Georgia prison officer convicted of smuggling meth, contraband into federal penitentiary

A former federal correctional officer was convicted by a federal jury following a six-day trial on charges of accepting bribes and conspiring with inmates to smuggle narcotics and other contraband into a U.S. federal penitentiary through a scheme involving a concealed “voided area” and a hole beneath a restroom sink, prosecutors said.

Patrick Shackelford, 51, of Senoia, Georgia, was found guilty April 2 of facilitating the smuggling of large quantities of methamphetamine and other contraband into the U.S. Penitentiary Atlanta, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia. He was taken into federal custody immediately upon the jury’s verdict.

Shackelford, who served as both a correctional officer and plumbing supervisor at USP-Atlanta, exploited his position to help inmates Patrick Kirkman, Mitchell Arms, James Hughes and others smuggle prohibited items into the then medium-security prison from approximately June 2018 through February 2019, prosecutors said.

According to court documents, Shackelford informed Hughes about a hidden room and “voided area” adjoining the prison’s visitation area. Under the cover of plumbing repairs, Hughes and another inmate used a sledgehammer and power drill to create passageways into the space, then cut a small hole beneath a sink in the visitation area restroom. Associates of the inmates brought tightly wrapped contraband packages to the prison during weekend visits and pushed them through the hole, prosecutors said.

On a nearly weekly basis, Hughes and another inmate retrieved the packages using their plumbing cart as cover. Shackelford allowed inmates to store the contraband in a staff office adjoining his own — a space inmates were not supposed to access — and helped escort his co-conspirators through security checkpoints to deliver packages to cellblocks, according to prosecutors. He also benefited from inmates completing his plumbing assignments for him.

In exchange, Shackelford received $5,000 in cash and pain pills from Hughes. Kirkman, who paid Hughes nearly $20,000 via Cash App to smuggle contraband and provided the cash for Shackelford’s bribe, was among the inmates who received the illicit goods, prosecutors said.

The scheme unraveled in February 2019 when prison officials discovered roughly two dozen packages in the plumbing office ceiling containing more than a pound of 100% pure methamphetamine, over a kilogram of marijuana, synthetic marijuana, tobacco and several cell phones — one of the largest contraband recoveries in USP-Atlanta history, according to prosecutors.