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Corrections official tells committee drones have been detected near Idaho prisons more than 7,000 times
Summary
Chad Page of the Idaho Department of Correction told the committee drone incursions are frequent and have been used to smuggle contraband and help coordinate escapes; he cited IDOC detector data and a specific escape-and-ambush incident that resulted in two community deaths.
Chad Page, chief of Institutions and Operations for the Idaho Department of Correction, told the committee that drone activity around prisons is not theoretical. "This is not a theoretic concern. It's an active and escalating problem," Page said, adding that after deploying detection equipment the department "has detected just over 7,000 drones operating in or near our prisons." He said each detection represents a potential delivery of contraband, phones, drugs, or weapons and that one incident involving a drone-delivered phone helped coordinate an escape that led to staff ambushes and two community members killed.
Page said correctional facilities were designed to control ground-based threats and were not built to manage persistent, low-cost aerial access. He urged lawmakers to give agencies legal clarity to respond, noting operational and staff-safety impacts and that current tools and laws are inadequate to the scale of the problem.
