and, in one case, ordered the shooting of a prison guard for interfering with a drop-off, using contraband cellphones.
The mandatory minimum sentence for Da’Sant to serve would have been one year, which Coble said he would usually give to someone young with no prior record. But because of the severity of the issue, Coble sentenced Da’Sant to three years, he said.
“There’s a problem with cellphones, and it puts people’s lives at risk, particularly for the officers who work there, which is one of my top concerns,” Coble said.
Local News
